Condominium Fees in Brazil

Checking a building before you sign

Get the debt statement

Ask the seller for a written statement from the síndico or the administrator saying the unit is paid up to a stated date, including levies and fines. The seller requests it because the seller is the owner on file.
Who: seller, with your lawyer checking. Time: days. Cost: often none, sometimes an administrator's fee.
Read three years of minutes

Ask for the minutes of every ordinary and extraordinary meeting since at least three years back. Mark each levy, each postponed repair and each lawsuit mentioned.
Who: you or your lawyer. Time: an afternoon.
Read the accounts

Compare the current budget with the last twelve monthly statements. Find the late-payment rate, the reserve balance and any legal costs.
Who: you, or an accountant for a large building. Time: a few hours.
Write the split into the contract

Say who pays each levy installment, with dates. Hold back part of the price until a fresh statement arrives on closing day. A contract clause binds the seller, and it does not bind the condominium.
Who: your lawyer. Cost: part of the purchase fee.
Tell the building you now own the unit

Send the síndico written notice with the registered deed, your address abroad and your email. From that date the bills and meeting notices should reach you.
Who: you or your procurador. Time: the day of registration.

What the monthly fee is

Every unit in a condomínio edilício, meaning a building or gated development with private units and shared areas, pays a monthly share of the running costs. Brazilians call the bill the condomínio or the cota condominial. The duty comes from Civil Code art. 1.336, I: each owner pays in proportion to the unit's fração ideal, the percentage of the whole written on the deed, unless the convenção says otherwise. The convenção is the building's founding rulebook, and art. 1.334 requires it to set each owner's share and how it gets paid.

So two similar buildings can charge very different amounts, and inside one building a penthouse may pay double what a studio pays. Say a building spends R$ 60,000 a month. A unit with a fração ideal of 2.1% pays R$ 1,260, and a penthouse with 4.2% pays R$ 2,520. If the convenção splits costs equally and the building has 50 units, everyone pays R$ 1,200.

The owners set the figure at a meeting. Art. 1.350 tells the síndico to call one meeting a year to approve the budget, the contributions and the accounts. The síndico is the building's elected manager, serves up to two years under art. 1.347, and need not be an owner. If the síndico doesn't call the meeting, a quarter of the owners can. If no meeting happens, a judge can decide at an owner's request. A fee rise should trace back to a vote, so look for the meeting that approved it.

The fee attaches to the unit, whoever holds it. Courts call this a propter rem obligation: the debt follows the property. That one idea explains most of this guide, including why a buyer can inherit a stranger's arrears.

Treat the fee as part of the price when you compare apartments on the listings page. R$ 2,000 a month is R$ 24,000 a year (about US$ 4,428), before IPTU, the municipal property tax covered in the property tax guide.

What the fee covers and what it leaves out

No law lists what a fee must include. The Tenancy Law (Law 8.245/1991) comes closest, because it divides building costs between landlord and tenant. Art. 23, §1 lists ordinary expenses and the sole paragraph of art. 22 lists extraordinary ones. Most fee disputes use that vocabulary.

Ordinary and extraordinary building costs under the Tenancy Law
Ordinary (art. 23, §1)	Extraordinary (art. 22, sole paragraph)
Staff wages and social charges	Structural works
Water, power and gas for common areas	Painting the facade and external window frames
Cleaning and painting of common areas	Works that restore a building's habitability
Upkeep of shared equipment and elevators	Labor claims from dismissals before the lease began
Small repairs	New safety, fire, telephone or leisure equipment
Topping up the reserve fund, leaving out balances from before the lease	Decoration and landscaping; building the reserve fund

If you let the unit on a long lease, this table decides the bill. The tenant pays ordinary costs under art. 23, XII, as long as the budget and the monthly split are documented (art. 23, §2). The owner pays extraordinary costs under art. 22, X. A facade levy during a lease lands on you, the landlord. Build that into any rental figures, and look up tax on rental income before you estimate what is left.

