Buying Property in Portugal as a Foreigner (2026): The Process and the Real Costs

You can buy. Portuguese law attaches no nationality condition to owning property, and a non-EU passport does not change what happens at the deed. What you need is a Portuguese tax number — a NIF — not a residence permit and not a visa.

The hard part is everything around the signature. Portugal charges a transfer tax that runs from nothing to 8% depending on what you are buying and why, adds stamp duty on top, then bills you every year afterwards. Every one of those bands moved on 1 January 2026, and the rules on selling changed in 2023 in a way that most English-language guides still get wrong.

Below is what a purchase costs, in the order the bills arrive, with every figure read from the Portuguese government’s own tables in August 2026.

Can foreigners buy property in Portugal?

Yes, and that includes non-EU citizens. The government’s own guide to buying and selling property turns on the tax number and the property’s paperwork, never on the buyer’s passport. Where the tax code does single a buyer out, it does so on fiscal domicile rather than nationality, and even then it sets a rate rather than a bar: article 17 of the IMT code charges a flat 10% transfer tax, with no exemptions, where the buyer is domiciled in a listed low-tax jurisdiction.

Two things follow from being a non-resident owner rather than a foreign one.

• You need a NIF first. Get it before you start viewing, because it gates the bank account, the promissory contract and the deed. Our guide to getting a NIF covers the in-person and remote routes.
• Owning creates a tax relationship. The tax authority’s leaflet for non-resident foreign citizens is explicit: a non-resident NIF needs no fiscal representative by itself, but once you own property here you have 15 days to appoint one or to sign up for one of two named electronic channels: the tax authority’s own notification and citation system on the Portal das Finanças, or the ViaCTT electronic mailbox. That obligation is optional for residents of the EU, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, and for Andorran citizens living in Andorra. For everyone else it is real, and the clock is short.

Where nationality genuinely bites is the mortgage, not the deed. More on that below.

What are the steps to buy a house in Portugal?

The sequence is short, and the order matters because the tax is due before the deed, not after it.

1. NIF, then a Portuguese bank account if you are financing.
2. Check the property, not the listing. The government guide names the two documents that matter: the certidão de registo predial (the land registry record — who owns it, and what is charged against it) and the licença de utilização, the council’s certificate that the building may lawfully be used as housing.
3. Sign the contrato-promessa de compra e venda (CPCV), the promissory contract, and pay a deposit. Legally optional; in practice universal.
4. Pay IMT and stamp duty. Under article 22 of the IMT code the assessment precedes the transfer, and article 36 gives you the day of assessment or the 30 days after it to pay.
5. Sign the escritura. This can be done at a notary, at a lawyer’s, or at a Casa Pronta counter, which handles deed and registration together.
6. Register the purchase at the land registry. Casa Pronta does this in the same appointment.

How much deposit is at risk in the CPCV?

More than most buyers realise, and the amount is not set by law. Portugal has no legal deposit percentage. Whatever the contract says is what is at stake, so treat the figure as negotiable rather than standard.

What the law does set is the consequence. Under article 442 of the Civil Code, as summarised in the Bar Association’s journal: if the buyer walks away, the seller keeps the deposit; if the seller walks away, the buyer may demand double what he paid. That symmetry is the reason the CPCV exists — and the reason to have your own lawyer draft or read it before money moves.

What does buying actually cost in 2026?

Three costs land at once. The big one is IMT, the municipal transfer tax, charged on the higher of the price you pay and the property’s rateable value (valor patrimonial tributário, or VPT) — article 12. The tax authority’s 2026 tables, which moved the bands up 2% on 1 January, are the mainland’s:

Value the tax falls on	Own permanent home	Deduct	Any other home	Deduct
Up to €106,346	0%	—	1%	—
€106,346–145,470	2%	€2,126.92	2%	€1,063.46
€145,470–198,347	5%	€6,491.02	5%	€5,427.56
€198,347–330,539	7%	€10,457.96	7%	€9,394.50
€330,539 up to €660,982 (own permanent home) or €633,931 (other)	8%	€13,763.35	8%	€12,699.89
From there up to €1,150,853	6% flat	—	6% flat	—
Above €1,150,853	7.5% flat	—	7.5% flat	—

The sum is base × marginal rate − the deduction on that row. These are marginal rates, not a cliff; the two flat rates at the top apply to the whole value rather than to a slice of it.

