Portugal

Registering Property in

Portugal

Listed below is a detailed summary of the steps, time and cost involved in registering property, assuming a standardized case of an entrepreneur who wants to purchase land and a building that is already registered and free of title dispute.

The information appearing on this page was collected as part of the Doing Business project, which measures and compares regulations relevant to the life cycle of a small- to medium-sized domestic business in 183 economies. The most recent round of data collection for the project was completed in June 2011.

  • Standard Property Transfer

  • Property Value: EUR 783,230.8
  • City: Lisbon

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No. Procedure Time to Complete Associated Costs
1 Register the property at the Real Property Registry

It is possible to register a property transfer in Portugal at any of the locations of the one-stop shop “On the spot house” (Casa pronta, www.casapronta.pt) in person. In April 2010, there were
31 locations in Lisboa, and 344 locations in all of Portugal. Banks can request that a public employee comes with a laptop with secured access to the database to complete the property transfer in the bank (for free) without going to a Casa pronta location. Also real estate agents can request that a public employee comes with a laptop with secured access to the database to complete the property transfer in their office. At the one-stop shop, the public employee will verify the following aspects:
• Identity of parties
• Powers of attorney (stating that the individuals are legal representatives of the firms)
• Verify the legality of the transaction (that all laws are fulfilled)
• Verify the ownership and the encumbrances (with access to the “predial” database)
• Verify that all taxes have been paid (with access to the Tax administration’s database)
Once all the checks are completed, if there are any outstanding taxes, those can be paid at Casa pronta, though a specific agreement between the Tax Authorities and Casa pronta. A receipt is issued to show that the taxes have been paid. The deed is prepared and submitted, and the transaction is completed. Property registration is mandatory in Portugal and the one stop shop process is available since July 2008, and its use is gradually increasing.

As an alternative to using the Casa pronta, it is possible to use the services of a notary or a lawyer (lawyers can do so only since 2008) to prepare and authenticate the deed and verify tax payments. The authenticated deed can be submitted to the Predial (land registry, www.predialonline.pt). Only an authenticated deed can be submitted to the Predial. Predial has
307 property registries (in each municipality) all connected to a central database. Casa pronta is an interface with the buyers and sellers that is connected to the central database managed by “registro predial” (land registry).

Preemption rights exist in Portugal but are not mandatory, unless the property is located in special areas (old town, cultural, or close to airport or near railways). In many commercial areas there is no need for such a waiver.

Note on the registry: 100 Euros per transaction are transferred to an institute which supervises investments in information technology. This institute is managed by a President and 2 Vice-presidents all designated by the government. The computerization efforts at the Land registry used these funding, but also other funds from the government.


Agency: Land Registry 		1 day 6.5% of the of the property’s fiscal value or sale price, whichever is higher + 0.8% stamp duty and 325 EUR for the Land Registry
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