Selling a property in Comporta and Melides in 2026: prices, planning rules and agents

Which municipality is your property in?

“Comporta” as a property market spans two municipalities, and the difference decides which planning rules apply, which council licenses works and which official price statistics exist.

• Alcácer do Sal contains Comporta village and its parish: Brejos da Carregueira, Torre, Possanco, Carrasqueira, Murta and Cambado. The parish lies between the coast and the Sado estuary.
• Grândola contains most of the coast sold as “Comporta”: Carvalhal parish (Carvalhal village, Pego, Lagoa Formosa, Soltróia and the Tróia peninsula) and Melides parish (Melides village, Lagoa de Melides, CostaTerra and Pinheirinho).

Even Praia da Comporta, the beach that carries the village’s name, is in Grândola’s Carvalhal parish.

Quick check: the parish (freguesia) is shown on your caderneta predial (tax record), and the postcode tells you the municipality: 7580-xxx is Alcácer do Sal (including Comporta and Brejos); 7570-xxx is Grândola (including Carvalhal, Pego, Melides and Tróia).

What is a property in Comporta and Melides worth?

Three kinds of figure are quoted, and they measure different things. INE medians are what buyers actually paid, from completed sales recorded by the tax authority. idealista asking prices are the average advertised price on that portal. Prime or luxury figures come from brokerages and consultancies and are mostly based on asking prices.

INE publishes nothing below municipal level here: parish figures are released only for the big metropolitan areas, the Algarve and municipalities of more than 100,000 people. So there is no INE figure for Comporta, Carvalhal or Melides alone, and each municipal median mixes the coast with inland towns and farmland.

Area	INE median paid, 12 months to Mar 2026	Change on a year	idealista asking, Aug 2026	Change on a year
Comporta parish (Alcácer do Sal)	Not published	–	€7,848/m²	−1.7% (7.8% below the €8,511 peak of Oct 2025)
Carvalhal parish (Grândola; includes Tróia and Pego)	Not published	–	€6,119/m²	+4.3% (5.8% below the €6,493 peak of Feb 2026)
Melides parish (Grândola)	Not published	–	No idealista series	–
Grândola e Santa Margarida da Serra (inland)	Not published	–	€4,018/m²	+13.6%
Alcácer do Sal e Santa Susana (town)	Not published	–	€3,250/m²	+2.8%
Grândola municipality	€2,533/m²	+29.9%	€5,502/m²	+5.7%
Alcácer do Sal municipality	€1,932/m²	+21.1%	€5,106/m²	+11.3%
Alentejo Litoral	€2,084/m²	+16.2%	–	–

INE changes are our calculation against the 12 months to March 2025. idealista changed its methodology in July 2026, so older idealista figures in the press (such as €5,488/m² for Grândola in June 2026) belong to a different series. Grândola is the highest-priced municipality in the Alentejo Litoral (INE).

What the prime figures say, and how reliable they are

Measure	Figure	What it is	Source quality
Porta da Frente Christie’s with Nova SBE, Realty Premium Market 2026	Comporta high end: €6,800–10,700/m²	Top-percentile idealista asking prices, 2025 data	A brokerage’s report, based on asking prices; the brokerage sells in Comporta
Knight Frank, The Residence Report 2025/26	€15,000–20,000/m²	What Discovery Land Company’s first Comporta development (CostaTerra, in Melides) sold at during the pandemic	A consultancy report on one developer’s sales, not a market average
idealista/data, homes listed above €1m, Q2 2026	Grândola: €14,286/m², the highest of any coastal municipality in Portugal	Asking prices of €1m+ listings	Portal data, reported by O Digital/SAPO
Individual listings, Carvalhal and Pego, 24 Sep 2026	About €9,850–15,900/m²	Four villas from €2.5m to €5.95m; €/m² our calculation on stated built area	Single asking prices

Press reports in September 2026 attributed higher prime ranges to a new Knight Frank report. We could not find the original, so we do not use those figures.

Worked example for a 200 m² villa in Carvalhal parish:

Basis	€/m²	Implied value
INE Grândola median paid	€2,533	€506,600
idealista Carvalhal parish asking	€6,119	€1,223,800
Individual Pego listing (3-bed villa, €2.5m)	about €13,500	€2,700,000

The spread is more than fivefold, so no average values a Comporta villa. Plot size, distance to the beach, pine cover, licence status and, above all, what the planning rules allow on the land decide the price. Recent completed sales of comparable houses are the only reliable guide. You can get a free price estimate.

