The numbers
The holding cost nobody budgets
A house costs something every year whether you are in it or not. The lines that make up the bill, where they are large, and the two that are invisible until the first year's end.
Portugal · Portugal
Algarve
The golden triangle is the most British-owned square kilometre outside Britain, and behind it runs a coast of cliffs and small bays that has been quietly filling with everyone else. The Algarve is a letting market first and a lifestyle market second, and the numbers work.
The Ranesta Index
€8,000 to 14,000
Prime band, per m²
€20,000
Trophy, per m²
4.0 to 5.5%
Gross yield
35%
Sold off-market
9.3%
Cost to acquire
0.7%
Cost to hold, a year
Editorial estimate of prime asking bands, September 2026. Not a valuation. Typical entry €2.0 m, trophy from €15 m. Prime marketing time about 170 days.
Where exactly
Quinta do Lago and Vale do Lobo
The two resorts that make the golden triangle: golf, the lake, the beach and villas on plots that the resorts themselves regulate. The most liquid prime market in Portugal.
Loulé, Vilamoura and the hills
The market town, the marina resort and the country between them: larger land, restored quintas and the newer estates with a view of the coast.
Lagos, Praia da Luz and the west
Cliffs, coves and a slower coast, bought by Germans and Dutch as much as by the British. Prices are a third below the triangle for a better sea.
Carvoeiro, Ferragudo and Portimão
The middle coast, with the best beaches and a mixed market of villas and resort apartments that let well.
The short version
The letting coast
The Algarve is where the arithmetic works. A well-positioned villa in Quinta do Lago lets for thirty weeks at northern European rates, the season runs from March to November, the airport is twenty minutes away, and the transfer tax is lower than Spain's Balearic scale. Gross yields of four to five and a half per cent are real, before management, and the tenants come back.
The two resorts of the triangle are the prime market: gated in effect if not in law, with their own design committees, their own service charges and their own resale ecosystem. Off-market is a third of sales there, mostly between owners on the same street.
West of Albufeira the coast changes character and price. Lagos and the cliffs of the west have better sea, fewer golf courses and a buyer base that is German, Dutch and Scandinavian rather than British. The desk sends buyers who want a house to the west and buyers who want an asset to the triangle.
Worth knowing
Transfer tax, IMT
Flat 7.5 per cent above roughly 1.1 million on a second home
Stamp duty
0.8 per cent
Letting
Local lodging registration, AL, is workable for villas; recent municipal limits mostly concern apartments
Golf resorts
Resort service charges and design rules apply inside Quinta do Lago and Vale do Lobo
Season
Long: March to November, with winter golf
Airport
Faro, twenty minutes from the triangle, with direct flights from most of northern Europe
Who is buying
The British by a wide margin, then Irish, Dutch, German and Scandinavian, and a recent line of Americans who came for the visa and stayed for the golf.
What the desk is working on
Villas on the lake or the fairway in Quinta do Lago, plots with a licence in Vale do Lobo, and cliff-top houses west of Lagos. The desk also carries three seller instructions from owners who are leaving after the visa changes and do not want a listing.
Buying notes
As Lisbon: promissory contract, ten to thirty per cent deposit, notarial completion, about 9.3 per cent in costs above 1.1 million. Inside the resorts the resale is also a contract with the resort; read the service-charge schedule and the design code before the promissory.
The hotspot vote
In the Algarve
Questions buyers ask
Quinta for the larger plots, the lake and the higher ceiling; Vale do Lobo for the beach and the village life. Prices in Quinta run a fifth higher for the same house.
A four-bedroom villa with a pool in the triangle returns four to five per cent gross over a thirty-week season. Management takes twenty to twenty-five per cent. The yield instrument has the Algarve profile built in.
It is a different coast: better sea, fewer services, a longer drive. Buyers who want the beach more than the golf are happier there and pay a third less.
Portuguese capital gains for non-residents on half the gain at progressive rates. Twelve years in, on a house that doubled, that is roughly a fifth of the gain. Model it before you buy, not when you sell.
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