What the quota actually pays for
Buy an apartment in Portugal and you buy two things: the flat, and a share of everything around it. The roof, the façade, the stairs, the entrance hall, the lift, the structure itself: the law calls these the common parts, and the owners hold them together under a regime called propriedade horizontal. The building's running costs are shared the same way, through the condominium quota, usually paid monthly or quarterly.
The quota pays the building's bills: cleaning and lighting the common areas, lift maintenance, water for shared taps and gardens, the building's insurance, the administrator's fee, and routine repairs. Charged alongside it is each owner's contribution to a reserve fund the law requires, which is why a quota statement so often shows two lines rather than one.
What it buys varies enormously by building. A small walk-up on a residential street may run on cleaning, insurance and little else. A newer Cascais development with gardens, a pool, underground parking and staff carries services all year. Same legal structure, very different monthly figure, which is why a quota quoted without its building tells you almost nothing.
Your share is fixed by permilagem, not by negotiation
Each unit's share is not negotiated, and it does not change when the flat changes hands. The building's constitutive title, the document that created the condominium, fixes the relative value of every unit, expressed as a percentage or a permilagem of the whole building (Civil Code, article 1418). A unit with a permilagem of 50 carries fifty thousandths of the building, and the default rule is that common expenses are paid in that proportion, by whoever owns the unit when the assembly approves the expense (article 1424, no. 1).
The law allows carve-outs, and well-run buildings use them. Charges for common services can be split equally, or by use, if the condominium regulation says so, with the criteria specified and justified (article 1424, no. 2). Costs of parts that serve only some owners fall on those owners (no. 3), and lift costs fall only on the units the lift can serve (no. 4). A ground floor flat should not be paying for the lift contract.
| Worked example | Figure |
|---|---|
| Assumed annual ordinary budget of the building | €60,000 |
| Your unit's permilagem | 50 of 1,000 |
| Your share of the ordinary costs | €3,000 a year |
| Reserve fund contribution, at the legal minimum | €300 a year |
| Total | €3,300 a year, about €275 a month |
That is a worked example, not an average: the budget and the permilagem are stated assumptions, there is no official national average quota, and the only honest figure for a real flat is the one in that building's own approved budget.
The reserve fund: a tenth more, by law
Every condominium must keep a fundo comum de reserva, a common reserve fund, to pay for conservation works on the building (Decreto-Lei 268/94, article 4). Each owner contributes at least 10% of their share of the condominium's other expenses, so the legal minimum adds a tenth on top of the ordinary quota. The money is held in a bank account, and the owners' assembly administers it.
Two things follow for a buyer. First, the reserve line on a quota statement is not an administrator's upsell; it is a legal obligation, and a building that is not collecting it is storing up a problem. Second, the fund's balance is a quick health check. A healthy balance in front of a twenty year old roof means the coming works are partly paid for. An empty fund in the same position means the works will arrive as a special bill, which is what the next section is about. And if the assembly votes to spend the reserve on something other than conservation, the owners must replace what was used through an extraordinary quota within twelve months.
Ordinary quotas, extraordinary quotas, and the façade bill
The ordinary quota comes from the annual budget. The owners' assembly meets in the first fortnight of January to approve the previous year's accounts and the budget for the year ahead (article 1431, no. 1), and the administrator runs the building against it. When the spend fits the budget, the quota stays where it was set.
Big works do not fit ordinary budgets. A roof renewal, a façade repair, a lift replacement: these are approved separately and charged as an extraordinary quota, on top of the ordinary one, until the work is paid for. Scale it with the same permilagem: on our worked example building, façade and roof works costed at €180,000 would put €9,000 on the unit with a permilagem of 50, typically collected in instalments while the works run. Worked example again, on the same stated assumptions.
The law puts some discipline around the big decisions. For extraordinary conservation works, or works classed as innovations, the administrator must present at least three quotes from different suppliers, unless the condominium regulation or the assembly decides otherwise (article 1436, no. 2). Innovations need a heavier vote than ordinary business: a majority of owners representing two thirds of the building's total value (article 1425, no. 1). And genuinely urgent repairs, defects in the common parts that could cause damage or put people at risk at any moment, do not wait for the calendar: the administrator must step in at once and call an extraordinary assembly to ratify what was done (articles 1427 and 1436).
One more reason to take the quota seriously once you own: the assembly minutes that set the amounts and the due dates are an enforceable document against an owner who does not pay (Decreto-Lei 268/94, article 6). The condominium does not start from zero to collect. The approved minutes are the proof.
