Portugal Scrapped Its Old Affordable-Rent Programme on 1 September, and the Replacement Still Cannot Be Used: the Rent Ceilings Were Due by 19 June and the IHRU Platform Is Not Live

On 1 September Portugal switched off the Programa de Apoio ao Arrendamento (Rental Support Programme), the affordable-rent scheme it had run since 2019, and switched on a replacement designed to be simpler. A week later the replacement cannot be used. The single number a landlord needs in order to join it, the maximum rent allowed for a given flat in a given municipality, is set by a portaria (ministerial order) that has not been published. The electronic platform on which the contract has to be filed is not live either.

Both were legal obligations with dates attached, and both dates have passed.

What the decree actually promises

The Regime Simplificado de Arrendamento Acessível (Simplified Accessible Rental Regime, RSAA) sits in Annex III of Decreto-Lei n.º 97/2026, published in the Diário da República (Official Gazette) on 20 May 2026 under an authorisation granted by Lei n.º 9-A/2026 of 6 March. It is part of a wider fiscal package for housing that also cut VAT on construction work to 6 percent and created a separate regime of investment contracts for rental supply.

The offer to landlords is unusually plain. Article 6 of the annex exempts rental income from a qualifying contract from personal income tax (IRS) and corporate income tax (IRC) altogether. Not a reduced rate: an exemption. If the taxpayer chooses to aggregate their income (the englobamento option), the exempt rent is still counted when the rate on everything else is calculated, but it is not itself taxed. The exemption covers renewals and survives a sale of the property, provided the contract stays in force.

In exchange the landlord accepts three things. The rent must sit at or below a ceiling. Under article 4, that ceiling is fixed by typology in a portaria from the finance and housing ministers, built on 80 percent of the median rent published by the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE, the national statistics office) for the municipality where the property sits, and it may be adjusted for the building's energy rating and whether it comes with private parking. The ceiling excludes the charges a tenant separately owes under article 1078 of the Código Civil (Civil Code), and it is updated automatically using the coefficient in article 24 of the Novo Regime do Arrendamento Urbano (New Urban Lease Regime).

The contract must also run for a minimum term: three years where the let is for permanent residence, three months where it is a temporary let under article 1095(3) of the Civil Code to a tenant whose tax address is in a different municipality. And the landlord must file, on a platform run by the Instituto da Habitação e da Reabilitação Urbana (IHRU, the housing and urban rehabilitation institute), a copy of the contract and proof that it was declared to the Portal das Finanças, by 15 January of the year following signature. The IHRU then tells the Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira (Tax and Customs Authority) by the end of February, and the exemption applies retroactively from the date of signature.

The two deadlines that were missed

Article 16 of the decree gave the government 30 days from publication to approve the portarias, naming among them the one under article 4(1) of Annex III, the rent ceilings. Publication was 20 May. Thirty days from then was 19 June. As of 7 September the order has not appeared, which puts it 80 days past the deadline the government wrote for itself and 110 days after the decree was signed.

Article 13 set a second date. By 1 September 2026, it says, the adaptations needed on the electronic platforms had to be available, "in particular for the purposes of applying the provisions relating to the Special Rental Investment Regime and to the RSAA". The IHRU registration platform where landlords and prospective tenants are supposed to sign up is not open.

Asked about the missing order, the Ministério das Infraestruturas e Habitação (Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing) said it is "for publication" and did not say when the IHRU platform would be operational.

The consequence is not merely administrative. Article 18 of the decree made three things take effect on the same day, 1 September: the RSAA itself, the new investment-contract regime, and the repeal of Decreto-Lei n.º 68/2019, which created the old Programa de Apoio ao Arrendamento. Existing contracts under the old programme keep their tax treatment under a transitional rule in article 15. But there is now no live route for a landlord who wants to enter an affordable-rent contract today, because nobody can calculate what rent would qualify.

Why the ceiling is the whole decision

A landlord weighing the RSAA is comparing a full tax exemption against forgone rent, and the same decree narrowed that gap. A new article 45.º-C of the Estatuto dos Beneficios Fiscais (Statute of Tax Benefits), in force from 1 January 2026, taxes residential rental income at an autonomous 10 percent up to 31 December 2029, provided the rent is what the decree calls moderate. Article 2 fixes moderate at 2.5 times the 2026 national minimum wage, which at 920 euros a month means a ceiling of 2,300 euros. So the choice for most landlords is not exemption against 25 percent. It is exemption against 10 percent, in return for a rent capped near 80 percent of the local median rather than at 2,300 euros.

That makes the exact ceiling decisive rather than incidental. Eighty percent of a municipal median is a formula, not a figure: it varies by council, and article 4 allows the portaria to modulate it by typology, energy certificate and parking. Until those brackets exist, a landlord in Almada or Braga cannot tell whether joining costs them 40 euros a month or 400, which is precisely the arithmetic the decree expects them to do.

The Associação Lisbonense de Proprietários (Lisbon Property Owners' Association) put the point sharply to its members, observing that an electronic platform only simplifies a procedure when it exists and is ready to run it, and recalling that government announcements have not always been coordinated with what actually works on the ground.

The programme it replaced set a low bar

The RSAA exists because its predecessor failed. The Programa de Apoio ao Arrendamento, created in 2019, attracted little more than a thousand contracts nationally across its life, against expectations measured in tens of thousands. Its problems were procedural: a heavier application, compulsory insurance, five-year minimum terms, and an eligibility check on tenants. The RSAA drops the insurance requirement, cuts the minimum term from five years to three, and replaces the approval process with a filing.

We reported in June that the old programme had run seven years without a single IHRU inspection of the contracts claiming its tax break. The new regime moves in the opposite direction on enforcement: article 7 makes the IHRU the body that verifies breach, strips the benefit from the moment of breach, adds compensatory interest, and suspends the limitation period for the tax assessment. That is a real tightening, and it will matter once there is anything to enforce.

What this means for expats

• If you are a landlord thinking of joining: you cannot sign an RSAA contract with confidence today. The rent you agree now determines whether the exemption applies, and the ceiling is unknown. Waiting for the portaria costs you nothing, because article 6 backdates the exemption to the date of signature once the filing is made by 15 January of the following year.
• If you already have a PAA contract: nothing changes. Article 15(2) preserves the tax effects granted under Decreto-Lei n.º 68/2019 for contracts in force on 1 September, with the RSAA's filing and breach rules applied by analogy.
• If you are a tenant hoping to find an RSAA home: there is no sign-up point yet. The IHRU platform is the only route, and it is not open. Municipal affordable-rent programmes recognised under the old article 23 regime carry over automatically under article 8, so a council scheme you already applied to is unaffected.
• If you rent out a room: the RSAA covers part of a dwelling only for temporary lets, and only where the room has its own access to the main entrance, to a full bathroom and to the kitchen, plus a window, balcony or enclosed veranda opening directly outside. That is a narrower gate than most room-shares pass.
• On the tax side: the exemption does not remove the declaration. You still report the income and still issue electronic rent receipts; the exemption is applied by the Tax Authority after the IHRU tells it the contract qualifies.

The government has committed, in the same decree, to an interim evaluation report from the IHRU by 31 December 2028 and a final one by 31 December 2030. Both will measure how many contracts the regime attracted. The count starts whenever the portaria arrives, not on the day the decree said the regime began. For readers arriving in the market now, our tenant guide to the contrato de arrendamento covers the ordinary rules that apply in the meantime, which for the moment are the only rules there are.