Three things usually sit outside the fee, and a quick question to the seller settles each one:

IPTU, which the city bills separately.
Electricity inside your unit.
Water and gas, which depend on the building. Some meter each unit and some share the total in the fee. Ask, because this can move a bill by hundreds of reais.

Buildings that offer daily services, such as a front desk with maid service, can sit in a different legal box. Serviced buildings of that kind fall outside the Tenancy Law under its art. 1. If that is what you are buying, ask for the operator's contract as well as the building accounts, because the two together make up your real monthly cost. Short-stay use has its own rules in the short-term rental guide.

Typical fee levels

No public body publishes a national fee table. The figures below come from private datasets, and each one measures something different. Use them to spot a building that is far off its neighbors, and never as a forecast.

Average monthly fee by city, January 2026 (Loft, from property listings)
City	Reais	Dollars at R$ 5.42
Rio de Janeiro	R$ 948	US$ 175
São Paulo	R$ 928	US$ 171
Florianópolis	R$ 754	US$ 139
Belo Horizonte	R$ 752	US$ 139
Curitiba	R$ 587	US$ 108
Porto Alegre	R$ 509	US$ 94
Brasília	R$ 466	US$ 86

Average monthly fee in higher-priced neighborhoods, January 2026 (Loft)
Neighborhood	Reais	Dollars at R$ 5.42
Jardim Europa, São Paulo	R$ 3,500	US$ 646
Vila Nova Conceição, São Paulo	R$ 2,219	US$ 409
Ipanema, Rio	R$ 2,200	US$ 406
Lagoa, Rio	R$ 2,100	US$ 387
Barra da Tijuca, Rio	R$ 2,030	US$ 375
Copacabana, Rio	R$ 1,470	US$ 271
Botafogo, Rio	R$ 1,200	US$ 221

Other counts give other answers. uCondo, a condominium software company, reports a national average of R$ 538 (US$ 99) for the six months to June 2026 from its own base. A later Loft cut put Rio at R$ 1,100 for January to April 2026, up 16% on a year earlier, with São Paulo about level and up 9%. A press figure compiled by Portas puts São Paulo at R$ 983 in 2025, with R$ 1,085 expected for 2026. Each count looks at different buildings. Listing data sees only homes being marketed. Software data sees only buildings on that platform, whether or not any unit is for sale.

Two lessons follow. First, fees can move fast: Loft's January count for Rio rose 13% in twelve months. Plan for rises when you compare a purchase with renting, and use the Rio cost of living page or its equivalent elsewhere for the wider budget. Second, averages hide the spread. These datasets give no figure for Trancoso, Búzios or Jericoacoara. In those places, ask for the unit's last three bills, and read a gated development's accounts as closely as a city building's.

How to read the minutes

The ata, or minutes, tells you what the owners decided and what they keep avoiding. Ask for three years of them, ordinary and extraordinary meetings alike. You have no right of your own to these papers before you buy, so the seller asks the administrator on your behalf. A seller who refuses is telling you something.

Read with a pencil and mark these items:

The budget approved each year, and the percentage rise.
Any levy, with its total, installments and the date of the last payment.
Repairs that were discussed and put off, especially facade, roof, elevators, pumps and waterproofing. A repair postponed three years running is a future levy.
Lawsuits. Art. 1.348, III requires the síndico to report court cases to the meeting, so they should appear here.
Late-paying owners, often reported as a total or by unit number.
Rule changes on short stays, pets, renovation hours or parking.
A change of síndico or administrator, and the reason given.

Then check that the votes were valid. Changing the convenção or the use of the building or a unit takes a two-thirds owner vote under art. 1.351, as rewritten by Law 14.405/2022. Most other matters pass at second call by a majority of those present (art. 1.353). So a note saying "approved by 12 of 14 owners present" means little for a change of use in a 60-unit building. It would need 40 votes if each unit carries an equal share.

