The short answer
In 30 seconds
Run separate campaigns per buyer language (at least Portuguese, English and French), target the countries your buyers live in as well as Portugal, and send every click to a page that matches the area and price band they searched for. Expect cheap clicks and expensive leads: in a luxury real estate account we manage, search clicks cost under €0.50 but a lead cost over €100. That is normal. What matters is how many of those leads are real buyers.
Who is buying, and from where
According to INE data for 2025, buyers with tax residence outside Portugal bought 8,471 homes, down 13% on the year before and the third annual drop in a row, linked to the end of the Golden Visa real estate route and changes to the old NHR tax regime. Fewer deals, but bigger ones: non-EU non-residents paid on average around €470,000 per home, roughly double what residents paid.
Where they search from matters even more for advertising. Listing data from idealista for 2025 shows British and French visitors leading overall, with Germans close behind, and Americans in the top three in several regions. It varies a lot by area: in Faro the UK leads, in Lisbon the US does, in Porto and the North it is France, and in Madeira it is Germany.
Sources: INE data as reported by idealista/news (April 2026); idealista foreign-search data (September 2025).
Run the languages your buyers speak
A British buyer looking at the Algarve searches in English. A French buyer looking at Porto searches in French. Neither of them types the Portuguese phrases your local campaigns are built on. That means one campaign per language, each with its own keywords, ads and landing page:
- Portuguese: residents and Portuguese-speaking buyers. Usually the highest volume and the most local intent.
- English: British, American, Irish, Scandinavian and Dutch buyers, many of whom search in English rather than their own language.
- French: worth its own campaign almost everywhere north of Lisbon, and in the Algarve too. The luxury account we manage runs a dedicated French-language campaign for exactly this reason.
- German: mainly for Madeira and the Algarve.
We cover how to split budgets and avoid the campaigns competing with each other in running ads in several languages in Portugal.
How to structure the account
A structure that works for a typical agency with one or two regions:
- One campaign per language, with the ad language and keyword language matching.
- Geography in two layers. Portuguese-language campaigns target Portugal. Foreign-language campaigns target the buyers' home countries and Portugal, because many buyers search after they arrive on a viewing trip.
- Ad groups by area and property type: "villa for sale Lagos", "apartment Cascais", "property Comporta". Generic "property in Portugal" searches are expensive and vague; start specific.
- Landing pages that match the search: a page of villas in Lagos for the Lagos ad group, not your homepage with a search box.
- Negative keywords for renters and dreamers: rent, holiday, Airbnb, cheap, jobs, and portal names if you do not want people who were looking for them.
Do not compete with the portals on their own terms. Idealista, Imovirtual and the international portals win generic searches. You win on specific ones: a town, a property type, a price band, your agency's name and the developments you hold exclusively.
What it costs
In a luxury real estate account we manage, between April and September 2026:
| Campaign type | Cost per click | Cost per lead |
|---|---|---|
| Search | €0.46 | ~€116 |
| Performance Max | lower | ~€55 |
Cheap clicks, expensive leads: buyers browse a lot before they leave their details. A cost per lead above €100 looks alarming until you compare it with a commission on a €700,000 villa. Budget for at least €1,500 to €3,000 a month across languages if you want enough leads to judge the channel, and give it three months, because property decisions are slow.
Lead quality is the real problem
The cheapest leads are often the worst. Performance Max brought leads at half the cost of search in the account above, but cheaper does not mean better until you check what happened to them. Three things keep quality up:
- Ask a qualifying question in the form: budget band, timeframe, or "are you planning a viewing trip?". It lowers volume and raises the share of real buyers.
- Reply in the buyer's language within the hour. A French lead answered in English the next day is half lost.
- Tell Google which leads became viewings and sales. Importing offline conversions shifts the bidding from people who fill in forms to people who buy.
Mistakes we see most
- One campaign in Portuguese, targeting Portugal only, while the buyers search in English from London.
- Translated ads instead of ads written for each market.
- Every click sent to the homepage.
- No negatives for rentals and holiday lets.
- Judging the channel after four weeks, when the average buyer takes months.
- Measuring form fills but not WhatsApp and phone calls, which is how many foreign buyers actually get in touch.
Selling property to foreign buyers? We review your account, or your market if you are not advertising yet, and tell you in English where the qualified leads are and what they cost. Request a free audit →