Buying a House in Portugal as a Dutch Buyer: 7.5% IMT, No Bedenktijd

Dutch law gives a home buyer three days to walk away after signing, free and automatic. Portugal offers no such window, and charges a non-resident 7.5% to come in.

Decreto-Lei n.º 97/2026 settled the rate for non-resident buyers of Portuguese housing at a flat 7.5%, and in the same breath disapplied every exemption and reduction. What matters is where you are tax resident, not which passport you hold. Three exceptions survive, and two of them repay only on a request made within six months.

IMT is short for Imposto Municipal sobre as Transmissões Onerosas de Imóveis, the tax charged once when a Portuguese property changes owner. It is the job overdrachtsbelasting does at home, with one difference that runs through everything below: the Dutch rate follows what you will use the home for, and the Portuguese rate follows where you live.

Transfer tax on buying a home, Netherlands against Portugal

What you buy	Rate (%)
Netherlands, home you live in		2.0%
Portugal, non-resident buyer		7.5%
Netherlands, second home or let		8.0%

Where did the bedenktijd go?

It has no Portuguese counterpart, and what stands in its place has to be negotiated rather than claimed.

Article 7:2 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek does two things for a private buyer of a Dutch home. It requires the purchase to be put in writing, and it gives the buyer three days from the moment the signed deed is handed over in which the purchase may be dissolved, with no reason owed and no penalty. The article even closes the obvious loophole in the other direction: use the right, and a fresh purchase of the same property between the same parties within six months does not revive it.

Portugal replaces a right with a bargain. The step that commits you is the contrato-promessa de compra e venda, the promissory contract, signed with a sinal, a deposit whose default penalties bite whichever party withdraws. The escritura pública before a notário follows later, as does registration at the Conservatória do Registo Predial. A Dutch buyer who signs a promissory contract expecting three days of reflection has already put the deposit at risk, and the documents that would have justified pausing, the caderneta predial and the certidão de registo predial, are obtainable beforehand but arrive only if asked for.

Why does a Dutch buyer land on 7.5%?

The test is tax residence, applied without regard to nationality or to what the home is for.

Article 17.º(10) of the Código do IMT, in the consolidated Decreto-Lei n.º 97/2026, fixes the rate at "always 7.5%" on a non-resident's acquisition of urban housing and states that no exemption or reduction applies. The second half of that sentence removes IMT Jovem, the young buyer relief, and every other concession in the code.

Three exceptions are set out in the same provision: you were already tax resident under Article 16.º of the personal income tax code; you become tax resident within two years; or you let the property for housing within six months at a rent capped at 2.5 times the 2026 minimum monthly wage, and keep it let for 36 months during the first five years.

Where the second or third applies, Article 17.º(11) has the Autoridade Tributária cancel the excess over the progressive scale, but only "on the interested party's application", and Article 17.º(12) gives six months from becoming resident or from signing the tenancy. On a 400,000 euro apartment, 30,000 euro of IMT turns on whether that request is filed, arithmetic on the published rate. Article 36.º of the same decree does ease the payment side, allowing IMT on the day of assessment or within the 30 days following.

The startersvrijstelling is exactly what Portugal takes away

The Dutch exemption is the clearest illustration of what "no exemption or reduction" means in practice.

The Belastingdienst sets four conditions for the starter exemption: you acquire a home you will live in yourself for a longer period, you are an adult and under 35 at that moment, you have not used the exemption before, and the value of the home is not above 555,000 euro. It reads that value as the open market value including appurtenances such as a garden, shed or garage, and it fixes the moment of acquisition as the signing of the notarial deed of delivery.

Portugal has a comparable young buyer relief in IMT Jovem, and the 2026 rule closes it to a non-resident whatever their age or the price. A Dutch buyer under 35 therefore moves from a possible 0% at home to a certain 7.5% in Portugal, and the age that opened one door is irrelevant to the other. Stamp duty is charged on top: PwC Portugal's 2026 tax guide puts Imposto do Selo on the purchase at 0.8%, adding 3,200 euro on that 400,000 euro apartment.

Does letting it change the Portuguese rate?

Only through the exception, and only on conditions the Dutch system never imposes.

The Belastingdienst rate table sorts Dutch buyers by intended use at the notary: 2% for a home you occupy, 8% for a second home or one you let, and 10.4% where the property is not a dwelling at all. Declaring the use fixes the rate, once, and that is the end of it.

Portugal starts everyone non-resident at the same 7.5% and then makes letting a route back rather than a rate. Taking it means a tenancy inside six months, a capped rent, and 36 months of letting spread over five years, with the refund still depending on that application. One duty a Dutch owner does escape: the Portuguese tax authority's guidance on fiscal representation makes a representante fiscal or electronic notifications always optional for residents of an EU country, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein, and obligatory for third country residents who own property there.

What to settle before the promissory contract

Residence and use are now rate decisions rather than lifestyle ones, and the letting route begins counting the day a tenancy is signed. On the market itself we have to be blunt: no Portuguese source publishes purchases by buyer nationality, so there is no Dutch buyer figure here to give.

We do not give buying or selling advice, and nothing here says whether a Portuguese property is worth buying. The verifiable core is small: 7.5% flat for non-residents, no relief of any kind, three exceptions, and six months in which to ask for the money back. Our piece on the Dutch transfer tax cut to 8% sets out the rate you are measuring it against.

AiMYNDi reads the listing, the financials and the legal paperwork for a specific property, so what three days of bedenktijd would have bought you at home is on the table before the deposit is. You can see an example of what a report looks like first.