The Cascais Letter · Buyer notes

After the escritura: the first month as an owner.

Filed under: Buying in Portugal

Deed day ends with handshakes and keys. Ownership, though, runs on paperwork.

The purchase is legally finished when you sign, but the first month has its own list of jobs. Some are done for you by the system, and your task is simply to confirm they happened. Others wait on your desk, and they are cheaper to handle in week one than in year two. Here is the list, in the order it tends to arrive.

First, confirm the purchase is registered in your name

The office that ran your deed, notary, lawyer or Casa Pronta desk, is obliged to promote the registration of the purchase, and the legal deadline is two months from the deed. Casa Pronta registers on the spot, as part of the act. What you should not do is assume. You can check the register yourself at any time with a certidão permanente from Predial Online: €15, an access code valid for six months, showing every registration in force on the property.

The tax authority needs no visit either. Notaries send the tax office a monthly list of the deeds they performed, and the property register, the matriz, is updated from that flow. Within some weeks the property should appear under your NIF in the Portal das Finanças, under Património. If it still shows the seller, a word with the local Finanças office corrects it. On a straightforward purchase of an existing home there is nothing for the buyer to file.

The IMI rule that surprises everyone: 31 December decides

IMI, the annual municipal property tax, belongs to whoever owns the property on 31 December of the year it covers. Buy this October and the whole of 2026's IMI is legally yours, even though you held the keys for ten weeks of it. Buy in January and it stays the seller's bill. Couples settling a sale sometimes split the year between them, but that is a private arrangement agreed at the negotiating table. The tax office charges one owner: the one on the register at New Year.

Your first bill is assessed between February and April and arrives before its payment month. Bills of €100 or less are paid once, in May. Between €100 and €500, you pay in May and November. Above €500, in May, August and November. If no bill ever reaches you, ask for a duplicate, a 2ª via, at Finanças or through the portal, because the charge exists whether the letter arrived or not.

One smaller point is worth a line. If the home is modest and becomes your main residence, a three year IMI exemption exists, for properties with a tax value up to €125,000 and within an income cap, but it has to be requested. Most Cascais purchases sit above that cap.

And if your Portuguese property is valuable, there is a second layer. AIMI, the additional IMI, looks at the combined tax value of your urban property here: above €600,000 for an individual, or €1,200,000 for a couple taxed jointly, the excess is charged at 0.7%, rising to 1% and then 1.5% at higher bands. It is assessed in June and paid in September.

Utilities: you sign new contracts, you do not inherit the seller's

Electricity and gas work as a free market. The seller closes their contract; you open your own, with any supplier you choose, and the energy regulator, ERSE, runs a free simulator that compares the tariffs on offer. Have four things ready: your NIF, your ID, your IBAN for direct debit, and the installation's delivery point code, the CPE on an electricity bill, the CUI for gas, printed on any old bill. The code belongs to the installation, not to the person, and it is the detail new owners most often have to chase.

Photograph every meter on deed day, electricity, gas and water. It is a habit, not a legal requirement, and it is what makes the seller's final bill and your first bill split at the right reading instead of an estimate.

Water in Cascais means a contract with Águas de Cascais in your name; expect to show ID and the deed as proof that the home is yours to occupy. Internet and phone providers ask for ID, NIF and address, and new contracts usually carry a loyalty period, so it is worth choosing once, properly.

Introduce yourself to the condominium

If your home is an apartment, then from the day of the transfer, the condominium charges that fall due are yours. Your deed pack already holds the document that proves where you stand: the administrator's declaration of the seller's charges and any debts at the date of sale, which the seller had to request and which forms part of the deed unless the buyer waived it. Keep it. It is your baseline if an old bill ever surfaces with your name on it.

The seller is meant to notify the administrator of the sale within fifteen days. Do not rely on it. A short visit or email in your first week, giving your name and NIF, means the quotas, the meeting calls and the letter about the leaking roof reach you rather than the previous owner. Part of every quota, at least 10% of your share of the building's other costs, feeds the reserve fund, the fundo comum de reserva, the building's savings for the roof, the lift and the facade.

Insurance: the law's version and the bank's version

In a building divided into apartments, fire insurance is not optional. The Civil Code requires it for each unit and for the common parts, and if an owner fails to arrange it, the administrator must do so and charge the owner. A multirriscos policy, the combined home policy, satisfies that duty and covers more besides.

With a mortgage, the bank goes further than the law and requires a multirriscos policy as a condition of the loan. Contents cover is your own choice rather than a duty. A detached house with no condominium carries no legal fire insurance duty of its own, although any lender will impose one in the loan contract.

If you live outside Portugal, one extra job

Tax letters need a reliable route to you. Owners who live in the European Union or the EEA do not need a fiscal representative. Owners who live elsewhere, and who have a tax relationship here, which owning a property is, must either appoint a representative resident in Portugal or sign up for electronic notifications through the Portal das Finanças and ViaCTT. Sort it in the first month. The tax office writes to the address it has, and its deadlines run whether or not you read the letter.

Beyond the paperwork, most owners who live abroad leave the keys and the paper trail with someone local, a manager, their lawyer, a neighbour they trust. Nothing in the law requires it. Everything about an empty house, a water leak in February, a condo meeting in March, argues for it.

This month is unglamorous, and it is where small problems are cheap. A registration nobody checked, a condominium account still in the seller's name, a tax letter sent to an address you have left: each is a nuisance in month one and a tangle in year two. For clients who buy from abroad, I work through this list with them in the first week, while the deed pack is still on the table.

Still at the looking stage? Build your buyer brief and I will plan the purchase, and the month after it, with you.

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