Two reforms from 2022 change how minutes look. Law 14.309/2022 lets a meeting that misses a special quorum continue as a permanent session, with a new date within 60 days and a limit of 90 days overall (art. 1.353, §§1-3). The same law allows electronic and hybrid meetings unless the convenção forbids them (art. 1.354-A). So you may find partial minutes, followed weeks later by the result. Read to the end before you conclude that a vote failed.

Warning signs are years with no ordinary meeting, the same contested item coming back, and a quorum that never forms. A building where owners stay away is a building where a small group decides what you pay. For checks on the unit itself, use the property title guide. The minutes do not replace those searches.

How to read the accounts

Art. 1.348 makes the síndico prepare the annual budget, collect the contributions and render accounts each year and whenever asked. Three papers do the work: the previsão orçamentária (the budget), the balancete (the monthly statement) and the prestação de contas (the annual accounts).

Start with the late-payment rate. uCondo's data shows 12.5% of fees more than 30 days late between January and June 2026, the highest in its series since 2022. It also breaks the figure down by region:

Fees over 30 days late, first half of 2026 (uCondo)
Region	Share late
North	19.09%
Northeast	12.71%
Southeast	12.28%
South	11.61%
Center-West	8.52%

A building well above its region deserves a question. The paying owners fund the shortfall. On a R$ 60,000 monthly budget, a 20% late rate leaves R$ 12,000 a month uncollected. The building then cuts maintenance, raises the fee or draws on the reserve.

Next, set the reserve fund against what the minutes promise. A R$ 180,000 reserve looks healthy until you read that a R$ 900,000 facade job is due. Check whether the convenção says how the reserve is built, and whether the building follows it.

Then walk through these lines over twelve months:

Does income match expenses, or does the building run a deficit that someone covers?
Do legal costs appear? Labor claims and defaults show up here first.
Is there a large one-off payment with no matching vote in the minutes?
Is the building insurance paid? Art. 1.348 makes the síndico responsible for it.
Does the bank balance on the statement match the reserve the meeting was told about?

An owner can ask for the same papers after buying, and a quarter of owners can force a meeting if the síndico stalls. An accountant can review a large building's accounts in a few hours. Weigh that cost against a single levy. If you are buying without a broker, add this review to the list in the direct-purchase guide, because nobody else will do it for you.

Special levies

A levy is a charge on top of the monthly fee, voted for a specific purpose. You will see it called a chamada de capital, cota extra or rateio extra. It can land soon after closing, and the minutes are where you find the warning.

The vote needed depends on the kind of work (Civil Code art. 1.341):

Who decides building works
Type of work	Who decides
Voluptuary, such as decorative improvements	Two-thirds of owners
Useful, such as a new amenity that improves use	A majority of owners
Necessary repairs	The síndico can proceed without a vote; any owner can if the síndico is absent or unable to act
Urgent necessary works with high costs	Done first, then reported to a meeting called at once
Non-urgent necessary works with high costs	Prior approval at a meeting

So a necessary repair can reach your bill without a vote you took part in.

Here is how a levy works out. A building approves R$ 900,000 for its facade, split over 18 months. With 60 equal units, each pays R$ 15,000, or about R$ 833 a month on top of the fee. A unit with a 2.1% fração ideal pays R$ 18,900, or R$ 1,050 a month. In dollars, that levy on the larger share is about US$ 3,487.

The hard case is a sale in the middle of the installments. The condominium can collect from whoever owns the unit, since the debt follows the property. If your contract says the seller pays, your remedy is against the seller, and a seller who has left Brazil is hard to reach. Three protections help:

List every approved levy in the contract, with the installments due before and after closing.
Hold back the amount from the price, or have it paid at closing with a receipt.
Ask for a fresh statement from the administrator on the day of the deed.

