Buy, sell & rent

You probably wonder "what can be so different about buying things in Portugal"?
Well, actually: there are all kinds of things that you should know, wether you buy a house, a car or even groceries.

You´ve decided to move to Portugal, ofcourse: first thing you need is a place to stay. That can be all sorts of places, a house ready to live in, a ruin, a piece of land where you can put a campervan or so, a piece of land with building permissions to have a house built from scratch, a community where you can stay for free and where you in exchange have to do some work on the land or whatever, or you start renting something first to have enough time to explore the country and find thát particular spot that you have been dreaming of for years and years (or you go camping or take a room in a hotel).

We won't go into details here (new and more detailed pages are on their way), but when it comes to buying a house or a piece of land basically there are two ways to do that:

1. You go on the internet looking for websites of real estate managers and
2. You go to Portugal, rent yourself a temporary something (hotel, house, cabin on somebody's land etc.) and then you start mingling with the Portuguese in the cafes, become a member of communities on social media and make friends and ask around for properties. This is the thing: not every property that's for sale is to be found on the internet because the owners chose not to work with a real estate manager for different reasons.

Keep in mind that for buying property in Portugal you do not need a real estate manager, this can lower the price and that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with it.

Don't get us wrong: we´re not saying that you shouldn´t buy through a real estate manager, there are some pretty good ones amongst them, very helpful and with a lot of knowledge. But on the other hand: you will miss out on properties that are not listed and there are some very good opportunities amongst those too.

Same as in every country: you can buy a car from a natural person or from a dealer. There are several websites with cars for sale and there are dealers with cars that are not on the internet.

The process of buying a car is: either you go to the IMT (authority) or you go to a sollicitadora.
The difference is that going to the IMT you will have to fill in all the papers and pay the costs (30-40 euros) and take a risk that there's a fine that you don't know of and that you will have to pay later.

If you go to a sollicitadora, then he/she will check everything and do the process while you're waiting. It's a bit more costly (60-80 euros) but less paperwork and completely risk-free.

Basically it's probably the same as in your homecountry, but there's one thing that you need to know: you can buy all these things with your NIF (numéro de contribuinte). And why would you do that?

Well: the Portuguese tax-authorities are fighting tax-avoidance, they try to motivate people to buy with their tax-number by deducting an amount from the taxes you have to pay.

There are several categories here, like regular groceries, medical expenses, restaurants etc. For every category you can earn 250 euros a year which will be substracted from the income-tax that you have to pay.

Next to that, per certain amount that you buy with your NIF you will receive a (virtual) ticket (fatura de sorte) and you automatically play in a lottery with prices up to 35.000 euros every month (in december the highest price is 50.000). We don't know of anybody that won such a price but it's all to be found on the website "Portal das finanças" including all the prices and the taxnumbers that won them.