The useful area of a room is the floor area of this room, less areas occupied by pillars and areas with headroom less than the minimum regulatory height (1,8m); for rooms that occupy 2 floors, the room area is made up of the area of the 2 floors and the plan area of the internal connecting stair.

The useful area of a home is the sum of the useful areas of all the room in this home, plus the area allocated to this home destined for clothes' washing and drying.

The useful area of a room is the sum of the useful areas of the rooms in a home and of the rooms of the annexes of this home that taken together comprise the home in question.

The area of a home is, for each storey occupied by the home, the area delimited by the external boundary of the walls that separate the home from the common areas of the building, by the mid-points of the walls that separate the home from the rest of the building and by the external boundaries of the external walls of the building. The sum of the areas thus determined for the different storeys of the home gives us the area of the home.

The gross area of a home is the sum of the area of this home with the proportional share corresponding to the area of the home of the difference between the area of the building and the sum of the areas of all the homes that make up the building.

The property register includes cartographic and geometric records of the property (whether rural or urban) and identifies the pieces of land and the respective owners. Prepared with fiscal and legal objectives in mind, the property register enables the location, dimensions and legal situations of property to be known as accurately as possible, thus allowing better territorial planning and management.

The IPCC (The Portuguese Institute of Cartography and Property Records - "Instituto Português de Cartografia e Cadastro") is responsible for the definition and scheduling of the actions for maintaining the property records, and for central coordination thereof and for urban control. In Portugal, only about 50 per cent of buildings are properly recorded. The IPCC is encouraging the renewal of the property register to ensure, through the introduction of information technology, that the information contained therein is more correct.

16) CLÁUSULAS CONTRATUAIS GERAIS (GENERAL CONTRACTUAL CLAUSES) - The legal regime of general contractual clauses was established by Decree-Law n.º 446º/85, of 25.10.1985, adapted by the alterations introduced by Decree-Law n.º 220/95, of 31.08.1995. Legal definition: Clauses prepared beforehand that proponents or undetermined parties for whom the clauses are destined, are confined to, respectively, subscribing or accepting.

The referred Decree-Law sets out the regulations related to the inclusion of general contractual clauses in specific contracts, the interpretation and integration of general contractual clauses, prohibited general contractual clauses and their invalidity in relations between businessmen and similar organisations and in relations with final consumers. See "Contrato" - Contract.

17) COMPRA E VENDA (SALES CONTRACT) - Contract through which the ownership of a thing or right is transmitted for a price.

Real estate sales contracts are only valid if celebrated in the form of a public deed (article 875 of the Portuguese Civil Code), except if the sale is one involving a loan, with or without a mortgage, of an urban building or autonomous fraction destined for habitation, and where the lender is a credit institution authorised to concede credit for housing (Decree Law n.º 255/93, of 15.07.1993, and article 81, paragraph "d" of the Portuguese Public Notary Code). In the sales contract, the transmission of the ownership of the property or the right to the purchaser is not dependent on the payment of the price except if this is agreed in the ownership reservation contract. Unless agreed otherwise, the expenses of the contract and other accessory expenses are borne by the purchaser (article 878 of the Portuguese Civil Code). (Check Article 874 of the Portuguese Civil Code). See "Contrato" - Contract.

The joint owner has right of preference and is first in line among legally preferred parties in the case of the sale or payment, to outside parties, of the share of any of the other joint owners (article 1409 of the Portuguese Civil Code).

See "Propriedade horizontal" - horizontal ownership and "Condomínio" - Condominium.

The common areas and presumably common areas are jointly owned by all the joint owners or by those people to whom their use has been attributed. The regulations governing the regime of horizontal ownership are set out in articles 1414 and following of the Portuguese Civil Code. See "Propriedade horizontal" - Horizontal ownership, and "Fracção autónoma" - Autonomous fraction.

In normal, everyday construction sector speech, civil constructors ("construtores civis") are those self-employed building contractors whose main activity is the construction of buildings and the subsequent sales of fractions thereof to private individuals.

The term "alvará de construção civil" - civil construction licence refers to a licence held by companies with experience of private construction and which are legally permitted to execute such work. Companies that have experience and legal permission for carrying out works for the Portuguese State have an "alvará de obras públicas" - public works' licence.

