Buying a Repossessed Property at Auction in Portugal in 2026: A Practical Guide to the Two Separate Systems, the 85 and 70 Percent Opening Prices, the 15 Days to Pay, and the Charges That Vanish

There are two entirely separate systems in Portugal for selling a property out from under its owner, and they are governed by different codes, run by different people, publish on different websites and open at different prices. One is the judicial execution, run by an agente de execução (enforcement agent) under the Código de Processo Civil (Civil Procedure Code). The other is the tax execution, run by the Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira (Tax and Customs Authority) under the Código de Procedimento e de Processo Tributário (Tax Procedure and Process Code). Almost everything a buyer needs to know differs between them.

This guide sets out both: where the sales are published, how the opening price is calculated, how long you have to pay, what happens if you do not, which charges on the property disappear and which survive, and the several ways a completed purchase can still be undone. It is written from the law itself, which in this area is unusually specific.

One thing to settle at the start. These are not distressed-asset bargains in the sense the phrase usually carries. On the platform that runs the judicial sales, the most-bid lots on the day this was written included a one-bedroom flat in Sacavém with a base value of 31,747.93 euros standing at a live bid of 132,468.26 euros, a house in Albufeira with a base of 72,000 euros at 131,300 euros, and a flat in Gafanha da Nazaré with a base of 84,794.83 euros at 167,181.49 euros. The opening price is low by design. The closing price is set by whoever else turned up.

Part one: the judicial track

Who decides what happens

When a creditor enforces a debt and the debtor's property is attached, the decision on how to sell it belongs to the agente de execução, not to a judge. Article 812 of the Civil Procedure Code says that where the law does not provide otherwise, the enforcement agent decides, after hearing the creditor, the debtor and any creditors holding security over the assets. The decision covers three things: the mode of sale, the base value of the assets, and whether to bundle items into lots. If the debtor, the creditor or a claiming creditor disagrees, a judge decides, and there is no appeal from that.

Article 811 lists seven possible modes: sealed written proposals, regulated markets, direct sale to someone legally entitled to acquire, private negotiation, sale in an auction house, sale in a public depository, and electronic auction.

In practice one of those dominates. Article 837 says that except in the regulated-market and direct-sale cases, immovable and movable attached property "is sold preferentially by electronic auction", on terms set by a ministerial portaria. That portaria is Portaria n.º 282/2013 of 29 August, as amended.

How the base value is set

For immovable property, article 812(3) says the base value is the higher of two figures: the valor patrimonial tributário (taxable asset value, or VPT) provided it was assessed less than six years ago, and the market value. For everything else the enforcement agent sets the base at market value. Where market value is in play, the agent can commission the work needed to establish it, either because it seems worthwhile or because an interested party asks.

That matters to a buyer because the VPT is frequently well below what a property would fetch, and the code is deliberately written to stop a stale VPT anchoring the sale. Our guide to the caderneta predial explains what the VPT is and how to read one.

The announced price is not the base value. For sealed proposals, article 816(2) is explicit: "the value announced for the sale is equal to 85 percent of the base value of the assets." Proposals below that figure are not accepted, unless the creditor, the debtor and every creditor with security over the property all agree to accept them, under article 821(3).

You can see the arithmetic on the live listings. A base of 31,747.93 euros carries a minimum of 26,985.74 euros. A base of 72,000 euros carries a minimum of 61,200 euros. Both are exactly 85 percent.

Where the sales are published

Article 817 requires the sale to be advertised ten days ahead, by announcement on a publicly accessible web page under a justice ministry portaria, and by a notice posted on the door of any urban building being sold. Article 16 of Portaria 282/2013 identifies that page: the Área de Serviços Digitais dos Tribunais (Courts Digital Services Area) at tribunais.org.pt.

The announcement must carry the debtor's name, the enforcement agent's identity, the day, time and place for opening the proposals, a summary identification of the assets, and the announced price. If the judgment being enforced is under appeal, or there is an opposition pending to the execution or the attachment, the announcement and the door notice must say so. Read that line. It tells you the sale you are bidding in might later be undone.

The electronic auctions themselves run on a platform operated by an entity designated by the justice ministry, which in practice is e-leiloes.pt, run in the enforcement-agent sector. Article 21 of the portaria requires the platform to show the public the announcements and the system rules, and to display permanently and publicly, for each auction, the base price, the value of the last offer and the eventual sale price. Bidding requires registration and authentication.

The scale is visible on the platform's own front page: at the time of writing it listed 1,203 live online auctions and 1,996 private-negotiation listings, against 218,880 finished sales, 134,578 registered users, 1,569,300 bids placed and 59,553 lots sold.

