Buying a Portuguese property with a tenant in it (PL 103/XVII/1)

On 12 August 2026 the Government filed Proposta de Lei n.º 103/XVII/1 in Parliament. Its official object is to authorise the Government to amend the Novo Regime do Arrendamento Urbano (Lei n.º 6/2006), the Civil Code, the Code of Civil Procedure, the regime for works in leased buildings (Decreto-Lei n.º 157/2006, the RJOPA) and connected legislation.

That form matters more than the content. An autorização legislativa is a request for permission. Even a successful vote changes no rule directly: it would give the Government a window — article 3 of the bill sets it at 180 days — within which to publish the authorised decreto-lei. The rules below only bind anybody from the date that decreto-lei enters into force.

What is still unknown, and will stay unknown for a while: the date of the vote in the generalidade, the final wording after committee, whether the authorisation is granted at all, and the entry-into-force date of the eventual decreto-lei. Nothing on this page carries an effective date, because none exists.

One drafting detail is worth knowing if you own or are buying now: the bill's own transitional rule (article 11 of the annexed draft decreto-lei) states that the changes would apply to contracts signed after entry into force and to contractual relationships already in existence at that date. A lease you inherit on completion today would therefore be reachable by the new regime if and when it arrives.

This is the clause that most often surprises an international buyer. Under article 1091.º of the Civil Code the tenant has a right of first refusal on the sale — or dação em cumprimento — of the leased premises. In practice the seller must notify the tenant of the projected deal, and the tenant may take it on the same terms. You can lose a property you have already negotiated, at your own price, weeks into the process.

What the proposal would change here (article 2, and article 3 rewriting 1091.º):

• The qualifying tenancy length would be raised, so the right attaches on a sale of premises leased for more than three years. Short tenancies would stop carrying a preference right.
• Where the leased unit is sold together with other assets for a global price, the seller would state the price attributed to the leased unit and the values attributed to the other properties, and appreciable prejudice is expressly presumed where the buyer will only contract if it acquires the whole set — the answer to the buyer who wants an entire building, not one flat inside it.
• The provision held unconstitutional, which let a tenant of part of a building not held in horizontal property acquire a share of the building with exclusive use of the leased part, would be repealed.
• Where a contract has been terminated for demolition or deep rehabilitation works under the RJOPA, the tenant's preference right to a new lease afterwards would be eliminated.

Today, none of that is in force. The preference right applies on the current terms, and the notice has to be run properly before completion whatever your timetable looks like.

If the plan is to buy a run-down, tenanted urban building and rehabilitate it, the deep-works termination route is the one you will be using — and it is the part of the reform with the most detail in the filed text.

• A cost test replaces the paperwork test. Works that require the premises to be vacated would count as obras de remodelação ou restauro profundos where their cost, VAT included, is at least 15% of the value attributed to the premises by location and gross construction area, computed on INE's published median sale price per m² of dwellings, by concelho, for the preceding quarter, covering both new and existing dwellings. That is a number a buyer can model before exchange, which the current urbanístico criteria are not.
• Notice on an open-ended contract.The bill's rewrite of Civil Code article 1101.º keeps termination for demolition or deep works that require vacancy, and sets termination by simple prior communication at not less than three years before the intended end date.
• What the tenant is owed. A minimum of two years' rent, with the current minimum pegged to the property's value removed, or a guarantee of rehousing on analogous terms as to location, rent, charges and remaining contract term. Where the parties do not agree within 30 days of the article 1103.º notice, the indemnity applies.
• Pre-RAU contracts cost far more. For housing contracts signed before the RAU came into force, the proposed indemnity is 10 years' rent, and not less than two thirds of the property’s VPT (rateable value). If the building you are looking at has old tenancies, this figure — not the two-year one — is your exposure.
• Protected tenants stay protected. Where the tenant is aged 65 or over, or has a certified degree of incapacity of 60 % or more, the obligation to guarantee rehousing on analogous terms is maintained absent agreement.
• Conservation works are a separate, lighter track. For works short of the deep-works threshold, the landlord could require the premises to be vacated on not less than three months notice, for the period needed to carry out the works, capped at 180 days.

• Arrears. Continuation of the tenancy would become unenforceable on the landlord at two monthsof unpaid rent, and the landlord's right to terminate on that ground would have a limitation period of six months. The bill also targets persistent lateness, counted by number of late payments over a rolling window.
• Inherited old contracts. Where a pre-1990 contract passes on the death of the original tenant to a spouse or de facto partner who is under 65, the contract would move onto the NRAU — which is what opens the door to updating a long-frozen rent. Transmission would also require the transferee to have demonstrably been living in the property at the date of death.
• Fixed-term contracts. Absent agreement to the contrary, a fixed-term contract would renew automatically for successive periods of equal length, and the minimum renewal periods would go. For non-residential leases the default term, absent stipulation, is set at five years.
• Short tourism lets under a lease. Per unit, contracts for special transitional purposes on tourism grounds could not exceed 90 days in total, consecutive or not, per calendar year. If short-term letting is the business plan, that is a lease-route cap — it is separate from the Alojamento Local registration regime.
• Enforcement. The bill also reaches the eviction procedure and the Balcão Nacional do Arrendamento, and amends the Code of Civil Procedure on appeals in proceedings concerning possession or ownership of a dwelling.

Every item in this section is proposed. None of it is a rule you can act on, and none of it is encoded anywhere in this site's calculators — our cost, tax and mortgage engines only carry rules published in Diário da República.

Do this before the contrato-promessa. A tenanted purchase is priced off the lease, not off the building.

1. Get the actual contract, in writing, with its date. When it was signed determines which regime governs it. A pre-1990 contract, an RAU-era contract and a post-2006 NRAU contract are three different assets.
2. Establish whether it is open-ended or fixed-term, when it renews, and what notice either side must give.
3. Confirm the rent actually being paid and whether arrears exist — including how long they have been running.
4. Put the preference notice in the timetable. Confirm in writing how and when the tenant will be notified, and do not pay anything you cannot recover if the tenant exercises the right.
5. Check the tenant's protected status — age 65 or over, or a certified incapacity of 60 % or more — because it changes what any future termination route would cost you.
6. If you intend to renovate, cost the works first. Whether the project clears a deep-works threshold, and what the tenant would be owed, decides whether the purchase works at all.
7. Do not price in the reform. Underwrite on the law in force today. If the decreto-lei arrives and improves your position, that is upside, not the base case.