A separate table zeroes IMT up to €330,539 for buyers aged 35 or under — but only on a first purchase of an own permanent home, only if they are not someone else’s dependant that year, and not if they have owned any residential property in the previous three years. Outside housing, the flat rates are 5% on rural property and 6.5% on other urban property.

Buying in Madeira or the Azores? The same circular sets separate, more generous tables for the autonomous regions: IMT starts at €132,933 rather than €106,346 on an own permanent home, and every band ceiling is 25% above the mainland’s — that last figure is our arithmetic on the circular’s own tables IV to VI.

Can a non-resident use the own-permanent-home column? Only by actually making it your own permanent home. Article 11 of the IMT code withdraws the exemption and the reduced rates if the property is not put to own permanent housing within six months of the purchase, and claws the benefit back if it is given a different use inside six years (with carve-outs for a sale, a change in household, or a job that moves more than 100 km away). Buy a holiday flat on the own-permanent-home column and you will be assessed on the other one, with interest. The code sets a use test, not a residency-status test — but in practice you cannot pass it from abroad.

One date to keep in mind: these are the 2026 bands, set by Lei n.º 73-A/2025, the State Budget for 2026. The brackets have been moved by each recent Budget — 2% this year — so if you are reading this in a later year, pull the current tables from the tax authority before you budget anything.

Then stamp duty at 0.8% of the same base, under verba 1.1 of the general stamp duty table. Then registration: Casa Pronta charges €375 for a single act, €700 where the purchase comes with bank financing, and €50 for each extra property.

Two worked examples, on the mainland, with the arithmetic ours rather than the tax authority’s:

	€250,000, own permanent home, with mortgage	€350,000, second home, with mortgage
IMT	€7,042	€15,300
Stamp duty (0.8%)	€2,000	€2,800
Casa Pronta	€700	€700
Total	≈ €9,742 (3.9%)	≈ €18,800 (5.4%)

So you can check the arithmetic: both examples are mainland, and both assume the VPT is lower than the price, so the price is the base. The €250,000 own permanent home sits in the €198,347–330,539 band, giving €250,000 × 7% − €10,457.96 = €7,042.04. The €350,000 second home sits in the €330,539–633,931 band, giving €350,000 × 8% − €12,699.89 = €15,300.11. Stamp duty is 0.8% of the same base. Casa Pronta is the €700 rate because both examples are financed. Figures are rounded to the nearest euro.

One cost is deliberately outside those totals: the 0.60% stamp duty on the loan itself, under verba 17.1, because it scales with how much you borrow rather than with the price — on a €200,000 mortgage it is €1,200. Add that, your lawyer, and the bank’s valuation, so price the deal above the percentages above.

Hold the tax in cash, too. Under article 49 of the IMT code a notary may not execute the deed at all without being shown the declaration and the receipt proving the tax was collected — so the money has to clear first, and no lender advances it. You start that off yourself by filing a Modelo 1 declaration at a tax office or electronically (article 19), which is why buyers usually let their lawyer or the notary file and settle it. If you are banking outside Portugal, agree who is paying the reference, and how, well before the deed date.

What will you pay every year after that?

IMI, the annual municipal property tax, set by each council within a national range: 0.3% to 0.45% of the VPT on urban property, a flat 0.8% on rural, and 7.5% where the owner is domiciled in a listed low-tax jurisdiction (article 112). It arrives in one instalment in May if the bill is €100 or less, two in May and November up to €500, and three in May, August and November above that.

Above a threshold there is also AIMI, the wealth surcharge on residential property and building land. Read the deduction carefully, because it is the part people get wrong: the tax falls on the sum of the rateable values of all the Portuguese urban property one owner holds on 1 January, and the €600,000 is deducted once from that total — it is per owner, not per property. A married or cohabiting couple who opt to be assessed together pool their values and deduct double. Above the deduction it runs at 0.7%, then a marginal 1% on value above €1,000,000, and 1.5% above €2,000,000 — with those two thresholds also doubled for a couple filing jointly. Commercial, industrial and service premises are outside it entirely.

Note what AIMI is charged on: the VPT, an administrative value the tax office assigns, not the price you paid. Read the property’s caderneta predial before you assume either way.

What tax will you pay when you sell?