Planning rules that decide what your property is worth

Grândola: the January 2025 plan amendment (Carvalhal and Melides)

The first amendment of Grândola’s municipal master plan (PDM) was approved by the Municipal Assembly on 16 December 2024 and published as Aviso 1869/2025/2 in the Diário da República on 21 January 2025, in force the next day. For sellers it does four things:

1. A high tourist pressure zone. It creates a Zona de Elevada Pressão Turística on the coast, where the only new tourist developments allowed are campsites and caravan parks (plot of at least 10 ha, up to 500 users and 30 beds in fixed units). New tourist development nuclei (large resort schemes) are banned, and the whole municipality is capped at 17,153 tourist beds, including those already built or approved.
2. A new house on rural land only for a farmer. Under article 43, a new home on rural land is allowed only as the own residence of the farmer-owner of the holding. The plot must be at least 4 ha, or 2 ha in Carvalhal and Melides parishes; the house can be at most 500 m² and normally one storey.
3. Ten years without selling. After such a house is built, the farm plots cannot be sold for 10 years, and this is recorded as a charge at the land registry. The exceptions are narrow, such as a sale to another farmer who keeps the house as their own residence.
4. Limited extensions. On rural plots below the minimum size, extensions of existing houses are capped at a total of 250 m² of construction (article 42); inside the Sado Estuary Nature Reserve, stricter parameters apply (article 46). Ask the council how the cap applies to your house.

The amendment also bans new mineral extraction and intensive livestock in both parishes, and includes a transitional regime for applications already pending. Press reports put those at 82 applications for 6,720 beds, reassessed under the new rules.

The “building plot” myth

Rural land around Carvalhal and Melides has long been advertised as “building land” or a “plot with project”. Since 22 January 2025, that is true only in narrow cases. The table shows what a buyer can do with a rural plot under Aviso 1869/2025/2:

Rural plot	Parish (Grândola)	Can the buyer build a new house?
1.5 ha	Melides	No: below the 2 ha minimum
3 ha, bought as a holiday home	Carvalhal	No: only the farmer-owner’s own residence is allowed
3 ha, bought by a farmer who will live there	Carvalhal	Yes: up to 500 m², one storey; the plots cannot then be sold for 10 years
3 ha	Grândola e Santa Margarida da Serra	No: the minimum outside Carvalhal and Melides is 4 ha
Below the minimum size, with an existing house	Any	No new house; the existing one can be extended within the article 42 cap

If you are selling land, get the council’s written planning information (informação prévia) for your plot before you set a price or accept an offer, and ask whether any older approval survives under the transitional regime. A buyer’s lawyer will check the same points. Land plans still in force, such as the Carvalhal and Melides urbanisation plans and the detailed plans for the Herdade da Comporta (NDT do Carvalhal), Fontaínhas and Tróia, set their own rules inside their boundaries.

Alcácer do Sal: Comporta village and Brejos

Grândola’s amendment does not apply to Comporta parish. Comporta village has had an urbanisation plan since 1994 (Portaria 675/94, amended 2011), and Alcácer do Sal council is revising it: a public session on the revision took place on 17 July 2025. According to council and Diário da República references we have not read in full, the municipal PDM was revised in 2017 and the detailed plan for the ADT2 (Comporta) resort land dates from 2008. Ask the council which plan covers your plot.

Protected areas on both sides

Much of the rice-field, dune and estuary land is in the National Ecological Reserve (REN), the Agricultural Reserve (RAN), Natura 2000 or the Sado Estuary Nature Reserve, whose management plan was approved by Council of Ministers Resolution 182/2008. Grândola’s coast is also covered by the Espichel–Odeceixe coastal programme (Resolution 87-A/2022). In these areas unlicensed extensions and pools are often impossible to legalise. From 1 October 2026 (Decree-Law 108/2026) every deed must state whether a habitation licence exists; if the statement is missing, either party can seek to annul the sale. See unlicensed works.

Is 2026 a good time to sell in Comporta?

• Prices paid rose fast. INE medians rose 29.9% in Grândola and 21.1% in Alcácer do Sal in the year to March 2026.
• Asking prices at the core have stalled. Comporta parish is 7.8% below its October 2025 peak and Carvalhal 5.8% below its February 2026 peak, while cheaper inland parishes still rise. Grândola’s annual asking-price growth fell from 18.1% in September 2025 to 5.7% in August 2026.
• Fewer sales. Alentejo Litoral sales fell 15.5% year on year in Q1 2026, one of the four steepest falls in Portugal (INE).
• Supply is capped. The 2025 plan limits new tourist schemes and new rural houses, which limits new competition for existing licensed homes.
• But resale homes compete with resorts. Vanguard’s Terras da Comporta covers 1,376 ha, with the Dunas golf course open since October 2023. Six Senses Residences Comporta at Pinheirinho, Melides, is marketing 58 branded homes, and CostaTerra has its own brokerage.

Engel & Völkers’ 2025–26 report, as summarised by idealista, says the lower-priced market in Comporta “no longer exists” and presents Melides as having more room to grow. We found no credible figure for days on market or discounts to asking price.

Does the 7.5% non-resident IMT matter at Comporta prices?