You can also ask for a price cut for a levy that has been approved but not yet billed. No rule requires the seller to agree, so raise it during the offer. The buying guide shows where this fits in the sequence, and the closing costs guide covers the other money due that day. If you are buying a unit before completion, read the off-plan guide too, and ask the developer who pays fees between delivery and your registration.

Who owes arrears after a sale

The rule fits in one line. Civil Code art. 1.345 says a unit's buyer answers for the seller's debts to the condominium, including fines and default interest. The buyer can then try to recover the money from the seller, but the condominium doesn't have to wait for that.

Law 4.591/1964, art. 4, sole paragraph, adds that a transfer depends on proof that the seller's obligations to the condominium are paid. Don't assume a notary will catch this for you. Decree 93.240/1986, which lists the papers a notary works from, names tax and registry certificates and says nothing about condominium debts. Your protection is a signed statement from the síndico or administrator, plus a clause in the contract.

Work out the exposure before you decide how much to hold back. A seller owes 14 months at R$ 1,800. That is R$ 25,200, plus a 2% fine of R$ 504, plus correction, interest and possibly legal costs. The time limit is five years, counted from the day after each installment fell due (STJ Tema 949, REsp 1.483.930/DF). So the worst case at that fee is 60 months, or R$ 108,000 (about US$ 19,926), before the add-ons.

When the sale is only a promise

A promise of sale that was never registered creates a harder question: who owes fees after the buyer moves in, but before the deed?

STJ Tema 886 (REsp 1.345.331/RS) looks at the real relationship with the unit. If the buyer took possession and the condominium clearly knew of the deal, the seller can drop out of the case.
In REsp 1.910.280, reported in May 2025, the STJ's Second Section went further. Where the promise wasn't registered, seller and buyer can both be sued for fees that fell due after possession, because the debt attaches to the property.
The STJ then opened a further theme, reported as Tema 1.349, to revisit Tema 886. Sources up to September 2026 report no judgment yet, and panels have ruled in different ways meanwhile.

This point is unsettled, so protect both sides. Register the promise, tell the síndico in writing on the day of possession, and keep the receipts. The trade-offs of staying at the promise stage are on the page comparing posse and escritura.

Buying at auction

Court auctions turn on the notice of sale, the edital. In AREsp 2.664.065/SP, decided in February 2026, the STJ's Fourth Panel kept buyers free of old condominium debts because the edital did not mention them. Commentators stress that the result depended on the facts proven in that case. Read the edital, and ask the condominium for the balance before you bid. Don't apply the rule for old tax debts here: Tema 1.134 deals with earlier tax debts on the property, and it does not cover condominium claims.

What happens when fees go unpaid

The costs start small. Art. 1.336, §1, as reworded by Law 14.905/2024, allows monetary correction, interest at the rate in the convenção or the art. 406 rate if it is silent, and a fine of up to 2%. On a R$ 1,500 fee the fine tops out at R$ 30. If the convenção sets interest at 1% a month, that adds R$ 15 for each month. A convenção cannot raise the 2% fine, whatever it says.

The other effects grow quickly:

You lose your vote. Art. 1.335, III lets an owner vote only when current on payments.
You face a court claim for the balance, the interest and the legal costs.
You can lose the unit. Law 8.009/1990 protects a family's only home from most creditors, but art. 3, IV excepts taxes and contributions due because of the property. Courts apply that exception to condominium debt.

A bank loan no longer shields the unit in the way many owners assumed. For years, courts allowed seizure only of the borrower's rights where a unit was pledged under alienação fiduciária, Brazil's usual home loan structure. On 12 March 2025, in REsp 2.082.647/SP, 1.929.926/SP and 2.100.103/PR, the STJ's Second Section allowed seizure of the unit itself, once the lender has been summoned and given the chance to pay. A separate track, Tema 1.266, was opened to give the question binding force. Published sources differ on whether a final binding thesis is out, so ask a lawyer to check its status before relying on it. Buyers considering a loan can read the financing guide.