This is the section where old guides do the most damage. The flat 28% on non-resident property gains is gone. It went on 1 January 2023.

Since then, article 43 of the IRS code taxes half the gain for residents and non-residents alike, and the tax authority’s instruction 20255/2023 sets out what happens next for a non-resident: the half-gain is compulsorily aggregated and taxed at Portugal’s general IRS rates, which in 2026 run from 12.5% to 48% above €86,634 — and your worldwide income is taken into account, purely to decide which rate applies.

Whether that is better or worse than the old flat rate depends entirely on the size of the gain and on what else you earn. It is not automatically a win.

One relief is effectively out of reach for a non-resident owner: the rollover that excludes the gain when you sell your own permanent home and buy another. It requires that the property was your own permanent home — proved by your registered fiscal address there in the 12 months before the sale — and that you reinvest between 24 months before the sale and 36 months after it, in Portugal or another EU or EEA state that exchanges tax information. A holiday flat never qualified.

If you will be tax-resident here, read our IFICI and NHR guide alongside this — the regime you sit in changes the rate that half-gain meets.

Can a non-resident get a Portuguese mortgage?

Usually, on tighter terms, and this is the one place your passport genuinely counts.

• BPI publishes up to 70% of the valuation for non-resident foreign buyers, over terms of up to 30 years, with its advertised pricing tied to bundled insurance and account products.
• novobanco publishes 80% of the lower of valuation and deed price where the buyer is resident and a national of the EU, the UK, the Schengen area, the USA or Canada — and asks anyone resident or national outside that group to come in and be assessed individually.

Both sit under the Banco de Portugal’s macroprudential recommendation, rewritten with effect from 1 August 2026. It caps loan-to-value at 90% for an own permanent home and 80% for every other purpose — which is what a holiday home or a rental is — holds total debt service to 45% of net income, and limits maturity to 40 years for borrowers aged 35 or under and 35 years above that.

Pricing tracks Euribor. The three-month rate averaged 2.43% in July 2026, up from 2.18% in April, on the ECB’s published series — rising, gently, through the year.

Does buying property still get you residency?

No. The golden visa’s real-estate route was closed under the Mais Habitação package, and the government’s own announcement put it plainly: an end to new golden visas, with existing property-based permits renewable only where the property is the holder’s own permanent home or is placed durably on the rental market.

Buying a house in Portugal now gives you no immigration status whatsoever. Anyone still selling residency through a property purchase is describing a programme that no longer exists — our golden visa guide covers what actually qualifies today.

What goes wrong, and how do you avoid it?

• The building is not licensed for what it is. Casa Pronta requires the utilisation licence, or a notarial declaration of exemption for buildings finished before 7 August 1951 and not altered since. A conversion, an extension or a “studio” carved out of a garage may have neither. Check the licence against what you are actually being shown.
• The registry and the reality disagree. Rural and older properties are where boundaries, unregistered outbuildings and inherited co-ownership surface. The land registry certificate is the document, not the agent’s floor plan.
• The VPT is higher than the price. IMT is charged on whichever is greater. On a cheap purchase with a stale rateable value, the tax bill is not the one you calculated from the price.
• You are planning to renovate. Portugal’s revised building and renovation licensing regime was pushed back to 1 October 2026 — our post on the building licence delay explains which rules apply meanwhile. Confirm with the câmara before you count on a permission.
• The agent is not your agent. The estate agent is paid by the seller. Verify the agency’s AMI licence on the IMPIC public register, and instruct your own lawyer — not the one the agent recommends, and not the seller’s — to run the searches and read the CPCV before you sign it.

What should you do next?

• Sort the tax number first — how to get a NIF — because nothing else can start without it.
• Working out whether the sums add up at all? What Portugal actually costs in 2026 sets the running costs beside the purchase.
• Deciding where before deciding what, our hubs for Lisbon and Porto compare the two markets people most often choose between.
• Need people on the ground? Our directory lists property search and rentals and tax advisors and accountants. We do not list property lawyers yet — we only list people we have dealt with ourselves, and an unchecked name on a legal purchase is worse than none.

This guide is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Every figure here was read from the official Portuguese source on 22 August 2026 and tax bands move with each State Budget — verify the current position at Portal das Finanças and in the Diário da República before you commit money, and use a lawyer who is working for you.