In Cascais, 81.3% of all property acquisitions are now made by foreign buyers. In the Oeste region the figure is 55%. In Vilamoura it reaches 75%. These numbers come from the Engel & Völkers Market Report Portugal 2025-2026, and they describe a market that has moved well past the single-nationality, single-region pattern of a decade ago.
They also describe something else, though the report does not say it directly. Every one of these figures measures people buying property that already exists. None of them measures the buyers who arrive, look at the available stock, and conclude that nothing on the market is what they actually want.
That second group is the one we work with every day at Villas, a MAP Group Company. This article looks at what the regional data says, and then at the question it leaves unanswered.
Which regions in Portugal attract the most international buyers?
The Engel & Völkers report breaks the market down by region, and the differences are considerable. Rather than one national story, Portugal now supports several distinct buyer profiles operating in parallel.
| Region | Share of acquisitions by international buyers | Leading nationalities |
|---|---|---|
| Cascais | 81.3% | Brazilian, Russian, North American |
| Quinta do Lago and Vale do Lobo | approx. 80% | British, Irish, then German, Belgian, Dutch |
| Vilamoura | 75% | German, Dutch, Belgian |
| Oeste | 55% | North American, French, German |
| Vila Nova de Gaia | 33% | North American, British, French |
| Porto | 27% | North American, French, Spanish |
| Minho (detached houses) | 95% of the segment | British |
Source: Engel & Völkers, Market Report Portugal 2025-2026. Data as reported in July 2026.
Two things stand out. The first is the concentration of demand along the Lisbon coast and in the Algarve, where international buyers are not a segment of the market but the market itself. The second is the diversification of nationalities. Cascais alone draws Brazilian, Russian and North American buyers, each with different expectations of what a home should be.
Engel & Völkers attributes this resilience to regional variety: different parts of the country answer different motivations, whether that is proximity to Lisbon, heritage, landscape or price relative to comparable European markets.
What do these numbers mean if you want to build rather than buy?
They mean competition for finished product is intense, and it is intense in exactly the places international buyers want to be.
When 81.3% of transactions in a municipality involve foreign buyers, the effect on available stock is predictable. Well-located properties move quickly, often before they are publicly listed. Properties that stay on the market tend to stay there for a reason: an awkward plot, a compromised orientation, a renovation whose real cost is not visible from the photographs.
For a buyer with a specific brief, and most buyers at this level have one, the practical choice narrows to three options:
- Buy a finished home and accept its constraints
- Buy an existing property and undertake a deep renovation
- Acquire land and build
The third route is the one the market data does not cover, and it is the one that gives you control over orientation, layout, materials, energy performance and the finish level throughout.
Portugal has just rewritten its permitting rules
Anyone researching this before mid-2026 will find outdated information.
Decree-Law 108/2026, published on 29 May 2026, is the twenty-first revision of Portugal’s planning and building regime, the RJUE. It takes effect on 3 August 2026 and applies to new applications and to pending applications still at an early stage.
The direction of the reform is a shift away from prior control by the municipality toward subsequent verification, placing more responsibility on the applicant and their technical team. Four points matter if you intend to build.
Prior notification replaces licensing in most cases. Where a detailed plan, an execution unit or an approved subdivision already defines the alignments, building envelope, height, number of floors and permitted uses for the site, the works fall under prior notification rather than licensing. Under Article 34, a correctly prepared notification allows work to proceed once fees are paid and the start of works is registered, with no permissive act required. Municipal review takes place afterwards and lapses one year after payment.
Where licensing still applies, the deadlines are short but sequential. Article 23 gives the municipality a maximum of 20 days to decide on a licence application for building or demolition works, 30 days for infrastructure works and 45 days for subdivisions, with tacit approval if the deadline passes without a decision. That 20-day figure is worth reading carefully: it applies to the final decision, counted from submission of the engineering projects. The architecture project carries its own 30-day period under Article 20, preceded by a 20-day preliminary check. The licensing route is a sequence of short deadlines, not a single one.
A preliminary information request can remove prior control entirely. Under Article 17(2), a favourable preliminary information request covering all the specified planning parameters exempts the operation from both licence and prior notification, and dispenses with further external consultations. It remains valid for two years. For an international buyer this is the most useful instrument in the whole regime, because it establishes what a plot will allow before you commit to buying it.
Heritage sites stay on the licensing route. Works on classified buildings, on buildings within classified sites, and on buildings inside the protection zone of a classified building continue to require a licence rather than prior notification, unless preceded by a favourable preliminary information request covering all applicable parameters. Reconstruction works are now exempt, including within those protection zones.
The practical consequence is worth stating plainly. Under the new regime, your timeline is determined by the quality and completeness of what you submit, not by how long the municipality takes. A complete, technically correct submission moves. An incomplete one triggers a request for further documents, which suspends the clock until you respond.
Source: Decree-Law 108/2026 of 29 May, Diário da República, 1st series, no. 104. Supporting analysis by Deloitte Legal TELLES.