Owners abroad run a particular risk. Notices go to the address on file, so a year of arrears can build up before anyone tells you. Any letter from a court or administrator deserves a same-week reply.

Fines for breaking building rules

Late-payment charges are one thing. Fines for conduct are another, and they can be much larger because the law ties them to the monthly fee:

Conduct fines in the Civil Code
Rule	Cap	Example on a R$ 1,500 fee
Breach of an owner's duties (art. 1.336, §2), set in the convenção; if silent, voted by two-thirds of the other owners	5 times the fee	R$ 7,500
Repeated failure to meet duties (art. 1.337), voted by three-quarters of the other owners	5 times the fee	R$ 7,500
Repeated antisocial conduct (art. 1.337, sole paragraph)	10 times the fee	R$ 15,000

The duties in art. 1.336 include using the unit according to the building's purpose and not disturbing neighbors, their safety or the common areas. That is the hook many buildings use against unapproved short stays, covered in the guide to short-term rental rules. Read the fines clause of the convenção before you plan to renovate, keep animals or let the unit. Fines that go unpaid become part of the debt that a buyer can inherit under art. 1.345.

Paying and voting from abroad

The bill arrives in reais, usually as a boleto, a bank payment slip. Plan how you'll pay it before you leave: a Brazilian account or a local representative holding funds are the two usual answers. The guide to sending money to Brazil explains how to document money coming in, and the same paper trail helps when you sell.

Voting takes a little planning. Check the convenção on proxies, then give someone a written power of attorney if you can't attend. The same procurador who closed your purchase can often act, depending on the powers granted, as explained in the power of attorney guide. Electronic meetings under art. 1.354-A help, but the condominium isn't liable for your own connection problems. Under Law 4.591/1964, art. 24, §4, a tenant can vote in your place at a meeting you miss, unless the item involves extraordinary expenses.

When you sell, ask the administrator for the statement of no debts early. A statement that can be handed over on the first visit shortens the buyer's checks, and it costs you nothing if the unit is current. Owners using the free listing form can state the fee, and any approved levy, up front. The rest of the paperwork is in the foreign seller's guide.

Questions

Does a buyer in Brazil have to pay the previous owner's condominium debts?

Yes, toward the condominium. Civil Code art. 1.345 makes the buyer answer for the seller's debts, including fines and interest. The buyer can then pursue the seller, so get a signed statement of no debts before closing.

How far back can a condominium collect unpaid fees?

Five years, counted from the day after each installment fell due, under STJ Tema 949 (REsp 1.483.930/DF).

What is a normal condominium fee in Brazil?

One national count gives R$ 538 a month and listing data gives R$ 948 for Rio and R$ 509 for Porto Alegre. Neighborhoods such as Ipanema average about R$ 2,200. Ask for the unit's actual bills.

Who pays a special levy when an apartment is rented out?

The owner pays extraordinary expenses such as structural work and facade painting (Tenancy Law art. 22, X). The tenant pays ordinary expenses (art. 23, XII).

Can a condominium take my apartment for unpaid fees?

Yes. Law 8.009/1990, art. 3, IV excepts debts tied to the property from family-home protection. The STJ's Second Section also allowed seizure of a unit under a bank's alienação fiduciária in March 2025, with the lender summoned first.

What is the maximum late fee on condominium charges?

A fine of up to 2%, plus monetary correction and interest (Civil Code art. 1.336, §1). The interest is the rate in the convenção or, if it is silent, the art. 406 rate.

Can I see a building's minutes before buying?

You have no right of your own until you own or hold a qualifying right to the unit. The seller can request them as an owner. Treat a refusal as a reason to pause.

Can I lose my vote at meetings?

Yes, while you owe money. Civil Code art. 1.335, III gives the vote to owners who are current on their obligations.

Sources

Written by Lucas Andrade. Updated November 2026. General information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Ask a Brazilian lawyer about your own case.