How to buy a property at auction in Portugal

Where do you find properties at auction in Portugal?

In three places: the Citius portal, the electronic judicial sale platforms (e-leilões is the largest), and the websites of the private auction houses. There is no single official register: which is why the same property can appear in two places and many are never seen by someone looking in only one.

**Citius** is the Ministry of Justice portal where the courts publish sale notices. It is the primary source for any enforcement or insolvency sale: if a judicial sale exists, its notice is there. The limitation is the format: plain-text PDFs, no photographs, no filters by type or price, and search by case rather than by property.

The **electronic platforms** are where bidding actually happens. e-leilões is the one most used by enforcement agents; others are used by insolvency administrators and auction houses. This is where you see the base value, the current bid, the deadline and usually the photographs.

The **private auction houses** (a few dozen in Portugal) publish catalogues on their own sites. They sell both court-process assets and private sales. Each has its own site, registration and rules.

Licito exists because of that fragmentation: it aggregates the public sources into a single feed, filterable by district, municipality, property type and price. It is free and needs no account to browse.

What kinds of sale exist, and why does the difference matter?

It matters because it changes who is selling, what guarantees exist, and what happens to the encumbrances registered against the property. There are four routes in Portugal.

**Enforcement sale**: the property was seized in an enforcement case (an unpaid debt) and is sold by court order, run by an enforcement agent. This is the most common route. In most cases registered mortgages and seizures are cancelled by the sale, because the proceeds pay the ranked creditors.

**Insolvency sale**: a company or individual has been declared insolvent and the insolvency administrator liquidates the assets to pay creditors. Publicity rules and deadlines are set by the creditors' committee, and the format may be an electronic auction, a sealed bid or private negotiation.

**Tax sale**: the tax authority enforces a tax debt. It runs on the tax portal under its own rules.

**Private sale / private negotiation**: an auction house or the owner sells without a court. This is not a judicial sale: there is no ranking of creditors, and whatever is registered against the property stays registered. Here the due diligence is entirely yours.

⛔ One distinction that catches people out: a **hereditary share** or an **undivided fraction** of a property is not the property. It is a portion of an estate or a co-ownership quota, it sells under different rules, and it does not give you the right to deal with the house. Licito excludes those lots from the feed for exactly that reason.

What do you need in order to bid?

Registration on the platform running the sale, a Portuguese tax number (NIF) and, depending on the format, a deposit. You do not need to be a company or hold any licence.

**Registration** on e-leilões asks for a Portuguese NIF, name, domicile in Portugal, phone, email, the IBAN of a bank account in Portugal and marital status (Despacho no. 12624/2015, art. 3(2)). Private auction houses each set their own registration.

The **deposit** depends on the format. In a **sealed-bid sale**, each offer must include, as a deposit, a certified cheque or bank guarantee for 5% of the advertised value (CPC, art. 824(1)). On **e-leilões**, the platform rules do not provide for any deposit to bid. At a **private auction house**, its own conditions apply, so confirm them in the conditions of sale before bidding.

⚠️ No deposit does not mean no commitment. On e-leilões every bid is irrevocable and, if yours is the highest above the minimum value when the auction closes, you are obliged to deposit the price, with the consequences of CPC art. 825, which by the judge's decision can include the attachment (arresto) of your assets (Despacho no. 12624/2015, Annex I). There is no change of mind and no financing clause. If you will need a mortgage, get the approval in place BEFORE bidding; even then, the bank may refuse to finance a property it could not inspect.

What do you actually pay, beyond the bid?

On top of the winning bid come IMT, stamp duty and registration, and then the works. How much they weigh depends heavily on the property and its use: on a €100,000 flat bought as your own permanent home on the mainland IMT is €0 and the charges come to about €1,050; on a shop of the same value, about €7,550.

**IMT** (property transfer tax) is usually the largest charge, but there is not always IMT to pay: it depends on the value, on whether the property will be your own permanent home, on whether the buyer qualifies for IMT Jovem, and on the region (the Azores and Madeira have their own tables). **Stamp duty** is 0.8% of the value (TGIS, item 1.1). **Registration** of the acquisition costs €250 (RERN, art. 21).

