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.

Planning to renovate or build after you buy?

Then the rules for the work change on 1 October 2026. Portugal’s building and planning code, the regime jurídico da urbanização e da edificação (RJUE), was rewritten by Decreto-Lei n.º 108/2026. The rewrite was due in August, Decreto-Lei n.º 155-B/2026 moved it to October, and our post on the building licence delay covers which rules judge a file that is already with the câmara on the day.

We read what follows on 21 September 2026, from the code as that decree republishes it (the official text, 132 pages) and as Declaração de Retificação n.º 29-A/2026/1 of 27 July corrected it. Article numbers are the RJUE’s. No câmara has applied this text yet, so we can tell you what it says and not how your town hall will read it.

Which works need no permission?

Article 6 lists the works that need neither a licence nor a comunicação prévia (prior communication). For someone buying a house, four matter.

• Conservation works (obras de conservação). Article 2 defines them as works that keep a building in the condition it was in when it was built, rebuilt, extended or altered, “namely restoration, repair or cleaning”.
• Alterations inside the building that involve no outside change affecting its physical or aesthetic character (the code names heights, façades and roofs) and do not affect its stability. Work that does touch the structure stays exempt only with a stability project, a signed statement from a qualified technician that the works improve the structure or do not harm it, and a seismic reinforcement project where the law requires one.
• Minor works (obras de escassa relevância urbanística), listed in article 6.º-A. Among them: an outbuilding of up to 10 m², no taller than 2.2 m or the main building’s ground floor, that does not front the public road; a boundary wall up to 1.8 m, again not on the public road; a garden greenhouse under 3 m tall and up to 20 m²; solar panels that stay within the roof’s area and rise no more than 1 m above it; and swapping window frames, roof coverings or wall cladding for more energy-efficient ones that look the same from outside. A câmara can add to the list by municipal regulation.
• Reconstruction, which the code defines narrowly: rebuilding after demolition to the building’s last lawful state, façades and roof reconstituted as they were. Add footprint, floor area, height or volume and article 2 calls it an extension (obra de ampliação), which is not on the exempt list.

Exempt does not mean unregulated, and this is where the October text is stricter than most summaries of it.

• Exempt works still have to obey the municipal plan, the building standards and the heritage rules, and they can be inspected (article 6, n.º 8).
• You tell the câmara before you start. Article 80.º-A requires the person promoting the works to inform the câmara up to five days before they begin, and to say who will carry them out, “including works exempt from licence or prior communication”. The one carve-out is conservation work entirely inside the building.
• Heritage changes the answer. For a classified building, or one inside a classified ensemble or site, even conservation needs a licence, and so does altering the outside of a building in a classified monument’s protection zone (article 4, n.º 2). The minor-works list does not apply to those buildings either, with a single exception for energy-efficient window frames in a protection zone (article 6.º-A, n.º 2).
• Façade tiles are their own rule. Any operation that removes azulejos from a façade needs a licence, whether or not the wall faces the street (article 4, n.º 2).

What needs a prior communication or a licence?

Broadly, anything else that changes the building: an extension, another floor, a new façade, a new house. Which of the two procedures you face turns less on the work than on where the plot is.

Article 4 sends construction, alteration and extension works to comunicação prévia where a detailed plan, a subdivision (loteamento) or an execution unit already fixes the parameters, and in a consolidated urban zone where the result respects the municipal plan, rises no higher than the most frequent façade height on that stretch of street, and involves no handing over of land to the municipality (cedências). A swimming pool that goes with a main building is a comunicação prévia too. Outside those cases the same works need a licença, a licence. You do not get to choose: where the code says prior communication, article 4 rules the licence route out.

The code’s own tool for finding out before you commit is the pedido de informação prévia (PIP), a request for prior information. Article 14 lets “any interested party” ask the câmara whether an operation is viable and under what constraints. It does not say you have to own the property first. Our read is that a buyer who is paying for a house because of what it could become should ask before the deed, not after it.

What changes at the deed?

One thing, and it is aimed at buyers. Under article 4.º-A, n.º 14, whoever formalises a transfer of building land, a building or a unit (the registrar, the notary, the lawyer or the solicitador) must state in the document one of three things:

1. that the property’s título urbanístico, the licence, prior communication or use title behind the building, was shown to them;
2. that the seller declares he has it, where it was not shown; or
3. that the seller declares he has none.

Leave the statement out and the transaction can be annulled (anulabilidade). The decree’s preamble gives the purpose in its own words: the contract must say whether the property has a título urbanístico or not, “assuming thereby a conscious and informed acquisition”.

Read that list again, because the third line is lawful. The rule does not stop a sale of a building with no permission behind it. It makes the seller say so in writing, and it leaves the consequences with a buyer who signed anyway. The same article says the use title passes automatically with the property (n.º 13), so what you are buying is the paperwork that exists, not the paperwork the listing implied. Ask which of the three statements your deed will carry, and ask before the CPCV, while walking away costs nothing.

What if work was already done without permission?

The code’s route is legalização, under article 102.º-A. Where unlawful works can be brought into line with the rules in force, the câmara notifies those concerned to legalise them and sets the deadline. After the deed that is you.

Two parts of that article are worth knowing before you price an “easy fix” into an offer. Anyone interested in legalising works can ask the câmara how the process would run, and it has 15 days to answer (n.º 6). And the câmara may waive a building standard that has become impossible or unreasonable to meet, but only if the works met the standards in force when they were carried out, and it falls to the applicant to prove that date (n.º 5). An undated extension with no invoices is a harder file than an old one with a paper trail.

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. The revised licensing code starts on 1 October 2026, and the section above sets out what it exempts, what it does not, and what it changes at the deed. Confirm with the câmara, in writing, 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.