Buying Property in Portugal as a Foreigner: The NIF, the Process, and What Changed

Buying property in Portugal as a foreigner is straightforward in one important respect: there are no nationality restrictions on ownership. Any foreign national, whether from inside or outside the EU, can buy property in Portugal with the same ownership rights as a Portuguese citizen. There is no foreign-buyer quota, no requirement to be resident, and no cap on what you can hold. What trips people up is not the right to buy, it is the sequence of tax and banking steps, and a set of recent legal changes that have quietly rewritten why people buy in the first place.

Start with the NIF

Before you can do almost anything, you need a NIF (Número de Identificação Fiscal), the Portuguese tax identification number. Nothing meaningful happens without it. You cannot sign a purchase deed, open a bank account, connect utilities, or pay property tax without a NIF. You can get one in person at a Finanças (tax office), often within an hour, or apply online, which typically takes several business days. Non-EU residents applying without being physically present usually need a fiscal representative in Portugal to obtain the number, a role a lawyer or specialist firm commonly fills.

Next comes a Portuguese bank account. It is not strictly required to complete a purchase, but in practice you will want one to pay the deposit, the taxes, and ongoing costs, and to create a clean record of where the funds came from. Non-residents can open one remotely.

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The transaction and its costs

The purchase itself runs through two documents. First the promissory contract (Contrato de Promessa de Compra e Venda), signed with a deposit of typically 10 to 30 percent, which legally binds both sides. Then the final deed (Escritura Pública), signed before a notary, at which point ownership transfers and the balance is paid.

Budget for the taxes on top of the price. The IMT (property transfer tax) is charged on a sliding scale that can reach around 7.5 to 8 percent on higher-value homes, with lower rates and exemptions on modest primary residences. Stamp duty (Imposto do Selo) adds 0.8 percent of the purchase price. After completion you pay annual municipal property tax, the IMI, generally between 0.3 and 0.45 percent of the property's tax value for urban homes. These are real numbers, not rounding errors, and they should sit in your model before you make an offer.

What changed: the Golden Visa real estate route is gone

If your plan was to buy Portuguese property and receive residency for it, that door closed. The property investment route to the Portugal Golden Visa was removed in October 2023 under Law 56/2023, the "Mais Habitação" (More Housing) package. Buying a home, a commercial unit, or a real-estate-backed fund no longer qualifies for the Golden Visa. The programme still exists, but the surviving routes are things like qualifying investment funds and cultural or scientific contributions, not direct property. Anyone selling you a Portuguese apartment on the promise of a residence permit attached to the purchase is describing a scheme that has not existed for over two years.

What changed: NHR ended, IFICI replaced it

The other big shift is tax. The Non-Habitual Resident (NHR) regime, which for a decade drew retirees and remote workers with flat rates and foreign-income exemptions, was closed to new applicants at the end of 2023. In its place Portugal introduced the IFICI (Fiscal Incentive for Scientific Research and Innovation), sometimes called NHR 2.0. IFICI offers a flat 20 percent personal income tax rate on qualifying Portuguese-source employment and self-employment income for ten years, but it is aimed at highly qualified professionals in specific sectors, not at passive retirees. If your Portugal plan was built on NHR, check whether you actually qualify under IFICI, because for many buyers the answer is no.

Verify who you are buying from

Portugal's foreign-buyer market leans heavily on new developments and off-plan sales in Lisbon, Porto, the Algarve, and the Silver Coast. The ownership rules may be simple, but delivery risk is not. A developer that has run late or delivered below specification on earlier schemes is the single biggest threat to a clean purchase, and that record is rarely visible in a sales office. Bektu (https://bektu.com) lets you check a developer's actual delivery history before you commit, which is the piece of due diligence most foreign buyers skip entirely.

Portugal remains one of the easier European markets for a foreigner to buy into. Get the NIF, open the account, budget for IMT, stamp duty, and IMI, and go in clear-eyed that the residency and tax incentives that drew the last wave of buyers have been rewritten. Buy the property for the property, not for a Golden Visa that no longer comes with it.

Sources

- Buying property in Portugal as a foreigner: complete guide 2025 (idealista)

- Portugal Golden Visa real estate eliminated (Connaught Law)

- Lei n.º 56/2023 "Mais Habitação" (Diário da República)

- Buying a House in Portugal as a Foreigner (Portugal Property Invest)

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Buying Property in Portugal as a Foreigner: The NIF, the Process, and What Changed