An inspection is only useful if you can act on it. This is the standard every PIDS report follows, published so you can hold us to it.
A property report can fail a buyer in two opposite ways. It can hide a real problem to keep everyone comfortable, or it can list every blemish in alarming language until a perfectly normal house sounds like a ruin. Both leave you unable to decide.
We do neither. When we find something, we say so plainly. Then we tell you three things about it, every time: how serious it actually is, how common it is in a property of this type and age, and what we recommend you do about it.
That is the whole method. We never make a real problem sound smaller than it is. We take the fear out of it with context and a clear recommendation, not by shrinking the truth.
Damp at the base of an interior wall in a 1970s Portuguese house. Here is how the same finding reads depending on who writes it.
“Minor cosmetic staining noted to wall. No action required.”
You find out what it really was after you own it.
“Significant moisture ingress detected. Structural investigation strongly advised.”
Technically defensible, but you walk away from a house that was fine.
“Rising damp to the lower 40cm of the north wall of the living room. Not structural. This is common in Portuguese houses of this era, which were built without a damp proof course. We recommend having the affected section assessed and treated by a damp specialist before any redecoration, and checking the external ground level against the floor level while that work is done. See item 3.2 for photographs.”
You know what it is, whether to worry, and what to do next. Now you can decide.
There is no fifth category and no vague middle ground. Each item we inspect is rated, photographed where relevant, and cross-referenced from the summary.
In very good order. Nothing to do.
Sound and working as intended. Normal for its age.
Functional but showing wear, or approaching the end of its service life. Not urgent, but it comes with a recommendation so you know what to plan for.
A defect, a safety issue, or a failure that needs attention. Always explained in full, with photographs and a clear recommendation on what to do about it.
Your report opens with the General Property Condition Summary. Before any formal property details, you see what matters, sorted by how much it matters.
Safety hazards and outright failures. Exposed wiring, an unsafe balcony rail, a gas fault. If something here is present, it is the first thing you read.
Genuinely important, but not a safety risk. A roof nearing the end of its life, active damp, drainage that will cause damage if left. These are the items that usually inform a renegotiation.
The ordinary upkeep list. Useful for planning your first two years of ownership, and deliberately kept separate so it never inflates the serious findings.
What is genuinely good about the property. A report that only lists faults is not an honest picture of a house.
Near the front of every report is a section explaining how properties of this age and construction type were normally built in Portugal. Single glazing in a 1980s apartment, no damp proof course in a 1960s villa, a flat roof detail typical of the 1990s. When you reach a finding later in the report, you already know whether it is a defect or simply how houses of that era were made.
Anything rated Fair or Critical carries our recommendation for what to do about it: what needs a specialist to look at it properly, what should be repaired, what only needs watching, and what can safely wait. We do not price repairs and we do not carry them out, so the recommendation is about what the property needs and nothing else. You take it to a builder or a specialist and get a real quotation from the people qualified to give one.
When you commission a pre-purchase inspection, the report is yours. Nobody else sees it unless you say so. No estate agent, seller, developer or lawyer can review it, comment on it, or ask us to change a word before it reaches you.
We are paid by you and by nobody else. We take no commission and no referral fee from anyone, in either direction. That is not a slogan, it is the reason the report is worth reading: we have nothing to gain from the sale going ahead or falling through.
If you would like your agent or lawyer to receive the findings summary, you can tell us at booking and we will send it. That is your decision to make, not theirs.
Working with buyers as an estate agent, lawyer or relocation adviser? See how referring an independent inspection works.
Most findings in most properties are normal, fixable and worth knowing about before you commit rather than after. In practice a report leads to one of three outcomes.
Nothing serious found, or nothing you were not prepared for. You buy knowing the condition of the property, with a maintenance plan for the years ahead.
The summary is written so it can be handed to the other side. Clear items, clear severity, clear recommendations. This is the most common outcome where something meaningful is found, and it usually keeps the purchase alive on fairer terms.
The least common outcome, and the one that saves the most money when it happens. If the cost of putting the property right changes the deal completely, you find out before the deed rather than after.
No. We do not price repairs and we do not carry them out. What every Fair and Critical item carries instead is our recommendation: what needs a specialist to investigate it properly, what should be repaired, what only needs monitoring, and what can wait. You take that to a builder or specialist and get a real quotation from the people qualified to give one. It also means we have nothing to gain from making a finding sound bigger or smaller than it is.
More on how the whole process works in our buyer's guide to property inspections in Portugal.
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