The payment is the easy part. The question is whether a bank will say yes.

Yes, including non-EU buyers. The constraint is not eligibility but loan-to-value and documentation. Regulatory ceilings sit at 90% for an own permanent home and 80% for other purposes, but non-resident second-home files are commonly written at 60% to 70% of the lower of price and valuation, which means a deposit of 30% to 40% before purchase costs. Approval turns on income durability, existing commitments and the quality of the documentation rather than on gross earnings.

Recomendação Macroprudencial n.º 1/2026 took effect on 1 August 2026 and applies to applications assessed from that date. The effort ratio ceiling fell from 50% to 45% of household net monthly income, the share of new contracts a bank may write above that ceiling was cut from 15% to 10%, the average-maturity guidance for lenders' books was removed, and bank-owned properties lost their general access to full financing. The interest rate stress test was retained.

It is a recommendation on a comply-or-explain basis rather than binding law, but it shapes the decision on almost every file.

Because the bank is testing whether you could still pay if rates rose. For terms beyond ten years the assessment adds 1.5 percentage points to the contracted rate and measures the effort ratio against the resulting payment. That is the number that has to come in under the ceiling, not the payment you would actually make. A file at 3.9% is assessed at 5.4%, and that gap is where most marginal applications now fail.

The lower of two constraints. The first is loan-to-value, which for a non-resident second home is typically 60% to 70% of the lower of price and the bank's own valuation — and the valuation is where deals are frequently repriced. The second is the effort ratio: total monthly credit instalments across every loan you hold, measured at the stressed rate, should not exceed 45% of net monthly income. The calculator reports the maximum loan the second test supports, which is often the binding one.

To every institution granting consumer credit in Portugal, not to a subset — the Banco de Portugal monitors compliance precisely to prevent any lender competing by disregarding it. It is a recommendation on a comply-or-explain basis rather than binding law, and banks retain an allowance to write a limited share of new contracts above the ceiling.

Nationality and tax residence are irrelevant to the test. What matters is that the borrower is a consumer and the lender is operating in Portugal, so a non-resident foreign buyer is assessed on exactly the same ceiling and the same stressed rate as a domestic borrower. The harsher terms non-residents encounter come from bank credit policy on loan-to-value, spread and documentation, not from the macroprudential framework.

Two situations fall outside it. An acquisition through a company or for a business purpose is not consumer credit and is assessed under the bank's corporate policy instead. And a loan from a private bank outside Portugal — including lending secured on a securities portfolio rather than the property — is not within the framework at all, which for clients with assets managed abroad is frequently the better comparison.

Variable rates are priced as a Euribor index plus a bank spread and reprice at each review, typically every six or twelve months. Fixed rates hold for a defined period and usually revert to variable afterward. Because the affordability stress is applied to variable-rate exposure, fixed and mixed products have become comparatively easier to qualify for since August, and pricing has moved with that.

The honest answer depends on how long you expect to hold the debt and on the early repayment charge, which is materially higher on fixed-rate loans. If an early sale is plausible, that charge belongs in the comparison.

It rose through the summer of 2026. As at 11 September the three-month index stood at 2.643%, the six-month at 2.806% and the twelve-month at 3.138%, with the six and twelve-month tenors at their highest in roughly two years. The six-month index is the reference in most Portuguese variable mortgages. These figures move every business day, which is why they are editable here rather than fixed into the page — check the current fixing before relying on any payment figure.

Stamp duty on the loan at 0.6% for terms of five years or more, the bank's arrangement fee, a valuation fee, and mandatory life and home insurance. Life cover is priced on age and health and can be a significant item or, occasionally, a decline — it is worth getting an indication early rather than late. The effective cost figure in the results folds all of these into a single annualized rate, which is the only basis on which two offers can honestly be compared.

Not a statutory one, but most lenders require the loan to be repaid by the borrower's seventieth to seventy-fifth year, and the 2026 framework allows income to be haircut where the term runs past seventy. For a borrower in their late fifties this is usually the binding constraint on the term, and a shorter term raises the payment, which then feeds back into the effort ratio.

Financing is available for second homes and investment property, on different terms from a primary residence. The point that catches people is that borrowed money does not count toward a qualifying investment threshold — the qualifying amount has to be your own committed capital. The real estate acquisition route was in any case removed from the program in 2023, so the question now arises mainly in relation to the fund route.

No. We are not a credit intermediary or a lender and we take no position in the financing. We introduce clients to partner banks and brokers, help assemble the file so it presents well, and sequence the financing alongside the acquisition so that approval in principle is in place before the promissory contract rather than after it. The credit decision, the rate and the terms are entirely the lender's.