Tool · 2026 · Live
Buying Costs
What buying a home abroad costs on top of the price, for your exact purchase. Every tax and fee in Portugal, Spain and England, worked out from the law and traced to its source.
Buying Costs
What buying a home abroad costs on top of the price, for your exact purchase. Every tax and fee in Portugal, Spain and England, worked out from the law and traced to its source.
What it is
A calculator and a set of guides for the taxes and fees you pay on top of a home’s price. It covers Portugal (the mainland, Madeira and the Azores), four regions of Spain (Madrid, Catalonia, Valencia and Andalusia) and England.
You enter the place and the price, then the details that change the bill: tax residence, a first purchase or a buyer under 35, a new build, a second home. You get every line of the bill. Each line names the law it comes from and the day that source was last checked. Lines that couldn’t be confirmed are highlighted in yellow, with the reason.
How it works
The tax rules are data, not code. Each tax is a rule in a file, with its rates, the conditions it applies under, its official source and the date it takes effect. When a rate changes, the old version stays and a new one is added, so a purchase dated before a change still gets the old rules. Valencia’s cut on 1 June 2026 and Portugal’s flat 7.5% for non-residents from 25 May 2026 are both versions in the files.
One engine reads those files. It runs in the browser for the calculator and at build time for every figure on the site, so the guides never repeat a number by hand. A check fails the build if a figure typed in a guide doesn’t match what the engine shows on that page.
Tests pin the engine to worked examples published by the tax authorities, including HMRC’s stamp duty examples and the Portuguese Tax Authority’s own leaflet.
What checking the law found
Before launch, every rule was compared with the official text: the Portuguese tax codes, Spain’s regional laws in the official gazettes, and HMRC’s manuals. That turned up real errors in my own first version:
- It charged a person living in a listed tax haven Portugal’s 10% transfer tax, but the law limits that rate to companies.
- It missed the stamp duty relief Portugal gives buyers aged 35 or under.
- It had Madrid’s stamp duty on new builds wrong.
- It gave England’s first-time buyer relief to people who already owned a home.
Each fix cites the article it comes from. A check now runs on the 1st of every month: it fetches every official page the rules cite and opens an issue when one changes.
The guides
About fifty guides answer the questions people actually type: what a non-resident pays, what changes for Americans or for British buyers after Brexit, how the stamp duty refund on a second home works, which Spanish region is cheapest. The list came from search suggestions, matched against every page’s headings to find the questions no page answered yet.
Try it
Work out a purchase. It’s free and needs no account. Your figures stay in your browser, and the site sets no cookies. It isn’t tax or legal advice: a notary or lawyer in the country has the final word.