How long does it take to build a villa in Portugal?
There is no single answer, because the timeline is the sum of five phases and only one of them is construction.
- Site selection and feasibility. Confirming what the plot allows, ideally through a preliminary information request before committing to purchase
- Design. Architecture, engineering and specialist projects, through to a submission-ready package
- Permitting. Governed by the deadlines described above, and by whether your project takes the prior notification or the licensing route
- Construction. Our current private residence project in Lisbon, at 600 m², has a 17-month execution period
- Completion and utilisation. Final inspections and handover
The variables that move the timeline most are the site itself, whether heritage protection applies, and how complete the initial submission is. A plot with defined planning parameters and no heritage constraint follows a materially shorter path than a protected urban site in central Lisbon.
Is it better to buy or build a luxury villa in Portugal?
The trade-offs are consistent.
Buying gives you speed and certainty. You see what you are getting, you know the cost, and you can be living there within months. What you give up is control. You inherit someone else’s floor plan, someone else’s choice of materials, and whatever the building’s construction quality happens to be.
Building gives you control and cost transparency. Every decision, from the position of the house on the plot to the specification of the joinery, is yours. You know where the budget goes because you approve it line by line. What you give up is time, and you take on a process in a country whose regulatory framework may be unfamiliar.
In markets with constrained stock, such as Cascais, the comparison also has to account for what you would spend renovating a property that does not match your brief, and for what that renovation cannot fix.
What does building in Cascais involve?
Cascais combines the highest concentration of international buyers in the country with a constrained supply of buildable land. Plots come to market infrequently, and the municipality applies its own rules on volume, setbacks and coastal protection on top of the national framework.
Our Villa Mar development in Parede sits within this context: seven luxury villas in a municipality where the great majority of buyers are international. The architectural concept is by Humberto Conde, an independent architect. Villas, a MAP Group Company is the builder responsible for executing that vision.
What does building in Lisbon involve?
Lisbon presents a different problem. Land in the historic districts is effectively unavailable, so most high-end residential work is either reconstruction behind a retained facade or building on rare infill plots, both under heritage constraints. Where a property is classified or in the process of classification, the permitting route and its timeline differ from an unconstrained site.
Our current project in Lapa, one of Lisbon’s most established residential quarters, is a 600 m² private residence designed by Ricardo Bak Gordon, with a 17-month execution period. It illustrates the level of coordination required when architectural ambition meets a protected urban setting.
How do international clients manage a build from abroad?
Most of our clients are not in Portugal for the duration of the project, and the process is structured on that assumption rather than treating it as an exception.
In practice this means the client sees the work rather than reads about it. We hold video calls directly from the site, usually over WhatsApp, so that a client in London or São Paulo can look at the actual state of the structure, the finish of a wall or the way light enters a room at a given hour, in real time and with someone there to answer questions. Alongside these, we schedule Zoom calls for the moments that need a proper conversation: a decision on materials, a variation to the original design, a stage about to close. The result is a client who is never presented with a completed fact, but who follows the build as it evolves.
What matters, from experience, is that decisions reach the client with enough context to be made remotely, and that nothing is decided on site without approval.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. There is no restriction on property ownership or construction by foreign nationals in Portugal, including for buyers resident outside the European Union. The process is the same as for Portuguese nationals, though tax residency and financing arrangements differ. A Portuguese tax number is required in order to transact.
According to the Engel & Völkers Market Report Portugal 2025-2026, Cascais leads with 81.3% of acquisitions made by foreign buyers, followed by the Algarve resort areas of Quinta do Lago, Vale do Lobo and Vilamoura. The Oeste region reached 55%, while Porto remains predominantly domestic at 27%.
Portugal’s regime changed with Decree-Law 108/2026, in force from 3 August 2026. Where planning parameters are already defined for the site, works fall under prior notification and can begin once fees are paid, with no waiting period. Where licensing applies, Article 23 sets a maximum of 20 days for the municipality to decide on building works, with tacit approval if it does not, though the architecture project carries a separate 30-day period beforehand. A favourable preliminary information request covering all parameters can exempt the project from prior control altogether.
The total timeline covers feasibility, design, permitting, construction and handover. Construction alone depends on scale and complexity: a 600 m² private residence in Lisbon, currently being built by Villas, a MAP Group Company, has a 17-month execution period.
It depends on the plot, the specification and the location. Building gives you full visibility of where the budget goes, which buying does not. In markets with constrained stock, the comparison also has to account for the cost of renovating a property that does not match your brief.
You should not have to. Formally, the applicant is the owner and the technical projects are submitted by their authors, but managing that process is our responsibility, not yours. We can coordinate architect, engineers and specialist consultants, prepare and follow the submission through the municipality, respond to any request for further documents, and keep you informed at each stage. The aim is a genuinely turnkey process: what reaches the client is a decision to make, not a procedure to run. For buyers based abroad, this is usually the difference between a project that advances and one that stalls