The auction mechanics, and where they are not written down

Article 22 of the portaria says the opening and closing day and time of each electronic auction are set by the platform operator and published on the platform at least five days before the auction starts. Article 23 says bids are entered between opening and the designated close, that only bids at or above the base bidding value are accepted, that the highest stands, and that once entered, a bid cannot be withdrawn. Article 26 gives the adjudication decision to the enforcement agent, and says that legally provided rights and duties may be exercised up to the moment of adjudication.

What the portaria does not contain is the operational detail people most want: the auction's standard length, the bid increments, and whether a bid placed in the closing minutes extends the clock. Article 20 puts those in the "regras do sistema", the system rules approved by the platform operator and homologated by the justice ministry. If you are going to bid, read the platform's current system rules, because that is where those numbers live and they are not in the code.

Paying, and what happens if you do not

For the sealed-proposal route, article 824 requires the deposit up front. Proposers must attach to their proposal, as security, a certified cheque made out to the enforcement agent, or a bank guarantee, for 5 percent of the announced value. Once a proposal is accepted, the proposer has 15 days to deposit the rest of the price with a credit institution to the enforcement agent's order.

Miss that deadline and article 825 gives the enforcement agent three options, all bad for you. Set the sale aside and accept the next-highest proposal, with you forfeiting the security. Set the sale aside and sell by whatever mode suits, with you forfeiting the security and barred from bidding for the same property again. Or liquidate your liability: apply to the judge for an arresto over enough of your assets to cover the shortfall plus costs and expenses, execute against you in the same proceedings, and, in the code's own words, without prejudice to criminal proceedings.

Article 25 of the portaria routes electronic-auction non-payment to the same article 825, with the payment conditions themselves to be defined in the system rules.

Getting the title, and getting the keys

Article 827 sets the sequence. Once the price is fully paid and the tax obligations on the transfer are satisfied, the assets are adjudicated and delivered, and the enforcement agent issues the título de transmissão (title of transmission) identifying the assets, certifying payment and declaring that the tax obligations were met or exempt. The agent then sends the sale to the land registry, which registers it and, of its own motion, cancels the entries for rights that have lapsed.

The tax obligations are yours. IMT and stamp duty on the transfer are the buyer's, and they have to be settled before the title issues, not after. Our guide to IMI, AIMI and IMT sets out the rates, and if you are under 35 and buying to live in, the young-buyer exemption thresholds may apply here as they do to an ordinary purchase.

Occupation is dealt with separately and briskly. Article 828 says the buyer may, on the basis of the title of transmission, apply against whoever is holding the property, in the execution itself, for delivery. That is a real advantage over an ordinary purchase: you do not start a new eviction action, you use the file that already exists. It is not instantaneous, and if the occupant has a lease or another right the position gets more complicated, but the route is short.

What disappears from the property, and what does not

This is the provision that makes buying at execution viable at all. Article 824 of the Código Civil (Civil Code) says the sale in execution transfers to the buyer the rights the debtor had over the thing, and, in paragraph 2, that the assets are transmitted free of the security rights that burden them, and free of other real rights that do not have a registration earlier than that of any arresto, attachment or security, with the exception of rights constituted earlier that produce effects against third parties independently of registration. Paragraph 3 says the third-party rights that lapse transfer to the proceeds of the sale instead.

In practice: the mortgage that put the property here is extinguished, and the bank is paid from the money you pay, not from you. So are later-registered charges. What survives is anything registered before the attachment or security that put the property in the process, and the narrow class of rights effective against third parties without registration.

The practical instruction that follows is not optional. Pull the certidão permanente do registo predial and read the order and the dates of every entry, because the cut-off is chronological and the register is where the chronology is. Do the same on the caderneta predial and, for a building, check whether the property is inside a condominium with arrears. Our guide to the condomínio explains how those charges attach.

Two risks buyers regularly miss

Preferential rights. Articles 819 and 823 require the holders of legal or registered contractual preference rights to be notified of the day, time and place of the opening of proposals, so they can exercise their right on the spot if a proposal is accepted. If more than one turns up with an equal right, they bid against each other. Article 811(2) applies articles 819 and 823 to every mode of sale except direct sale. Article 819(4) adds that even if the notification fails, the preference holder can still bring a preference action under the general rules. In plain terms: you can win the auction and then lose the property to a co-owner, a tenant or a municipality stepping into your price.

No habitation licence. Article 833(6), which governs sale by private negotiation, allows a building or fraction on which urban construction has been or is being carried out to be sold in the state it is in, dispensing with the utilisation or construction licence, with the absence recorded in the document, and with the legalisation of the property being an obligation of the buyer. If you buy something that has never been legalised, legalising it is your problem, at your cost, with the council. Check whether a licença de utilização exists before you bid, not after. You will separately need a certificado energético if you go on to sell or rent it.

