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Buying and Selling Real Estate Laws in Portugal

Buying and selling property is always tricky, whether you’re a legal resident, buying a vacation home, timeshare, office building or simply investing in the Portuguese real estate market, buying or selling is always an adventure in bureaucracy. As with your home country, there are regulations, requirements and rules to consider. Murphy’s Law holds that anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Knowing the ropes, due diligence and expert assistance can make your transaction move forward more easily, if not more smoothly.

Lawyer or no lawyer?

Portuguese law used to require a notary, which is kind of like a minor solicitor, but that is no longer required. It’s a good idea to retain an attorney (avogado) or solicitor (solicitador).

Licensed realtor

Unlicensed realtors abound, so ask for the realtor’s AMI number. It should be printed on all company collateral, such as Web sites, brochures, business cards and letter head.

A licensed realtor has the state-required qualifications and uses the required documentation.
The INCI, the government department regulating real estate, also bonds realtors.
Seller pays the agent’s fees, usually 3% – 5%, plus tax (21%).
The mortgage

Unless it’s a cash transaction, as a buyer you need a mortgage, whether fixed or variable rate. If you go to a Portuguese bank, you’ll need to supply the bank with:

Proof of income, including bank statements
Health records (to be sure you don’t die before you pay the mortgage off)
Life insurance to cover the mortgage (see above)
Property valuation, blueprints, etc.
Residency card, passport and identification
The process

If you are a first-time buyer, you’ll need a fiscal number (cartão de contribuinte) before you can open a bank account.

The local tax office (finanças) can provide you with one, and it’s very easy to obtain.
The bank will also need copies of your birth certificate and passport.
When you’ve agreed a price (buying or selling), there’s a legally binding promissory contract (contrato de compra e venda) to execute.

At that time, a 10% – 20% deposit is required.
A lawyer will (or has already) prepare the contract and it must be signed on licensed premises or before a notary. The contract will include:
Identification of the parties
Identification (article number) of the property
Price
Deposit amount
Signing date (closing date for the final deed-escritura)
Other considerations such as: use of the property before closing, etc.
Once signed, any default incurs penalties:

Seller’s default requires the seller to pay buyer double his deposit
Buyer’s default means seller keeps the deposit
As with any escrow, between signing the promissory contract and final deed, your legal representative will vet the property for:

Deed: use and planning restrictions
Clear title: no outstanding debt, liens, ownership or boundary disputes (unpaid debt follows the property, not the owner, including utilities and taxes)
Habitability: no unapproved building modifications and that the property has an occupancy license (licença de habitação)
Agreed fixtures and fittings in place
Once finalized, you’ll need to register the escritura with the Land Registry (Conservatoria do Registo Predial), tax office (Autoridade Tributária) and utility companies.

Registration with the Land Registry makes you the legal owner.
You’ll need your fiscal number for registration.
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Thinking of living, retiring or buying property in Portugal?

Click here for guides on living in Portugal [http://www.propdom.com/index.php/where/europe/portugal/portugal-overview]

Click here for guides on buying real estate in Portugal [http://www.propdom.com/index.php/where/europe/portugal/portuguese-real-estate]

James Harrison has lived on four continents with his family and is now the founder of PropDom:

PropDom – the worldwide property domain for all things regarding holidaying, buying a second home, investing in property and retiring abroad.

Information for everyone and no advertising!

Plan To Succeed With Information Product Creation: Why You Need To Split Your Process Up

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.

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Start A Home Based Business – 3 Ways To Increase Your Income

If you want to start a home based business that is more than just a part-time income, you will have to learn how to master some of the most important parts of working an online business that are directly related to the size of your income. Many different parts come together to build a successful online business, but there are a few specific things you can do that will maximize your income potential. In order to ensure you are doing all that you can, it is essential to educate yourself about what goes into building a successful business from home, and how exactly you can master each aspect and build the best possible business.

Here are three very important things you should focus on if you want to maximize your home-based business’ income potential:

#1 – Focus on building the biggest customer list possible

If you want to maximize your home-based income potential, you should be focusing on building your list from the first day of business. Even if you don’t have a single product yet, you should learn about list-building and put plenty of energy into this process. The size of one’s list is directly related to the size of one’s income. Thus, focusing on building a larger list is a top priority in achieving success with your home-based business.

#2 – Focus on the needs of the customers

Your customers are your source of income, so if you want to get the most money possible from them, you should focus on supplying them with the absolute best possible service. Find out more about them, build relationships with them through your list, and ask them exactly what they need or want, what you can do to help them achieve their goals, and then give them plenty of free information to help. When you give away good quality information for free, you can be sure that they will still be willing to pay you for your absolute best information.

#3 – Create different levels of products

There are different levels of customers, some have plenty of disposable income, some have very little, so if you want to ensure you maximize your ability to help them, create different product levels so that everyone can afford your services. Your products could range anywhere from a $10 eBook to a $1,000 home-study course, but ensuring you have products for sale to fit every type of customer’s needs, you can ensure you will be making as much money as possible.

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