Your pre-approval predates Portugal's 1 August mortgage rules

A pre-approval letter is not a promise. It is a snapshot of what a bank was willing to lend under the rules that applied the day it ran the numbers — and on 1 August 2026 those rules changed. If your file was put together in June or July and you are only now going house-hunting, the amount at the top of that letter may no longer exist.

What the effort rate actually counts

This is the part that catches people moving from abroad. The effort rate is not «your Portuguese mortgage payment divided by your salary». It is every loan instalment you owe anywhere, divided by your net monthly income — the new mortgage plus any existing credit with a repayment plan.

A car loan you left running at home, a student loan, a mortgage on the flat you did not sell — all of it counts. Under the old 50% ceiling a household on €2,000 net could support around €1,000 of monthly instalments. At 45% that becomes €900. If €300 of it already goes to a loan in another country, your Portuguese borrowing capacity is not what your online simulator told you.

The 10% exception is not a plan

Banks may still approve files above 45%, but only within a quota that has shrunk from 15% to 10% of everything they lend in a half-year. That quota is finite, competitive and invisible to you. Treating yourself as the exception is how a purchase falls apart between the CPCV and the deed — and by then your deposit is already committed.

Why this is happening now

Portuguese households have never owed the banks more for housing. Banco de Portugal data for July put the stock of housing loans at €118 billion, an all-time high, with a monthly increase of €1.2 billion — the largest single-month jump since December 2009. The tightening is a response to that, not to anything you did.

If you are not resident yet

Two things stack. The 90% LTV applies to an own permanent home; buying as a non-resident is «another purpose», so the recommendation caps you at 80% — and in practice most banks were already asking non-residents for more than that. Our note on the deposit non-residents actually need has the working numbers.

The second thing is documentation. Net income has to be provable in a form a Portuguese bank accepts, which for foreign salaries usually means translated contracts, several months of statements and a tax return — not a screenshot of a payslip.

What to do before you apply

• Close small consumer credit abroad if you can. Clearing a €150 instalment buys back roughly €150 of Portuguese capacity — usually more than haggling over the interest rate.
• Ask the bank for the effort-rate calculation itself, not just the approved amount. You want to see which foreign debts they counted, and at what exchange rate.
• Re-run the numbers before you sign anything. An offer made on a June simulation and a mortgage approved in September are two different budgets.
• Check the age brackets. If you turn 36 before the contract is signed, the maximum term drops by five years — and the instalment rises accordingly.

None of this makes buying harder than it was for locals; it makes the arithmetic honest earlier. The expensive version of this lesson is discovering the gap after the sinal is paid.