The Cascais Letter · Buyer notes

Escritura: deed day, explained.

Filed under: Buying in Portugal

Weeks after the promissory contract, there is a morning in an office in Portugal where your purchase stops being a promise and becomes a fact. That morning is the escritura.

Foreign buyers tend to imagine deed day as a ceremony. It is closer to a checklist with signatures. The deed, the escritura pública de compra e venda, is read, signed and registered, the money moves, and usually the keys change hands across the same desk. It takes about an hour when the weeks before it were done properly, and it can fall apart in ten minutes when they were not. Here is how the day actually works.

Three ways to sign

Portugal gives you three routes to the same legal result. The traditional one is the escritura pública before a notary, a cartório notarial. The second is the documento particular autenticado, an authenticated private document signed before a lawyer or a solicitador, who then deposits it electronically. The third is the one I steer most straightforward purchases towards: Casa Pronta, the one-stop desk inside the land registry, where a registrar handles the deed and the registration in a single appointment.

Casa Pronta charges a flat fee: €375 where the appointment involves a single registration act, which covers most cash purchases, and €700 where there are two acts, typically a purchase plus a mortgage, plus €50 for each additional property. One warning, because it catches people out: older guides and even some official-looking pages still quote €300 and €600. Those prices are years out of date. The current table is on the Ministry of Justice site, linked below.

If you use a notary instead, know that notaries in Portugal set their own fees, so the escritura itself is priced by the office you choose. The land registration of an acquisition costs €250 on top, or €225 when it is promoted electronically, which it usually is. A lawyer-authenticated document carries the lawyer's own fee plus the registrations and a €20 electronic deposit.

The papers, gathered the week before

Deed day is won or lost in the week before it. The pack that has to be complete looks like this:

At Casa Pronta the registry pulls several of these from its own databases, which is part of the appeal. But do not let the shorter list relax you, because of the change described next.

The check the State stopped doing

Until recently, the use licence for the property, the licença de utilização, and the technical file had to be exhibited at the signing. Under the Simplex changes that took effect in 2024, they no longer do. What the official must do instead is warn everyone at the table that the property may not hold the titles it needs for its use or its construction. Read that again, because it matters: the State stepped back from checking, and told you it stepped back.

Two things follow. First, your bank has not stepped back at all: if you are buying with a mortgage, the bank will still want to see the use licence before it lends. Second, the checking has not disappeared, it has moved. It now sits entirely with the buyer's side, in the weeks before the appointment rather than at the desk. This is the part of the process my team works hardest on: licence, title, charges and paperwork verified while there is still time to fix a problem, not discovered across a desk with the seller watching.

One more recent change, in force since 1 October 2026: the deed must now state whether the property has its urbanistic title, or record that the seller declares there is none. A quiet line in the document, but it puts the position in writing, signed by everyone.

Pay the taxes first

The purchase taxes are not paid at the desk. IMT, the municipal transfer tax, and stamp duty at 0.8% of the price must be settled with the tax authority before the deed can be signed, and you bring the proof of payment, the guias, with you. No proof, no deed. Many buyers pay that same morning through the Portal das Finanças, which is fine, as long as the receipts exist before the appointment starts. I set out the IMT bands and how the tax is calculated in the buying costs guide.

The balance of the price itself is normally paid at the signing by bank cheque: a cheque bancário or a cheque visado drawn on a Portuguese bank account, in the seller's name. If you were picturing cash in any form, retire the picture. Portuguese law has prohibited cash payments of €3,000 or more in transactions like this since 2017.

The hour itself

So, the room. You, the seller, and the official running the act: notary, registrar or lawyer, depending on your route. Anyone who cannot attend signs through a representative holding a power of attorney, a procuração. If you are buying from abroad, that power of attorney is usually signed before a Portuguese consulate, or before a notary where you live with an apostille and a certified translation into Portuguese. Have its form checked before you sign it, because a document that is valid where you signed it can still be refused in Portugal.

The official verifies identities, checks the seller's title and the registry for charges, confirms the promissory contract's conditions were fulfilled, and reads the deed. If you have a mortgage, there are two signings in the same appointment: the purchase and sale, then the loan contract with its mortgage, the mútuo com hipoteca, after which the bank releases the funds that pay the seller. Then the price is settled, the deed is signed, and in the normal run of things the keys are handed over and the property is yours.

After the signatures

The office that ran your deed is legally obliged to promote the registration of the purchase in your name, and there is a two-month deadline for it, with the fee doubled if it is late. At Casa Pronta there is no wait at all: the registrar registers the purchase as part of the appointment. Either way, you can afterwards pull your own certidão permanente online for €15 and see your name on the property, which is a good moment and a sensible final check.

That is deed day. An hour of signatures, resting on weeks of paper. Buyers remember the hour; what protects them is the paper.

Approaching an escritura, or still at the CPCV stage? Send me the details and I will tell you honestly what I would check before anyone sits down at that desk. The earlier the better: most deed-day problems are cheap to fix a fortnight out and expensive on the morning.
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