How to remove your condominium administrator in Portugal, legally

In Portugal the owners' assembly can remove the condominium administrator without waiting for the management contract to expire, because the assembly is the body that elects and dismisses it (article 1435 of the Civil Code). Votes are counted in permilagem, and owners holding 25% of the permilagem can call the meeting themselves.

The contract with the management firm went way back, renewed in silence year after year, and nobody in the building could quite remember signing it. The accounts came late, the lift sat idle for three weeks waiting on a quote and at the last meeting one neighbour said out loud what half a dozen were thinking quietly: what if we ran this ourselves?

What Portuguese law will not allow is a building with no administrator, which is why the right move is to swap the paid company for an in-house administrator, elected in the same act.

Can we really fire the management company?

Managing the common parts of a building under horizontal property rests on two bodies: the owners' assembly and an administrator, who can be a neighbour or a hired firm. So when a condominium ends its relationship with the managing company, the role simply changes hands.

And replacing is a right of the assembly, not a favour from the firm. Article 1435 says only that the administrator is elected and removed by the assembly, with no conditions attached; removal for specific failings (irregularities or negligence) is the court route, which a single owner can ask for. The service contract you signed with the company is one thing; the office of administrator is another. Confusing the two is the mistake that keeps many buildings hostage to a firm they no longer want: they wait for the contract to run out, when a single resolution was enough.

How do you convene the assembly to remove the administrator?

An extraordinary assembly is normally called by the administrator, who in this case is precisely the party you want gone. The law foresees the deadlock: owners representing at least 25% of the invested capital can call it (article 1431(2)). The permilagem is the thousandths that measure each unit's share of the building, so a quarter of the total value is enough to put the matter on the table.

The notice goes by registered letter (carta registada) to every owner, ten days in advance, and must state the day, time, place and agenda (article 1432). A well-drafted notice asks for the removal and for the election of the successor on the same day. Without that second item, it becomes unclear who runs the building in the meantime: article 1435 keeps an administrator in office until a successor is appointed, while article 1435-A hands the duties provisionally to the owner with the largest share.

At a minimum, the notice should contain:

• The date, time and place of the meeting and who is convening it
• An express item to remove the administrator in office
• An express item to elect the new administrator, naming candidates if there are any

Keep the receipt for every registered letter. A removal decided at a badly convened meeting is one the ousted firm can challenge.

The vote and electing the successor in one act

On first call, removal requires a majority of the votes representing the invested capital: more than half the permilagem of the whole building, whether those owners turn up or not. Without that quorum, the second meeting takes place one week later at the same time and place, unless the notice set another date; if a quarter of the building's value can be guaranteed on the day, the notice may set it for thirty minutes later. At the second meeting a majority of those present decides, provided they represent at least a quarter of the building's total value, which is why almost every removal is decided there.

In the same act you elect the successor, almost always a resident willing to take on self-management. All of this goes into the minutes (ata), the document that proves to the bank, the utilities and the firm itself who is in charge. Since Law 8/2022 the ata can be signed with a qualified electronic signature, and resolutions take effect once the minutes are approved, even before they are signed (article 1 of Decree-Law 268/94).

Write the resolution surgically: the assembly resolves to remove firm X from the office of administrator, with immediate effect, and to elect owner Y as administrator for the current term. Vague minutes change the signatory on no bank account at all.

Do you need just cause? The compensation maths

To remove the firm from office, the law asks for no reason. The contract is another matter. A management contract is a service agreement governed by the rules on mandate (article 1156 of the Civil Code), and a party that revokes a paid mandate granted for a fixed period, or revokes it without adequate notice, must compensate the other side for its loss (article 1172(c)). An annual contract ended in March can therefore come with an invoice. That is why the minutes that remove the firm should record the concrete grounds: accounts left unrendered, breaches, unanswered requests, poor work. They are what the condominium argues with if the firm claims compensation. Check the termination clause too; many set a notice period that, if honoured, avoids the argument altogether.

The firm is gone: now you run it

Demand the handover of everything: keys, documents, the condominium's tax number, access to the bank accounts, the book of minutes and the list of pending invoices. From there the job is familiar: collect fees, pay the common expenses, keep the insurance and the reserve fund. The first headache is usually the oldest one, the unpaid fees the firm never got round to recovering, and our guide to self-managing a condominium in Portugal covers the first month. Vecinly handles fees, communications and documents in one place, and its pricing is published so you can set it against the fee the building used to pay.

Before the letters go out, read the termination clause in the firm's contract and count the notice days. If they fit before the meeting date, send the termination the same week.

Updated September 2026. This article is for information only and does not constitute legal advice.