Then come the **works**. A judicial-sale property has usually stood empty for years without maintenance, sometimes without a kitchen or plumbing. You cannot see inside in most cases, so the works budget is an estimate, and it is where most bad deals go wrong.

And if the property is occupied, there is a cost nobody budgets for: the **time and process** of getting possession.

How does the bidding actually work?

It depends on the format. In an electronic auction you bid online over a period: days or weeks, and the highest bid at close wins. In a sealed-bid sale you submit a single sealed offer, all offers are opened on the appointed date, and the highest above the minimum wins.

In an **electronic auction** the opening value is the starting point. On **e-leilões** it is 50% of the base value and the minimum value is 85%; bids between the two are conditional bids. The minimum increment is 1% or €10, and a bid in the last 5 minutes extends the end to 5 minutes after that bid, precisely to prevent last-second snipes (Despacho no. 12624/2015, arts. 2 and 7).

In a **sealed bid** you cannot see what anyone else offered. The minimum value is 85% of the base value (CPC, art. 816), and an offer below it is only accepted with the agreement of the debtor, the enforcing creditor and all secured creditors (CPC, art. 821).

If nobody bids, the sale is **unsuccessful**. A new sale usually follows at a reduced base value, and that is where the largest discounts appear, because the minimum drops on a property that has already been valued.

You won the auction. What now?

The award, then payment of the balance within a short deadline, then the transfer title that moves ownership. There is no notarial deed in an enforcement sale: the title is issued by the court or the enforcement agent.

The **award** is the act recognising the winning offer or bid. In a sealed-bid sale, once the offer is accepted, you have **15 days** to deposit the rest of the price (CPC, art. 824(2)). Always confirm the deadline in the notice, because it varies by format.

**Payment** is the price minus any deposit already posted. ⚠️ If the price is not deposited, the enforcement agent may declare the sale without effect and the bidder loses the deposit, among other consequences set out in CPC art. 825.

The **transfer title** is the document you take to the land registry. It is what makes you the owner. After that comes registration, and that is when you confirm, on the permanent certificate, that the encumbrances were actually cancelled.

What should you check BEFORE bidding?

Five things, all verifiable without seeing inside: the registered encumbrances, occupancy, condominium debts, the area and registry description, and the real market value of the area.

**Encumbrances**, the permanent land registry certificate states what is inscribed: mortgages, seizures, easements, usufructs, pre-emption rights. The sale notice says which survive the sale and which are cancelled. That is the difference between buying a house and buying a house with someone else's debt attached.

**Occupancy**: whether the property is lived in, by whom, and under what title. A lease predating the seizure may survive the sale. An occupier with no title has to be removed through the courts, which takes time and money.

**Condominium debts**: the Civil Code attributes each debt to whoever owned the unit when it should have been paid, unless the buyer expressly accepts it in the deed (art. 1424-A). Because the rule was written for voluntary sales and how it applies to an enforcement sale is not settled, ask the administrator for the debt statement and read the conditions of sale.

**Area and registry description**: the tax record and the registry certificate do not always agree with the sale notice. A discrepancy in area, or unlicensed building work, becomes your problem.

**Market value**: the base value of a judicial sale is not a market appraisal, it is a procedural figure. Comparing the true total cost against the median €/m² for the area is the only way to know whether the discount is real.

The Licito Report does exactly this check: it reads the case documents, summarises the encumbrances and pending actions, estimates market value from the INE reference for the area, and computes the true total cost.

Is buying at auction worth it?

It is worth it when the discount survives the true total cost and the verifiable risks, and it is not when you buy on the base value alone. The difference between those two outcomes is due diligence, not luck.

The profile of people who make money at auction is consistent: they buy below market with room for works, check the encumbrances before bidding, have the cash ready for the 15-day deadline, and do not bid past their ceiling out of competitiveness.

So is the profile of those who lose: they bid on the base value without adding IMT and works, discover afterwards that the property is occupied, or cannot deposit the price in time and face the consequences of CPC art. 825.

⚠️ One honest closing note: not everything at auction is an opportunity. Many properties are there because they are hard to sell on the open market. The discount pays for the risk: it is not free money.