Vistoria

Vistoria is the Portuguese-language term for the walkthrough that happens before a property changes hands, in which the buyer or someone acting for them checks the finished unit against the contract and records any defects or unfinished work. It is used across Portugal, Brazil and other Portuguese-speaking property markets, and produces a signed document similar to a snag list or punch list.

Also called: vistoria de imóvel, vistoria de entrega

In practice a vistoria de entrega is the same event as a snagging visit or a punch list walkthrough: the buyer, or somebody engaged by the buyer, walks the finished unit against the contract specification and the delivered drawings, and produces a signed record of what does not match.

What differs is the weight of the signature. In Brazil the termo de vistoria frequently accompanies delivery of the keys, and signing it without reservations can be read as accepting the unit in the state it is in. Buyers are routinely advised to record objections on the document itself rather than agreeing to raise them afterwards.

Portuguese practice in the Algarve, where a large share of buyers are foreign, tends to run the vistoria alongside the escritura and the licença de utilização. The sequence matters: an occupancy licence says the building satisfies the authorities, not that it satisfies your contract, and the two get conflated constantly.

For a buyer who is not in the country, the practical problem is that a vistoria is a single scheduled event with a short notice period. It happens on a date the developer sets, and a buyer who cannot travel that week either sends somebody or signs on the basis of photographs taken by the party they may end up in dispute with.

Like every walkthrough of a finished unit, it also arrives after everything structural has been closed up. It is the correct thing to do, and it does not answer what happened while the building was going up.

If your contract is in Portuguese, establish now whether signing the vistoria document constitutes acceptance, and never sign it without your objections written on it. Arrange for somebody to attend before the date is set, not after.

A vistoria is the signed walkthrough record of a property’s condition at handover, used in Portuguese-speaking markets much as a snag list or punch list is used elsewhere — valuable for what it documents about the finish, but silent on structural work completed and covered up earlier.

See also

• Snagging
• Handover inspection
• Punch list