It has recently been revealed that the widely held belief that buying property in Portugal will incur 10-15 per cent additional charges in tax and fees is incorrect, according to a report on PropertyWire.com.
Property advisors have been warning potential buyers for years that this additional cost will need to be taken into consideration before purchasing Portuguese property, with websites, publications and television programmes alike all delivering this same message. The actual figure is more like 5 per cent.
Jim Edmeades of Homes for Sale in Portugal told PropertyWire.com: ?The misunderstanding has its origins decades ago when you could buy a quite substantial property in Portugal for ?10,000. Extras could well amount to ?1,500 so that was where the 15 per cent figure came from.?
He added: ?It has been copied from one publication to another down the years and exploited by a number of less than scrupulous lawyers and real estate agents who offer to ?take care of extras? for an additional 12.5 or 15 per cent? hence a myth has become firmly rooted and editors have become unwitting accomplices to a very sharp practice.?
Mr Edmeades? company gives an example of a ?200,000 property whereby the purchase tax would be ?3,995, land tax ?1,200, stamp duty ?1,600, lawyer fees ?1,000, legal fees ?350 and registration of ?355.
It is thought that this inaccurate information could be dissuading potential buyers from getting on the Portuguese property ladder. Despite this, at present, the property market in Portugal remains consistently stable and may be considered one of the safest investment markets in Europe.
