Buying a House in Portugal as a German Buyer: 7.5% IMT, 6 Months

German law will not let you buy a house without a notary reading the contract out loud to you first. Portuguese practice has you committed, with a deposit down, well before that stage exists.

Under Decreto-Lei n.º 97/2026 the rate for a non-resident acquiring Portuguese housing is 7.5% flat, and the same provision cancels every exemption and reduction that would otherwise apply. Citizenship is beside the point; tax residence decides. Three exceptions exist, and two of them refund only on a request filed inside six months.

IMT is short for Imposto Municipal sobre as Transmissões Onerosas de Imóveis, the one time tax on a change of ownership, and the Portuguese equivalent of Grunderwerbsteuer. §11 of the Grunderwerbsteuergesetz puts the German rate at 3.5%, while Article 105(2a) of the Grundgesetz hands each Bundesland the power to set its own, which is how the rates in force came to spread from 3.5% to 6.5%.

Transaction taxes on buying a home, Germany against Portugal

Tax	Rate (%)
Germany, Grunderwerbsteuer default		3.5%
Portugal, Imposto do Selo on the purchase		0.8%
Portugal, IMT for a non-resident		7.5%

When exactly are you bound?

In Germany, at a table with a notary reading. In Portugal, weeks earlier, in private.

German law puts three locks on the same door. §311b(1) of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch requires a contract to transfer ownership of land to be recorded by a notary. §925(1) requires the Auflassung, the agreement that actually transfers ownership, to be declared with both parties present at the same time before a competent office, and names every notary as competent. And §13(1) of the Beurkundungsgesetz requires the content of the record to be read aloud in the notary's presence, approved by the parties, and signed in their own hand. A German buyer therefore has a fixed, unmissable point at which the deal becomes real.

Portugal splits that point in two and puts the binding half first. The contrato-promessa de compra e venda, the promissory contract, is signed privately with a sinal, a deposit carrying penalties that run against whichever side walks away. Only afterwards comes the escritura pública, or a documento particular autenticado, before a notário or a lawyer, and then registration at the Conservatória do Registo Predial. Nobody in that sequence has a statutory duty to read the promissory contract to you, and by the time anyone reads anything aloud the deposit is already at risk.

Why does a German buyer land on 7.5%?

The provision turns on where you are tax resident and looks at nothing else.

Article 17.º(10) of the Código do IMT, in the consolidated text of Decreto-Lei n.º 97/2026, sets the rate at "always 7.5%" for a non-resident acquiring urban housing, with no exemption or reduction applying. That second half is where the real money is, because it strips out IMT Jovem, the young buyer relief, and everything else the code offers.

Three exits are written into the same paragraph: 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 hold it let for 36 months across the first five years.

Take the second or third and Article 17.º(11) has the Autoridade Tributária cancel the difference against the progressive scale, but strictly "on the interested party's application", with Article 17.º(12) allowing six months from becoming resident or from signing the tenancy. On a 400,000 euro apartment the amount hanging on that request is 30,000 euro of IMT, arithmetic on the published rate. Article 36.º of the same decree at least softens the payment side, allowing IMT on the day of assessment or within the 30 days after it.

Grundbuch against certidão: who has to show you what?

Neither country hands the file over unasked, but they gate it differently.

§12(1) of the Grundbuchordnung opens the Grundbuch to anyone who demonstrates a legitimate interest, and in a German purchase the notary is the one who does that work as a matter of course. The Portuguese register is reached through a certidão de registo predial, which shows the registered owner and the charges standing against the property, and it sits alongside the caderneta predial, the tax office's own description of it. Neither arrives automatically, and both can be in hand before the promissory contract rather than after it.

Three further papers belong in the same folder and have no single German counterpart: the licença de utilização, the permit for the use the building is actually put to, the certificado energético, and the ficha técnica de habitação. A German buyer used to the notary assembling the file has to assemble this one.

Hausgeld, condomínio, and who pays the agent

Two costs that feel familiar are governed quite differently.

§28 of the Wohnungseigentumsgesetz obliges the Verwalter to draw up a Wirtschaftsplan for each calendar year, and has the owners resolve after year end on any shortfall, alongside a Jahresabrechnung and a Vermögensbericht. That statutory reporting rhythm is what makes German Hausgeld legible to a buyer. Portugal's condomínio performs the same practical job for the shared parts, and PwC Portugal's 2026 tax guide is a reminder that the purchase itself also carries Imposto do Selo at 0.8%, or 3,200 euro on that same 400,000 euro apartment.

Commission is the sharper break. §656c(1) of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch provides that where an agent takes a fee from both parties to the sale of a flat or a single family house, both must be bound in equal measure, and that an agent acting free of charge for one side may take nothing from the other. No such splitting rule governs a Portuguese sale, so who pays the agent is a matter to establish rather than assume.

What to settle before the promissory contract

Whether you will be tax resident in Portugal, and whether the property will be let, now decide the rate, and the letting route starts a six month clock the day the tenancy is signed. One caveat on the market: no Portuguese source publishes purchases by buyer nationality, so there is no German buyer count to quote here.

We do not give buying or selling advice, and nothing here says whether a Portuguese property is worth buying. What the decree supports is narrow and checkable: a flat 7.5%, no relief of any kind, three exceptions, and a refund granted only on a request made in time. Our companion guide for British buyers in Portugal takes the same decree from outside the EU.

AiMYNDi reads the listing, the financials and the legal paperwork for a specific property, so what a German notary would have surfaced at the table is visible while the promissory contract is still unsigned. You can see an example of what a report looks like first.