[imtringued]

You get what you pay for.

Less extreme example: When people sell their house 30% below market rate then you have to prepare yourself for the possibility that you have to spend that saved 30% on remodeling the home. Cheap properties usually have problems but estimating how much it costs to fix them is difficult if you are not the owner. However, the owner knows that it would take X amount of money to repair the home so he deducts X from the market price to clear the sale.

When you're saving 99% expect to replace up to 99% of the house.

The only real way to save money is by doing the repairs/remodeling yourself but that's basically a second job.

[Aeolun]

If you get a bunch of land for basically free and have to build a new house that’s still great though.

[corty]

Yeah, but you won't. Conservation laws will prevent you from tearing down the old house and instead oblige you to invest to prevent it from falling over on its own.

[literallycancer]

It's Southern Europe. Ask the locals how often they wait for the bureau to allow repairs and how often they just go ahead and do whatever changes they feel are needed.

[taejo]

Be sure to ask the locals how often they get away with that vs. how often foreigners get away with it (especially foreigners who've paid a 5000-euro deposit and explicitly promised not to do it, in exchange for a 1-euro purchase price)

[icebraining]

Uh, no, that's a good way to get fined, at least in Portugal/Spain.

People will often circumvent rules when they can (e.g. add a second story without a permit, but avoid putting regular windows to claim it's just a storage attic), but if you want to make more profound changes, you better be prepared to fight the bureaucracy.