Viewing the property

You are entitled to look. Article 818 obliges the depositary, up to the day the proposals are opened, to show the assets to anyone who wants to examine them, and lets the depositary set the hours, which the enforcement agent must then state in the announcement and the door notice. In practice access varies enormously, because the person holding the property is frequently the debtor. But the obligation is in the code, and the hours are supposed to be in the advert.

When a completed sale is undone

Article 838 lets a buyer who discovers, after the sale, a charge or limitation that was not taken into account and exceeds the normal limits for rights of that category, or an error about the thing transmitted through non-conformity with what was announced, ask in the execution for the sale to be annulled and for damages. The judge decides after hearing the parties. If the request is made before the sale proceeds are drawn down, they are not released without security being given.

Article 839 lists the other cases, and they are the ones worth understanding before you bid, because none of them is your fault:

• The judgment being enforced is annulled or revoked, or an opposition to the execution or the attachment succeeds.
• The whole execution, having run in the debtor's absence, is annulled.
• The act of sale itself is annulled for a procedural irregularity.
• The thing sold did not belong to the debtor and the true owner claims it.

Where a preference action succeeds afterwards, or a remição is granted, the preference holder or the redeemer substitutes for you, paying the price and the purchase expenses. In the first three cases above, restitution must be sought within 30 days of the definitive decision, and you must be reimbursed the price and the purchase costs first. If nobody asks within the 30 days, the winner is only entitled to the money.

Article 825 of the Civil Code covers the case where what was sold belonged to someone else: you can demand the price back from whoever received it, and damages from the creditors and the debtor who acted with fault, though not if a third party had protested their right before or at the sale and you knew about it.

Part two: the tax track

Where the creditor is the state, the Tax Procedure and Process Code governs, and the numbers are different and considerably more aggressive.

The descending price ladder

Article 250(1) sets the base value: urban buildings at the VPT assessed under the IMI code; rural buildings at the updated asset value or at market value where higher; movables at the value in the attachment record, unless the tax execution body works out another, which it may do with a technical opinion. Where it is evident that market value is manifestly higher than those rules produce, article 250(2) allows a valuation by an expert registered with the CMVM, at the debtor's request or the office's initiative.

Then article 250(5): the base value announced for sale is equal to 70 percent of the value determined under paragraph 1.

Article 248 sets out what happens next, and it is a ladder:

1. Electronic auction, 15 days, at 70 percent of the article 250 value.
2. If no proposals come in, the sale passes immediately to sealed proposals, running 15 to 20 days, with the base cut to 50 percent.
3. If still nothing, a fresh electronic auction of 15 days opens, and the property goes to the highest offer.
4. An absolute floor applies throughout: whatever the mode and however many attempts have been made, the sale cannot be adjudicated below 20 percent of the article 250 value.

Compare that with the judicial track, where the announced price is 85 percent of a base value that is the higher of VPT and market value. The tax track starts at 70 percent of the VPT and can end at 20 percent of it. The difference is not a rounding error.

Article 255 adds a route that has no equivalent on the judicial side: where no proposal meets the base value, the tax execution body may acquire the assets for the Fazenda Pública (Public Treasury), up to the value of the debt and additions, or, where the real value of the assets is less than the debt, at a price not exceeding two thirds of that value.

Where these are published, and paying for them

Article 249 requires publication over the internet, with the announcement carrying the office running the case, the debtor's name or firm, a summary identification of the assets, the place, period and hours in which they may be examined, the base value, where proposals go, the deadline for receiving them, and the time and place the proposals are opened. It also has to carry any condition set by special law for acquiring, holding or trading the assets. Paragraph 6 repeats the viewing obligation: the assets must be available at the stated place until the proposal deadline, and the depositary must show them.

These sales run through the Venda Electrónica de Bens Penhorados (Electronic Sale of Attached Assets) service on the Portal das Finanças, which carries the sales in progress, the sale modes, the mediators and the proposal consultation.

Article 256 governs the money, and the deadlines are tighter than the civil ones look:

• The buyer is issued a guia to deposit the whole price to the order of the tax execution body within 15 days of the adjudication decision.
• For acquisitions above 500 units of account, on a reasoned application filed within five days of the adjudication, the office may allow only part of the price to be deposited in that window, not less than one fifth, with the balance due within a maximum of 12 months.
• A buyer who is also a creditor is never excused the deposit. The state, public institutes and social security bodies are.
• Fail to pay on time and article 256(4) bars you from submitting any proposal in any tax execution sale for two years.
• Ownership passes only on issue of the title of transmission, after the price is deposited and the tax obligations met.