How the assembly decides, and why absence is a vote
Your voting weight follows your permilagem: each owner has as many votes as the whole units contained in their share of the building (article 1430, no. 2). Unless a special rule applies, decisions pass by a majority of the votes representing the building's invested capital (article 1432, no. 5). If too few owners attend for that majority, the meeting is treated as reconvened a week later, or, where the conditions are met, thirty minutes later the same day, and can then decide by a majority of those present, provided they represent at least a quarter of the building's total value (article 1432, nos. 6 and 7).
Decisions must be communicated to absent owners within thirty days, and for decisions that require unanimity, an absent owner who does not respond after being notified is counted as approving. The practical translation for a foreign owner is simple. The assembly will run your building with you or without you, and the minutes, the atas, are where every decision lives. Reading them is not homework for after the purchase. It is the purchase research.
The declaration: the page that keeps the seller's debts the seller's
Since April 2022, Portuguese law has given buyers a specific protection here, and it is one of the most useful pages in a purchase file. When a unit is sold, the seller asks the administrator for a written declaration listing every condominium charge in force for that unit, its nature, amounts and payment deadlines, and any debts the seller has to the condominium, with their nature, amounts, and the dates they arose and fell due (article 1424-A, no. 1). The administrator must issue it within ten days of the request. It is the same declaration our guide to due diligence before the CPCV treats as part of the paperwork stack, and here it earns its place.
The declaration is a mandatory document for the deed: the sale deed cannot be drawn up without referring to it. Liability follows timing. Debts are judged by when they should have been paid, so amounts that fell due before the transfer remain the seller's, and charges falling due after the transfer belong to the new owner (article 1424-A, nos. 3 and 4). There is one trap, written into the same article: if the buyer expressly states in the deed that they waive the declaration, they accept responsibility for any debt the seller owes the condominium. Never waive it. A suggestion to skip that page to save time is the most expensive sentence in the transaction.
Read the declaration against the minutes. The declaration tells you what the seller owes and what the unit currently pays. The minutes tell you what the building has already decided to spend, including extraordinary quotas approved before you buy and falling due after you complete, which are yours from their due date even though you never voted for them.
Five things to ask for before you sign
1. The current quota, split properly
How much, how often, and how much of it is ordinary quota and how much is reserve fund. A single unsplit figure hides whether the building is saving at all.
2. The administrator's declaration for this unit
The seller's charges and debts, in writing, from the administrator. If it has not been requested yet, asking for it starts the ten day clock.
3. Two or three years of assembly minutes
The atas show the budgets actually approved, the works discussed before they were approved, and any disputes between owners. Buildings tell the truth in their minutes.
4. The building's age, and its big dates
When were the roof, the façade and the lift last renewed, and what do the minutes show in planning? Age plus a lift plus a tired façade is the classic expensive combination.
5. The reserve fund balance
How much is sitting in the fund today, and are there extraordinary quotas already approved but not yet fully billed? That pairing is the real running cost of the flat you are about to buy.
Apartment or house: the honest comparison
Against all this, a house looks beautifully simple: no quota, no assembly, no reserve fund, nobody voting on your roof. It is genuinely simpler. It is not free. The house owner pays all of their own roof, façade, walls and insurance, in full, in the year the bill lands, and organises every contractor themselves. The apartment owner pays a permilagem share of shared problems, in monthly slices, with a tenth on top saved for the big ones, and inherits whatever the building's previous owners decided, or failed to decide.
So compare like with like. The question is never quota or nothing. It is quota, reserve fund and possible special assessments, in a building whose minutes you have read, against every cost alone, in a house whose roof you have surveyed. Buyers who budget the first and survey the second are rarely surprised. Buyers who treat the quota as a rounding error usually meet the difference later, on a builder's invoice.
Sources
- Civil Code (Código Civil), horizontal property: articles 1418, 1424, 1424-A, 1425, 1430, 1431, 1432 and 1436, consolidated text: pgdlisboa.pt
- Lei n.º 8/2022, de 10 de janeiro, the revision of the horizontal property regime in force since 10 April 2022, which added article 1424-A to the Civil Code: pgdlisboa.pt
- Decreto-Lei n.º 268/94, de 25 de outubro, articles 1, 4 and 6 (assembly minutes, the common reserve fund, condominium debts), consolidated text: pgdlisboa.pt
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