A British couple I have been helping look at a run-down farmhouse near Lagos asked me a fair question last week. If we buy this and renovate it, how long before we can actually move in? Until this month, my honest answer came wrapped in caveats about permits, waiting on the town hall, and timelines nobody could promise. As of 1 June 2026, that answer is starting to change.
Portugal’s new Construction Code came into force on 1 June. It is the biggest overhaul of the country’s building rules since the 1960s, and if you are thinking about renovating or building in the Western Algarve, it is worth understanding what it does.
What actually changed on 1 June
The new code revokes and replaces the old RGEU, the General Regulation on Urban Buildings that dated back to the middle of the last century. In its place is a single modern framework that pulls more than a hundred scattered laws into one set of rules.
Two changes matter most for buyers. First, licensing is moving onto a single national digital platform called PEPU, the Plataforma Eletronica dos Procedimentos Urbanisticos, which became mandatory for all municipalities in January 2026, so applications and approvals are handled electronically rather than on paper across dozens of different town halls. Second, and this is the big one, the system now leans on automatic approval. If a town hall does not respond to certain applications within the legal deadline, roughly 120 to 200 days depending on the size of the project, approval can be granted by default.
This builds on the Simplex Urbanistico reform (Decree-Law 10/2024), which had already started simplifying the process. The Construction Code is the moment it fully takes hold.
Why this matters if you are renovating or building
For years, the single biggest unknown when buying a renovation project or a plot in the Algarve was time. You could budget the build. You could not budget the bureaucracy. A permit that should take a few months could quietly sit on a desk for a year, and there was little you could do about it.
The shift toward automatic approval changes the risk. It puts a clock on the town hall, not just on you. For a buyer weighing a tired villa in Burgau or a plot of land near Aljezur, that is the difference between a project with an open-ended timeline and one you can actually plan a move around.
It also points to more supply over the medium term. Faster, more predictable permitting makes renovation and new-build projects more attractive to develop, which is welcome in a region where good stock is tight.
The catch: give the town halls time to settle in
I am not going to tell you the queues vanished overnight. A reform this size needs a bedding-in period. The town halls have to adapt their processes, staff have to learn the new system, and the first months will not be friction-free. Anyone promising you instant permits in June 2026 is overselling it.
So treat this as a direction of travel, not a magic switch. The rules now favour the buyer who plans a renovation or build far more than they did a year ago. The practical reality on the ground will catch up over the coming months.
What I am telling buyers right now
If you are looking at a renovation project or a plot this year, three things.
- Build the new approval timelines into your offer and your planning, but keep a sensible buffer while the system settles.
- Get a local architect or engineer who already knows the PEPU platform involved early. The people who work with these rules every day will save you more time than any change in the law.
- Do not let the old reputation of Portuguese permitting talk you out of a project that makes sense. The framework that frustrated buyers for decades is the one that just got replaced.
This is exactly the kind of change that does not make the international headlines but quietly reshapes what is possible for buyers here. If you are weighing a renovation or a build in the Western Algarve and want to talk through what it means for a specific property, that is the conversation I have every week.
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