Public order should be understood to be the group of fundamental principles inherent to the legal system that form the basic foundations on which economic and social order is based. The principle of contractual freedom is also limited by the regulations that must govern some types of contract - general contractual clauses *. These limitations seek to protect the weaker or less experienced contractual party. These limitations can also refer to inalienable rights, that is, those rights that cannot be signed away by the parties, and to the general contractual rules. Contracts that are celebrated without fulfilling the written form prescribed under the law are considered null and void unless there is another special sanction foreseen in the law (Refer to Article 219 and the following articles 280 and 405 and following of the Portuguese Civil Code). See "Contrato-promessa" - promissory contract.

The regime of non-transferability must be registered and automatically comes to an end with the death or permanent and absolute disability of the owner or of the respective spouse. If the owner or the cooperative wishes to sell the home before five years have elapsed from the date of purchase or issue of the respective utilisation licence *, he/it can request the National Housing Institute to lift the non-transferability limitation in exchange for the re-payment to the Institute of the financial support given in relation to the home in question.

Loans, factoring, financial leasing. In accordance with the legislation published at the end of 1992 (Decree-Law n.º 298/92 of 31/12/1992) to adapt Portuguese laws to those of the European Union, the following types of credit companies can be constituted: banks, State Savings Bank ("Caixa Geral de Depósitos"), savings banks, agricultural savings banks, investment companies, financial leasing companies, factoring companies, and credit purchase finance companies. All these organisations are subject to special rules and to the supervision of the Bank of Portugal as a way of guaranteeing the safety of the credit and the confidence of the public. Apart from credit companies there are also other financial companies such insurance companies and fund management companies.

There are two basic and well-defined types of real estate investment:

The investment made with a view to the future enjoyment, by the investor, of income or short, medium or long term capital gains, and the investment made to meet the investor's own installation needs. The first type of investment is called pure investment while the second is known as use-investment. The term "real estate investment" should not be confused or associated with the term "real estate promotion".

It is not technically feasible to allow or support any operations for the sub-division of land into lots unless this fits into the framework of municipal planning. No such operations should be authorised outside urban limits. Inside urban limits such operations should not be authorised outside the scope of established or provisional Detailed Urban Plans. However, this is not what usually happens in Portugal where legal or clandestine division of land into lots is the main trend and way in which the uncontrolled urbanisation (as opposed to urban planning) of recent decades has occurred. This uncontrolled urbanisation has resulted in today's urban agglomerations and urban areas.

The quality of the cities and metropolitan areas of the future depends to a large extent on the ability to improve the current sub-divisions into lots and to ensure that the future divisions into lots are of better quality. Conditions must be created in which the phenomenon whereby land is illegally divided up into lots is discontinued.

The process is based on an intimate understanding of the existing reality, normally obtained in a data gathering, analysis and interpretation phase. The process also includes a range of compatible and explicit objectives, that originates in the political arena but which have been re-interpreted technically. To achieve these objectives a linked group of measures and actions are proposed together with a strategic timetable for their implementation.

At certain times in the process a document (plan proposal) will be produced. Once the political authorities have approved such a document, it will acquire the status of a plan. The accompanying of the implementation of the proposed measures and the checking of the results obtained, in order to provide the system with new data for interpretation, is known as monitoring. Today, monitoring is considered to be an essential part of the urban planning process.

The municipal council can decide to extend the application of these regulations to other zones or localities not included in the group described above.

- The security of the invested capital in real terms;
- The security and regularity of the income;
- The ability to adjust income to changing market conditions;
- The liquidity of the investment;
- The degree of fiscal burden.

The rate by which the net income of a certain investment is divided to calculate the capital value at a certain date.

This process, that is universal in scope and has been going on over time, has resulted in the situation where, at the end of the 20th century, it is estimated that more than 65 per cent of the world's population lives and works in agglomerations with more than 50.000 inhabitants.

Urbanisation also means the practice of urbanism, putting into operation the relevant concepts through concrete plans and by carrying out works that enable spaces to function properly ("urbanised"), notably with regard to infrastructure networks.

An urbanisation can also mean a group of buildings, normally in an area of expansion or on the periphery of an agglomerate, usually made up of a mixture of buildings and detached houses. The unity of an urbanisation comes from the way it is promoted as a single unit with joint basic infrastructure: water, sewers, electricity, and roads with different types of paving. Sometimes the word tends to hide, euphemistically, the reality of a skeletal suburbanism where there is a lack of space for jointly used facilities and green areas.

Should any sale occur for a higher price, made to a person with a special interest or motive, these special circumstances are taken into consideration.