Key figures — as of 2026-08-24: Non-resident home purchases fell to 8,471 in 2025, down 13.3% on 2024 and the third consecutive annual decline (INE, via idealista) — EU-resident buyers down 9.6% to 4,416; non-EU buyers down 17.1% to 4,055 — Portugal's House Price Index rose 17.8% year-on-year in Q1 2026, the largest increase in the EU (Eurostat) — Q1 2026 transaction volumes fell 8.7% year-on-year even as domestic buyers hit a record 95% share of all sales.
The numbers behind the retreat
Foreigners without Portuguese tax residence bought 8,471 homes in Portugal in 2025 — 13.3% fewer than in 2024, and the third straight year the figure has dropped. Buyers with tax residence outside Portugal purchased 8,471 homes in 2025, representing a 13.3% decrease compared to 2024, marking the third consecutive annual drop in transactions involving non-residents. Split by origin, the fall was uneven: buyers living in another EU country purchased 4,416 homes, down 9.6% year-on-year, while buyers residing outside the European Union acquired 4,055 properties, a sharper decline of 17.1% compared to 2024.
Domestic demand told the opposite story. Buyers with tax residence in Portugal purchased 161,341 homes in 2025, a 10.1% increase compared to the previous year, accounting for 95% of all transactions — the highest share recorded since 2019. Portugal's property market isn't shrinking; it's just being bought by a different crowd than it was three years ago.
Prices haven't noticed the pullback
The retreat of foreign buyers hasn't cooled the market at all. Eurostat's Q1 2026 House Price Index confirms the highest increases were recorded in Portugal (+17.8%), Bulgaria (+14.8%) and Slovakia (+14.4%) among all EU member states. INE's own release, published in June, shows the same acceleration domestically, with existing homes doing most of the heavy lifting: house prices increased by 17.8% compared with the same quarter of 2025, though slightly below the 18.9% recorded in the previous quarter. Transactions moved the other way — the number of homes sold fell by 8.7% year-on-year, with 37,745 dwellings sold across the country between January and March 2026.
Foreign-resident buyers specifically kept shrinking into 2026: the number of foreign-resident buyers moved in the opposite direction, buying 1,770 homes in the first quarter, down 15.6% year-on-year.
Golden Visa and NHR closures are doing exactly what critics predicted
The timing lines up with two policy shifts GrowIN has tracked closely. Portugal ended the Golden Visa real estate investment route at the end of 2023 and revoked the long-standing Non-Habitual Resident tax regime, replacing it in 2024 with a more restrictive framework, reducing some of the fiscal and residency incentives that had previously attracted international buyers. Our own visa guides have flagged that neither the current fund-based Golden Visa route nor the narrower IFICI tax scheme replaces what real estate-linked NHR and residency-by-property once offered — and the INE numbers are the clearest evidence yet that the message has landed with buyers abroad.
GrowIN analysis: Non-resident purchases in 2025 (8,471) were roughly 1,300 fewer than in 2024 — and idealista's data shows overseas buyers typically pay well above the national average, in some cases double. Applying even a conservative gap to the national average transaction value of roughly €243,000 (from INE's €41.2 billion in sales across 169,812 homes), the missing foreign transactions alone plausibly represent several hundred million euros in transaction value that simply didn't happen in the non-resident segment last year — even as the overall market grew.
"Portugal's housing market has split in two: a record domestic engine buying more homes than ever, and a shrinking pool of foreign buyers paying more for what's left at the top," says GrowIN Portugal Editorial.
What foreigners considering a move should actually take from this
The retreat isn't proof that Portugal has stopped welcoming foreign homeowners — it's proof that the buyers left standing are self-selecting for those with a genuine relocation plan rather than a residency shortcut. Anyone weighing a purchase now needs a NIF, a Portuguese bank account, and a realistic read on non-resident closing costs (IMT, stamp duty, notary fees) before making an offer, since none of that has gotten cheaper even as the buyer pool has thinned. Golden Visa hopefuls specifically need to know property no longer qualifies at all — only the fund, research, arts/heritage or job-creation routes remain, all of them slower and less liquid than a house purchase used to be.
What to watch next
INE's next quarterly release and Eurostat's autumn housing bulletin will show whether the Q1 2026 slowdown in non-resident volume deepens or stabilises, and whether IFICI approvals — reported by industry trackers at only around 1,240 for all of 2025 — start pulling in enough skilled applicants to offset the loss of NHR-driven property demand. Until then, expect Portuguese property to keep doing what it's done for three years running: getting more expensive, and getting bought by fewer foreigners.