Buying property in Portugal as a non-resident: the 7.5% IMT rate, stamp duty and what it costs every year after

Almost every guide to buying property in Portugal shows the same thing: a progressive transfer tax that starts at nothing under about €106,000 and climbs in bands. For a resident buying a home, that is right.

For a non-resident it has not been right since May 2026.

The short answer: a non-resident buying urban property for housing pays IMT at a flat 7.5%, with no relief, no exemption and no discount, whatever the price. Stamp duty adds 0.8% of the value. After the purchase the property is charged IMI every year at between 0.3% and 0.45% of its rateable value, at the rate the municipality sets. Three exceptions take you off the 7.5%, and one of them can be met up to two years after you sign, with the difference reclaimed afterwards. And buying gives you no right to live in Portugal — that route was abolished in 2023 and nothing replaced it.

Every figure below carries the article that sets it and the date we read it. Where something could not be read at source, this page says so rather than repeating a number from a page that is selling property.

What a non-resident pays in IMT on a Portuguese home: a flat 7.5%

Decreto-Lei 97/2026 of 20 May 2026 added paragraph 10 to article 17 of the CIMT, the transfer tax code. It reads as a single rule: where the buyer is not resident, the rate on the acquisition of an urban building, or an autonomous fraction of one, used exclusively for housing is always 7.5%, without any benefit or reduction.

Two things about that are easy to miss.

It is not a surcharge added to the scale. It replaces the scale. A non-resident buying a €120,000 flat does not pay the 2% band; they pay 7.5% of the whole price.

And it is not tied to whether the property is a first or second home. The ordinary scale distinguishes those; paragraph 10 does not.

The exact date the new paragraph took effect is not assigned by the law itself. Article 18 of Decreto-Lei 97/2026 names separate commencement dates for the income tax, VAT and vehicle tax changes it contains, and names none for the IMT amendment, so the general rule applies. We publish the fact rather than a date, because a date we cannot read in the instrument is not a date we will put in a table.

The three exceptions to the 7.5% rate, and what each one requires

Paragraph 10 carries its own exceptions, at subparagraphs a) to c). Any one of them takes the purchase back to the ordinary scale.

1. The buyer was already a tax resident in Portugal at the time of the acquisition.
2. The buyer becomes a tax resident in Portugal within two years of the acquisition.
3. The property is put to long-term letting within six months, at a rent no higher than the "moderate" ceiling, and is let for at least 36 months within the first five years.

The second is the one most buyers can actually use, because it is satisfied after the fact. The third is the one most misread, because both of its limbs bind: the rent ceiling and the thirty-six months. A property let at the right rent for two years does not qualify.

The moderate-rent ceiling for 2026: €2,300 a month

The ceiling is not a figure in the transfer tax code. It is set by reference: article 2 paragraph 2 of Decreto-Lei 97/2026 fixes it at 2.5 times the national minimum wage.

The Portuguese minimum wage for 2026 is €920 a month, so the ceiling for 2026 is €2,300 a month.

Because the minimum wage is reset every January, the ceiling moves with it. A let priced at the ceiling in one year is priced below it in the next, which is a good direction; a let priced above it never qualifies, whatever happens later.

How to claim the difference back after becoming resident

Paragraphs 11 and 12 of the same article give the mechanism. A buyer who paid the 7.5% and afterwards satisfies one of the conditions claims the difference between what was paid and what the ordinary scale would have charged.

The claim has a deadline: six months from the moment the condition is met, not from the purchase. Someone who becomes tax resident twenty-three months after buying has until month twenty-nine, and the clock starts at residence rather than at the deed.

Buyers from blacklisted jurisdictions pay 10% IMT, and 7.5% IMI every year

Where the buyer is resident in a jurisdiction on Portugal's list of favourable tax regimes, the IMT rate is 10%, under paragraph 4 of the same article 17. That rate is not displaced by the non-resident rule: paragraph 10 opens by preserving paragraph 4, so 10% overrides the 7.5%.

The same status is charged again, every year, on the other side. Article 112 paragraph 4 of the CIMI sets IMI at 7.5% of rateable value for property owned by entities with a tax domicile in such a jurisdiction, or controlled by them — against the 0.3% to 0.45% an ordinary owner pays.

Note that 7.5% appears twice on this page in two different taxes: it is the IMT rate for an ordinary non-resident buyer, and the annual IMI rate for a blacklisted owner. They are unrelated, and a buyer who conflates them will budget for the wrong one.

The ordinary IMT scale, and who still gets it

For completeness, and because it is what applies once one of the exceptions is met: the 2026 scale was set by Lei 73-A/2025, the budget law, in force from 30 December 2025.

For a permanent home: nothing up to €106,346; then bands at 2%, 5%, 7% and 8%; a flat 6% from €660,982 to €1,150,853; a flat 7.5% above €1,150,853.

For a second home the first band is 1% rather than zero, the 2/5/7/8% bands follow, the flat 6% starts at €633,931, and the flat 7.5% applies above €1,150,853.

Stamp duty on a Portuguese purchase: 0.8% of the value

Imposto do Selo is charged on the acquisition itself, separately from IMT and on top of it. Verba 1.1 of the Tabela Geral do Imposto do Selo covers the onerous acquisition of ownership, or of parcelled rights over it, in immovable property, and sets the rate at 0.8% on the value.

There is no non-resident variant of it. A non-resident and a resident pay the same 0.8%, which on a €300,000 purchase is €2,400.

IMI: what a Portuguese property costs you every year after you buy

IMI is the annual municipal tax on the property, set by article 112 of the CIMI. The rate is not national: the code gives a band and each municipality picks within it.

It is charged on the valor patrimonial tributário, the rateable value on the tax register, which is not the price paid and is usually lower. Any figure you calculate from the purchase price is an overestimate.

Buying property in Portugal does not give you residence

This is the single most common error in the category, and it survives because it is what everyone selling property would prefer a buyer believed.

Portugal abolished the property route to its golden visa in 2023, and none of the routes that remain replaces it. A purchase of any size — €300,000, €1,000,000 — confers no residence permit and no path to one. The investment routes that do still work run through funds and other qualifying investments, not through buildings, and they carry their own income test on top.

If residence is the point of the purchase, the purchase is the wrong instrument. What the remaining routes actually are, with their thresholds, is in the Portugal golden visa guide; the routes that ask for income rather than investment are in the Portugal residence guide.

What this page does not compute, and why

Notary and land registry costs are not on this page. We could not read the current official fee at source — the Casa Pronta service's own fee page did not resolve when we checked on 29 September 2026 — and the figures circulating on property and banking sites are secondary, vary by whether a mortgage is involved, and are exactly the kind of number this site does not copy from somebody else's page.

Nor does this page compute your total tax position. Rental income, capital gains on a later sale and the interaction with your own country's tax system are separate questions, and for an owner who is not resident in Portugal they depend on a treaty this page has not read for you.

What it does state, with the article for each, is the transfer tax, the stamp duty and the annual charge — the three that are fixed by Portuguese statute and that a buyer can verify without advice.

Frequently asked questions about buying property in Portugal as a non-resident

More on Portuguese property, residence and tax

What a purchase achieves across five jurisdictions, read against each statute, is in the property and residency guide. The residence routes that ask for income rather than investment, and the €920 threshold, are in the Portugal residence guide. What remains of the investment route is in the golden visa guide. For an American buyer, the tax position after the purchase is shaped by the US treaty and its saving clause; for a British one, by the 2025 convention. Every Portuguese instrument named here has its own line, with the date it was read, on our sources page.