New Rules: Licence to use

- What is a utilisation licence?
The Utilisation Licence is a document issued by the City Council of the area in which the property is located, which defines and certifies the type of use it can have, residential or non-residential (commerce, services or industry).


- New Simplex Urbanism 
On 4 March, the Simplex for Urban Planning Licensing came into force, abolishing the use authorisation procedure. 
Following an urban development operation subject to a licence or prior communication, there is no longer any need for any permissive act. All that is required is to present the term of responsibility issued by the engineer in charge of the work and, only when there have been alterations to the licensed or communicated project, final canvases can also be requested. 

It should be made clear from the outset that the measure does not make it possible to sell the house without a licence, but rather without having to show the authorisation for use in the deed. 

Making it possible to buy and sell houses without the need to obtain a licence has several advantages for the Portuguese property market, speeding up processes, reducing costs and putting more houses on the market. 


- Advantages for the housing market
It enables owners to sell older properties, with habitable conditions, that were not licensed at the time. 

Owners are no longer obliged and conditioned to submit an architectural project to the local authority where the property is located, which entails high costs in order to sell it.

As a result, the buyer will be able to licence the house at any time after purchase, if they so wish. To make an informed decision, before going ahead with the property purchase, consult a specialist: lawyer, architect, solicitor or property consultant. 

From the above, this measure could increase the supply of property in Portugal, which had been somewhat "blocked".

It has also been common practice in Portugal for local authorities to take longer than 6 or even 12 months to licence work that has been completed, making it impossible for buyers to deed their property and use it. 

With this measure, the director of the work himself is responsible to his local authority for ensuring that the property or group of properties in question are habitable, and he assumes the appropriate responsibilities under the law. 


- Conditionalities in the housing market
For those wishing to take out a housing loan, there are still some entities that have not definitively signed up to the new measure, and some institutions may maintain the normal procedure of requiring the presentation of a licence in order to grant a loan.

To ensure that this doesn´t happen, before deciding to apply for a home loan, you should ask the respective bank if it is essential for the loan to be granted if you have a licence to use the property.