Rustic properties which are not being given any use, and which have constructive capacity, being in the urban perimeter, will start to pay more Municipal Property Tax (IMI), which is one of the measures contemplated in the Mais Habitação program, approved this Thursday (March 30, 2023) by the Council of Ministers. This means that landlords will pay urban IMI instead of rustic IMI.

The “charging of urban property tax on rustic buildings that are in urban perimeters” is, moreover, one of the measures contained in the explanatory document of the Mais Habitação package , which idealista/news had access to.

In this way, the Executive "forces" the owners of unused rustic land that can be the target of new constructions, and that are in the urban perimeter, to be classified as land for construction.

The difference, in terms of tax payment, is that a rustic property has a reduced taxable value, which means that the IMI is also lower. Becoming classified as urban property , the tax to be paid will be higher.

“[The idea] is not to apply the urban IMI in any rustic building. We are talking about buildings/land classified as rustic within the urban perimeter, because (...) there are owners who acquire land and keep it for many years without using it, in order to wait for its price and value to increase to have a greater added value , without giving it effective use. And as it is classified as a rustic building, they pay less than any of us pay for the property tax on a house where we live”, explained Prime Minister António Costa at a company conference .

“What is established? It's just that the councils, when they verify that there is an owner who, instead of promoting the urbanization of the land, in the urban perimeter, is simply leaving the land inactive, waiting for a better time, then it will be able to tax it according to the urban IMI rules and not according to the rustic IMI ”, he clarified.