Two categories of person cannot buy at all under article 256(1): magistrates and tax administration officials, whether directly, through an intermediary or through a legal entity they participate in; and non-resident entities in clearly more favourable tax regimes or whose legal regimes do not permit the beneficial owners of the capital to be identified.

Delivery works as on the judicial side. Article 256(2) lets the buyer apply to the tax execution body, in the same proceedings and against the holder, for delivery of the assets, and paragraph 3 allows the office to call on the police to hand the property over.

Annulment deadlines, which are short

Article 257 sets three clocks, and they are the tightest numbers in this guide:

• 90 days where the ground is a real charge that was not taken into account and has not lapsed, or an error about the object transmitted or its qualities through non-conformity with what was announced.
• 30 days where a ground of opposition to the execution is invoked that the debtor could not raise earlier.
• 15 days in the remaining cases provided for in the Civil Procedure Code.

Time runs from the sale or from when you learn the fact you are relying on, and proving the date of that knowledge is your job. The application goes to the regional office, which has 45 days to decide after hearing everyone with an interest in the sale. If it says nothing in 45 days, the request is deemed refused, and you then have to challenge the tacit refusal.

Article 260 completes the picture on charges: the lifting of the attachment and the cancellation of registered real rights that lapse under article 824(2) of the Civil Code are ordered by the tax execution body if the buyer has not already applied for them.

Practical checklist before you bid

• Work out which track you are in. Judicial sales are published on tribunais.org.pt and run through the enforcement-agent auction platform. Tax sales are published on the Portal das Finanças. The opening prices, the payment windows and the annulment deadlines all differ.
• Get the certidão permanente do registo predial. The date order of the entries decides which charges disappear. Nothing else tells you that.
• Read the advert for the appeal warning. Article 817(4) requires the announcement to disclose a pending appeal or opposition. If it is there, the sale is at risk under article 839.
• Ask about the licença de utilização. Article 833(6) allows sale without one, and makes legalisation your problem.
• Identify the preference holders. Co-owners, some tenants, municipalities and the state hold preference rights that can take the property off you at your own price.
• Find out who is living there. Delivery is available in the same proceedings, which is faster than a fresh eviction, but "faster" is not "immediate".
• Have the whole price ready. Fifteen days from adjudication is the standard on both tracks, and there is no mortgage-approval window inside it. If you need financing, arrange it before you bid; our guide to the crédito habitação sets out how long approval actually takes.
• Budget the tax. IMT and stamp duty are payable before the title issues, on top of the hammer price.
• Get someone to read the file. A solicitador is the natural professional here, because the enforcement-agent side of that profession is the side that runs these sales. If cost is the obstacle, apoio judiciário is means-tested.

What this means for expats

• If you are house-hunting on a budget: this is a real market and it is open to you. Neither code restricts bidding by nationality or residence, and the only exclusions are officials of the court and tax administration and opaque offshore entities. But the opening price is a floor, not a valuation, and the busiest lots close at multiples of it.
• If you are used to buying at auction elsewhere: the two features that will surprise you are the preference rights, which can take the property away after you have won, and article 839, which can undo the sale for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Both are compensated rather than prevented. Neither exists in an ordinary purchase, where the contrato-promessa and Casa Pronta route give you a survey period and a clean title check.
• If you are the one being enforced against: you have rights in this process that are easy to miss. Article 812 lets you be heard on the mode and the base value and take a disagreement to a judge. Article 250(2) of the tax code lets you ask for a proper valuation where the VPT is manifestly below market. Article 813 lets you apply to stop further sales once enough has been raised to cover the debt and costs. Get advice early rather than at the auction.
• If you are the creditor: this is the end of the road that starts with an unpaid invoice. Our guide to the injunção covers getting the enforcement title in the first place, and Portugal has struck 50 enforcement agents off the register in a decade, so check who you are instructing.

Two honest limits on what is written above. The auction length, bid steps and any closing-time extension on the judicial electronic auctions are set in the platform's system rules under article 20 of Portaria 282/2013, not in the portaria itself, so they can change without a change in the law and you should read the current rules before bidding. And the descending 70, 50 and 20 percent ladder in article 248 is the tax code's, not the civil one's; do not carry those numbers across to a judicial sale, where the announced price is 85 percent of a base that is the higher of VPT and market value.

The rest of it is in the codes, and the codes are unusually generous to the buyer on the one thing that matters most. A mortgage does not follow the property out of an execution sale. It follows the money.