Hello Doug and welcome to the forums. We felt the same as you last year this time. We were going to do everything ourselves. We thought Ei! was a little busy last Spring and went back to the idea of doing everything ourselves.  

When we joined the Expats Portugal Premium Plus program in July of 2021, we intended to use the skills for doing our D7 ourselves. Once we finished the program in September, we had made some progress and had our NIFs, background checks, and bank account. 

We realized in October that we had so much going on we did not want to do the D7 ourselves with the lease requirement and the potential to lose thousands of dollars. Carl from Expats Portugal introduced us to Cristina at Ei! via email at the end of October. We were Premium members, so all services were discounted 10%.

Ei! booked our VFS appointments for December 15 2021. They had our apartment secured and everything ready for the VFS appointment in 45 days. We flew over two weeks after the VFS appointment to stay on our 90 day limit while we waited for the D7 approval. We were approved in February 2022 and returned to the US for two weeks to get the visas.

We will be using Ei! for our SEF appointment this August as well. With Gilda being present almost every Monday on the Good Morning Portugal show to answer questions we couldn't be happier with our decision to use them and I think that is what distinguishes them.

Posted by: @grambo

I am from UK where apartments ( flats ) are sold as " leasehold" as apposed to "freehold" which applies to most houses.

Is this the same in Portugal? 

Firstly, as has been mentioned by others, always use a proactive Portuguese lawyer for property transactions - all relevant details should be checked by them, and explained to you in terms specific to the property in question.

Leasehold is not a concept in Portuguese law - there can be unconventional arrangements which may seem similar (but they're unusual); and you may find some people misdescribing things in those terms.

The key concept is propriedade horizontal, which is often glossed (notably by non-Portuguese speakers) as the condominium setup.  It is safe to assume that pretty much all apartments follow this regime; as do many resort-like developments - but also other multi-occupancy buildings which might not, in other countries, be considered to be condominiums (eg larger houses later subdivided into units).

A building classified as propriedade horizontal will be so described in its official paperwork - and in that instance, each owner is responsible for their share of the building upkeep based on the established proportions (in permilagens - thousandths).  The individual properties are known as frações and an owner may have one or more (garages may be separate titles, or combined, for instance).

Where there are more than four owners sharing the building, there must be an official condominium setup, with an adminstrator (an owner, or a third party) and regulations (which, once established, are extremely hard to change).  The way everything must function, including meetings, voting, financial reserves, is established clearly by law, and the regulations complement but cannot override that.

However, a key factor to check is the financial health of the condominium, and the historical maintenance.  If you buy into a condominium which is underfunded and/or poorly maintained, you share the headache of getting it sorted.  Many condominiums are well run and solvent; some are effectively bankrupt, with no money to fund, say, a roof problem.  There is no landlord - it's down to the joint ownership to fund the building in the established proportions.  This is precisely the kind of thing the lawyer should check for you.

The alternative to propriedade horizontal is propriedade vertical, where one owner owns the whole building (even if it has separately rented units within it).  It is possible for the status to be changed between these two - but that's beyond the scope of this thread!