Challenges Buyers Face When Buying Property in Portugal

What Creates Challenges for Buyers

When we refer to the market, we are not simply talking about listings, asking prices, or average price per square metre.

We mean the underlying structure of the Portuguese property system — how information is shared, how agents compete, how prices are formed, and how little verified transaction data is available.

Unlike markets with centralised databases and clear comparables, Portugal operates through a fragmented network of agencies, portals, and private relationships. This has important implications for buyers.

Market Dysfunction & Fragmentation

Portugal has a very large number of Real Estate (Sales) Agencies relative to market size, which creates a lot of issues for buyers:

• Listings where exact addresses (and even general locations) are deliberately witheld hindering online research (via google maps etc)

• Same property listed multiple times by different agents

• Incomplete / poor quality listings lacking detail to enable online research / comparison.

• Sales Agents with limited knowledge of the Property in question

• Properties that never appear online at all

This behaviour reflects the highly competitive and decentralised nature of the agency landscape, where protecting listings and leads often takes precedence over transparency. For buyers, the result is duplication, noise, and significant wasted time.

Lack of Transparency of actual Sales Prices (for comparison)

One of the most significant differences for expat buyers is the absence of a register of achieved sale prices.

In many countries, buyers can verify:

• What a property last sold for

• Comparable sale prices on the same street

• Historical transaction data

In Portugal, buyers can only see asking prices, not confirmed outcomes. This makes it harder to benchmark value, assess realistic negotiation ranges, or understand whether a price reflects genuine market demand.

Why Online Searches Don’t Show the Full Market

While Idealista is the market leader, Portugal does not have a single platform that shows “almost everything”.

Instead, the market relies on:

• Multiple overlapping portals

• Smaller portals and agency-specific platforms

• Off-market opportunities

• Direct relationships between agents

Even the largest portals represent only part of the market. Buyers relying solely on online searches often assume they are seeing a complete picture — when in reality, they are not.

Limited Buyer Representation

Traditionally, Portuguese estate agents act for the seller, not the buyer.

• Selling agents are incentivised to achieve the best outcome for their client

• Buyer representation is not culturally embedded or expected

• Independent buyer advocacy is optional, not standard

Unless a buyer appoints independent representation, they are typically navigating a fragmented and opaque market without advice that is fully aligned to their interests.

Why These Conditions Matter for Buyers

Taken together, these structural realities mean that buyers have to deal with:

• Wasting time and effort continually filtering duplicated, incomplete and poor quality listings

• Inconsistent and unrealistic pricing due to the lack of transaction transparency

• Inability to carry out prior research due to limited information in property listings

• Risk of misjudging value or opportunity cost

In this environment, professional support is often less about saving money, and more about bringing structure, clarity, and efficiency to the process. Once you understand how the Portuguese property market functions, the buying process itself is relatively straightforward. You can read a step-by-step overview on our Buying Property in Portugal page.

What Information Is Publicly Available

Some legal information can be accessed (for a fee) via the Portuguese land registry (Certidão Permanente Predial), including:

• Legal ownership

• Property registration details

• Mortgages or registered charges

Crucially, the information available does not include sales price.