Non-Habitual Residence

Non-Habitual Residence

When it comes to a second home investment, about 95 per cent of people buy on the same continent in which they live.

 Approximately 15 per cent of people in northern Europe with an upper middle class income and wealth of more than €2m have a second home in the southern Europe sunny belt; However if you apply the same criteria to Eastern Europe it’s less than 0.5 a per cent and this is a big market of almost 40m people becoming richer and soon will be heading south too for their vacation homes; and then we have the Russians too with 140m people with the potential to buy a second property.

One of the major attractions that is fuelling the Algarve Property Market is the fact that many of the new European buyers are attracted to Portugal by its non-habitual tax regime, under which non-habitual residents — who must spend 183 days a year in Portugal or maintain a primary residence in the country — are exempt from income tax on non-Portuguese incomes, including pensions, salaries and capital gains, if these were subject to tax in the country of source.

It’s all changing in the real estate scene in the Algarve, we’ve always had English, Irish and German buyers, but we’re now seeing many new nationalities investing here, like Chinese, Scandinavians, French, Polish, Russians and other non-Europeans, including South Africans, too.

Make your move and let one of our professional property consultants guide you in your Algarve investment.