Buying property in Portugal: the rules, the costs and the new surcharge

Portugal restricts nobody. There is no nationality condition on buying a home, no regional carve-out we could find for Madeira or the Azores, and no permit to obtain.

What changed is the price of being a non-resident rather than the right to buy. A 2023 proposal to bar foreigners from purchasing went nowhere — the European Commission said an outright prohibition would not be permissible — and what arrived instead, in May 2026, was a tax. It is in the next section, and it is the single most important thing on this page.

One consequence worth stating plainly: the difference Portuguese law now draws is between residents and non-residents, not between Portuguese and foreign buyers. A foreign national who is tax-resident in Portugal is on the resident side of it.

Since May 2026 a non-resident buying a home in Portugal pays transfer tax at a flat 7.5%, with no exemption or reduction of any kind. Decreto-Lei 97/2026 added it as paragraph 10 of article 17 of the IMT Code. Most guidance written before that date does not carry it.

There are three ways out, and all of them are about what happens after the purchase. The buyer was already tax-resident in Portugal; or becomes tax-resident within two years of the purchase; or lets the property long-term within six months at a rent no higher than the moderate ceiling — €2,300 a month in 2026 — for at least 36 months out of the first five years. A buyer who later satisfies one of these may reclaim the difference, within six months of meeting the condition.

For a resident buyer the ordinary scale still applies: nothing to €106,346 on a permanent home, then 2%, 5%, 7% and 8% by band, a flat 6% from around €660,000 and a flat 7.5% above €1,150,853. A second home starts at 1% instead of zero.

A buyer domiciled in a blacklisted jurisdiction pays 10%, and that rate overrides the 7.5%.

Stamp duty on the purchase is 0.8%. A mortgage of five years or more adds 0.6% of the loan.

Casa Pronta, the one-stop counter, charges €375 for a single registration act and €700 where there are several — a purchase plus a bank mortgage, typically — with €50 for each additional property. A registry certificate costs €15 online and is valid six months.

Lawyers' fees are not tariffed. Agency commission is not fixed by law either: the usual 5% plus VAT, paid by the seller, is market practice, and the regulator's own page sets neither the rate nor who pays.

The tax number comes first, and one widely repeated claim about it is wrong. A non-resident living outside the EU or EEA does not have to appoint a fiscal representative: enrolling in the tax authority's electronic notifications serves instead. The obligation is to be reachable, not to be represented. For residents of the EU, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein both are optional.

No law requires a Portuguese bank account to buy, though one is practical for paying the tax and the utilities.

The promise of purchase and sale is the binding step, and the deposit is where the risk sits: a defaulting buyer forfeits it, a defaulting seller returns it doubled. The customary 10% is practice, not law — the parties set it freely.

Due diligence rests on two documents: the permanent registry certificate, which shows title and encumbrances, and the tax register entry for the property.

Casa Pronta consolidates the deed, the tax payment and the registration into one appointment at one counter.

No Portuguese government source publishes a duration for any of this — not for the tax number, not for opening an account, not for the interval between promise and deed, not for registration. Any timeline you have been quoted is somebody's estimate.

The annual tax is IMI: 0.3% to 0.45% of the rateable value for urban property, up to 0.5% in exceptional cases. Each municipality sets its own rate within that range every year and may vary it by parish, so the figure is a local one. Where a property has stood vacant for more than a year or is in ruins, the rate is tripled.

Above IMI sits AIMI, on the portfolio rather than the property: the first €600,000 per individual is deducted — €1,200,000 for a couple filing jointly — and the excess is taxed at 0.7%, rising to 1% on the slice between €1m and €2m and 1.5% above that. It is assessed in June and paid in September, and a non-resident with a €700,000 apartment pays it exactly as a resident would.

Rental income for a non-resident is taxed at a flat 25%. Long contracts reduce it: five to ten years brings it to 15%, ten to twenty years to 10%, twenty years or more to 5%. From 2026 a separate 10% rate applies to contracts at or below the moderate-rent ceiling, in force until the end of 2029; how it interacts with the duration-based reductions is not settled in the sources we could reach.

One asymmetry matters here. A resident of another EU or EEA state may elect to be taxed at the progressive resident rates instead of the flat 25%. A resident of a country outside the EU and EEA has no such option.

Condominium charges are set by each building's own assembly and no government source publishes typical figures.

Local accommodation — alojamento local — went through three years of churn and came out the other side more permissive than the headlines suggest.

New registrations are open nationally. The suspension introduced by the 2023 housing law was repealed by Decreto-Lei 76/2024, in force since 1 November 2024, along with the extraordinary levy on apartments in local accommodation and the five-year expiry of registrations. What replaced the expiry is insurance: mandatory civil liability cover is tracked in the national register, and a lapse cancels the registration.

Registration is a prior notice through the single electronic counter. The municipality has 60 working days to object, or 90 in a containment zone; silence means the registration stands. Platforms must display the registration number.

A condominium can no longer cancel a registration on its own. Since 2024 it may only pass a reasoned resolution, approved by more than half the building's permilagem and based on proven disturbance, and then ask the municipality to consider cancellation.

The live constraint is municipal. Municipalities may declare containment zones, and a July 2026 decree gave those with more than a thousand registrations until 31 December 2026 to decide whether to regulate — with the power to suspend new registrations once while they draft the rules. Lisbon and Porto both restrict parts of their centres, and several other cities have followed. Which parish a property sits in decides the answer, so that is the thing to check before committing, not a national summary.

This is the section where Portugal differs from every other jurisdiction on this site: buying property here confers no immigration status at all.

The residence-by-investment route through real estate was removed in 2023, and the law went further than deleting it. Article 3(5) of the immigration act now provides that a qualifying investment may not be directed at real estate "directly or indirectly" — which closes the fund holding buildings as well as the flat. The provision survived a further amendment in October 2025.

What remains are five routes, none of them property: creating at least ten jobs; €500,000 into scientific research; €250,000 into cultural heritage; €500,000 into a qualifying non-property fund; or €500,000 into a company that creates five permanent jobs.

The route most buyers are actually thinking of is the D7, and it turns on income, not on assets. The official page for it does not list property ownership among its criteria, and does not mention proof of accommodation at all. The euro threshold is not stated on any government page we could reach; the figures in circulation come from consultancies.

So a purchased home may be the address on an application. We found no government source stating that owning one strengthens it.