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What to know before you buy

Each guide answers one question. The sources and the date we checked them are in the text.

  • How to buy property in Portugal, step by step

    To buy a home in Portugal you get a NIF, budget for the taxes, arrange the mortgage, choose the area and the home, check the documents, sign the promissory contract and then the deed. After that comes IMI, every year.

  • Does buying a home let you live in Portugal?

    Buying a home in Portugal does not give you the right to live in Portugal. The two are separate: ownership is a land-registry fact, residency needs its own permit. What the purchase does require is a NIF — and, depending on where you live, a tax representative.

  • What you pay on top of the price

    On top of the price come transfer tax (IMT), stamp duty and the notary and registration fees. IMT is the big one, and it is not one rate times the price: the table is banded, and if the home will not be your permanent one — a holiday flat, a rental — there is no zero band at all. Tax starts at 1 % from the first euro.

  • What flatin.pt is for when you buy a home

    Buying a home in Portugal is a chain of separate tasks, from the first listing to the signature at the notary. Some of them nobody can take off you: the tax number, the bank account, the taxes and the signature stay with you. The rest is done by people on the ground, and that is what flatin.pt is for: we are a licensed estate agency (AMI 28163), we answer your request ourselves and see the deal through to the deed. The table shows where the line runs.

  • Mortgages in Portugal: how much a bank lends and on what rules

    A bank can lend up to 90% of a home that will be your main residence and up to 80% of a second home or a property to let. These are Banco de Portugal limits (Recomendação Macroprudencial n.º 1/2026), and they depend on what the home is for, not on where you live. Repayments on all your loans, with a variable or mixed rate stressed upwards, should stay within 45% of your net income, and the term can run to 40 years if you are 35 years or younger and 35 years after that.

  • What to check before buying a new-build

    With a new-build or off-plan home, almost all the risk sits in the promissory contract (CPCV): the building permit, the deposit, the developer's mortgage and IMT that can fall due before the deed. Check all of it before you pay — once you have signed, you only get the deposit back doubled if the seller is the one who defaults (artigos 441.º e 442.º do Código Civil).

  • What you pay every year for owning a home

    Owning a home in Portugal means paying IMI, condominium fees and insurance every year; for an individual, AIMI only starts above 600 000 € of taxable value. IMI is a municipal tax: a rate between 0,3 % and 0,45 % applied to the property's taxable value — not to the price you paid.

  • Where to live in Portugal

    Every city has streets that are easy to live on and a few spots where we would not buy, but it is almost never a whole district. So our verdict goes to a zone and rests on something you can check: the INE median of completed sales, the date of a police operation, the noise map. Below: how to read the verdicts, what living next to municipal housing means, when the country stays up all night, and why in winter sun beats a view.