All is of course not straight forward with our property purchase. We got a note from the vendor they had built an extension to the porch which had never been an issue with the Council - because they never told the Council about it. So we are potentially looking at the implications of this illegal build. We have employed an engineer to determine if it can ever be made legal - or we may just have to adapt to the Portuguese way and buy a non-legalised property build. We just want to at least find out that it could be made legal. (In some cases it is never possible to make a build legal due to legislation constraints and land type.)
We were looking at another property where the owners where trying to get a swimming pool legalised. It had been put in by the owner/builder who never had a permit to build for it.