Countries · Portugal
What to check in Portugal before you sign.
Prices are rising faster than in any other EU country. Anyone anchoring on last year gets the sums wrong, and anyone betting on the boom pays the premium for it.
What costs the most money in Portugal
Residential property prices rose by 17.6 percent in 2025 against the year before, the highest figure since the series began in 2009. Existing homes went up by 18.9 percent. In the first quarter of 2026 Portugal led the whole EU with 17.8 percent, against an EU average of 5.1 percent.
Purchase costs
4 to 7%
of the purchase price, on top of the price in the listing.
- Transfer tax, main residence up to €106,3460 %
- Transfer tax, second home from the first euro1 %
- Buyers up to 35, first own homeexempt
- Stamp duty on the purchase value0,8 %
- Notary and register, purchase with a loan700 €
- Buyers based in a tax haven jurisdiction10%, no exception
Source: Portal das Finanças and the justice portal, as at 2026. Transfer tax is banded and rises to 8 percent. There is no official rule for agents' commissions, so they are not included in the range.
The trap for tenants
The annual rent adjustment follows an official coefficient. For 2023 it was capped politically at 2 percent; the following year it jumped to 6.94 percent, the highest figure in the whole series. Anyone who took the cap for a permanent state of affairs paid more than three times the previous year's adjustment in 2024. For 2026 the coefficient stands at 2.24 percent.
Energy and the duty to renovate
The energy certificate is compulsory for sale and letting, and the energy class has to appear in every listing. Where a property falls under an exemption, that exemption has to be named in the listing as well. A listing with no class and no named exemption is therefore already a breach of the rules, and a usable warning sign.
Source: Energieagentur ADENE, Gesetzesdekret 101-D/2020
Certificate validity: 10 years
What to watch for in Portugal in particular
There are two separate registers here for the same property: the land register with ownership and charges, and the tax register with area and valuation. They are kept and updated separately, and it is exactly that divergence which produces the expensive trouble. Only the land register extract shows charges up to date, and it is valid for just six months.
Official maps in Portugal
4 map layers lie directly over your property.
Not as an average for the district, but at your exact address, with a legend and a visible source. Every layer can be switched on separately.
Check it yourself
The official bodies in Portugal.
Scan my Home checks against these sources. You can call up every one of them yourself, and that is exactly the point: a figure you cannot verify is not a figure, it is a claim.
Ownership & charges
Registo Predial (Predial Online)
Ownership, mortgages, charges
Value & land value
Caderneta Predial (Autoridade Tributária)
Cadastral data, tax value (VPT)
Energy
Certificado Energético (ADENE / SCE)
Registered energy certificate
Building & zoning
Câmara Municipal / PDM
Zoning, building permit
The market in Portugal
169,812 homes sold in 2025, up 8.6 percent, with a total value of €41.2 billion, which is 21.7 percent more than the year before. The median price in the fourth quarter was €2,198 per square metre.
Source: Statistikamt INE, veröffentlicht 23.03.2026
A real dossier from this country
See what the analysis found on an actual listing in Portugal — every figure with its source.
Open the example dossierOther countries