"Rooms in bathrooms or garages: living poorly where you can" (with Regina Santos Pereira)

Actually, it's not. Regina Santos Pereira, a rental specialist at law firm SRS Legal, says there is a difference: a contract presupposes a written agreement between the landlord and the tenant; the receipt is only issued by the property owner.

What's more, "anyone who builds a house has to respect the building regulations in order for the town hall to issue a housing licence". Therefore, "you can't sign a lease without a licence". What can happen? After a complaint is made to the local authority, which has the obligation to supervise, the council can end the tenancy and oblige the owner to pay a fine of the amount of rent charged for one year. However, the lawyer emphasises, this would only be the case if there were enough human resources to inspect housing. As there aren't any, she emphasises, nothing happens.

In Porto, P3 found another example: a studio for 600 euros for a student girl. In the images, the size of the door and the lack of windows indicated what appeared to be a garage turned into a dwelling, a situation confirmed by the landlady. In this case, there was no contract either, but rather a "word of mouth" agreement, as the landlady said during the call. This agreement meant that she would only rent the house if the tenant proved he had the financial means to pay the rent. She added that she usually rented to foreign students, as they don't usually ask for a contract or receipt and stay less time, but that she had no problem accepting a worker, as P3 said he was.

The advert for the studio is still available, but, as Regina Santos Pereira confirms, garages and other similar spaces "can never be rented out for a person to live in".