Mostly not. Since 25 May 2026, buyers who are not tax resident in Portugal pay IMT (property transfer tax) at a flat 7.5% of the whole price (Decree-Law 97/2026). But under the 2026 table every buyer already pays a flat 7.5% above €1,150,853, so above that figure non-residents pay nothing extra. Between €633,931 and €1,150,853 (from €660,982 for a main home) residents pay a flat 6%, so non-residents pay 1.5 points more.

Price (second home)	IMT at the ordinary 2026 rate	IMT at 7.5% (non-resident)	Extra for a non-resident
€450,000 (Tróia apartment)	€23,300	€33,750	€10,450
€900,000	€54,000 (6% flat)	€67,500	€13,500
€2,500,000	€187,500 (7.5% flat)	€187,500	€0
€3,800,000	€285,000 (7.5% flat)	€285,000	€0

The buyer pays IMT and 0.8% stamp duty, not you. The rule bites on cheaper stock: Tróia apartments and inland houses. Buyers can model their costs with the buying cost calculator.

Who is buying in Comporta?

There are no official nationality figures for Grândola or Alcácer do Sal. What exists:

• Companies pay more here. In Q4 2025 the Alentejo Litoral was the only sub-region in Portugal where companies and other institutional buyers paid more per m² than households (INE). In Grândola the two were close over the 12 months to March 2026 (€2,501 against €2,586). This suggests developers, funds and holding companies are active buyers; INE gives no further breakdown.
• Wealthy families at the top. Knight Frank’s 2025/26 report pitches Comporta at Europe’s wealthy families seeking privacy, calls it one of Europe’s most credible “frontier” prime markets and says two more global operators are reportedly looking at it.
• Agency languages give an indirect picture: Engel & Völkers Comporta lists Spanish, French, English and Portuguese, and the French brand John Taylor has an office in Carvalhal.

Short lets and seasonal rentals

We found no short-let (alojamento local) regulation or suspension in Grândola or Alcácer do Sal. Grândola’s 2022 preventive measures and the 2025 amendment target tourist developments, not short-let registrations. Under Decree-Law 151/2026, councils with more than 1,000 registrations have until 31 December 2026 to decide on a regulation; existing registrations are unaffected. Weekly summer rents for villas on one agency’s site ran from €3,150 to €12,320 in September 2026. A valid registration can matter to buyers who plan to let, so give them the number.

What does selling cost?

The seller pays the agent: commonly about 5% (roughly 3–6%) plus 23% VAT, negotiable. The buyer pays IMT, stamp duty and normally the deed and registration.

	€900,000 house, Brejos da Carregueira	€2,500,000 villa, Pego
Commission at 5%	€45,000	€125,000
VAT on commission (23%)	€10,350	€28,750
Energy certificate (typical)	€300	€300
Land registry certificate	€15	€15
Lawyer (illustrative quote plus 23% VAT)	€1,845	€3,690
Total selling costs	€57,510 (6.4%)	€157,755 (6.3%)
Received at the deed	€842,490	€2,342,245

At 4% commission the house’s costs fall by €11,070 and the villa’s by €30,750. Capital gains tax comes later: non-residents are taxed on 50% of the gain at progressive rates, and commission and VAT reduce the gain. There is no withholding at the deed. If you live abroad, you can sign through a power of attorney (procuração). See costs of selling, capital gains tax for non-residents, UK residents selling, selling as a non-resident and the selling calculator.

How to choose an agent in Comporta

Most agency offices are in Carvalhal and on Rua do Secador in Comporta village; several international brands cover the area from Lisbon or Estoril. Check the AMI licence on the IMPIC register and that the company on your contract holds it. Ask for completed sales of comparable homes, not asking prices, and for land, ask whether the agency has checked the 2025 plan rules before quoting a price. Our list of luxury estate agents in Comporta and Melides sets out licences and segments without ranking them; see also estate agent commission and the area hub.

Key points

• Check your postcode: 7580 is Alcácer do Sal (Comporta village), 7570 is Grândola (Carvalhal, Pego, Melides, Tróia). Different councils, plans and statistics.
• INE medians paid (12 months to March 2026): Grândola €2,533/m², Alcácer do Sal €1,932/m². INE publishes nothing for Comporta or Melides alone.
• idealista asking (August 2026): Comporta parish €7,848/m² (−1.7% on a year, 7.8% below peak), Carvalhal €6,119/m² including Tróia.
• Since 22 January 2025, a new house on rural land in Grândola is allowed only for a farmer-owner on at least 2 ha (Carvalhal, Melides) or 4 ha, and the plots cannot then be sold for 10 years.
• Above €1,150,853 everyone pays 7.5% IMT, so the non-resident rate adds nothing; between €633,931 and that figure non-residents pay 1.5 points more.
• Commission of 5% plus VAT on a €2.5m villa is €153,750; one point less saves €30,750.