According to Público newspaper, from the second half of the year, the Property Identification Number (NIP) will be launched. This number will be like the citizen's card, but for properties, bringing together all information regarding the property in a single number.

In the beginning, “this project should start only for rural lands, and then will be extended later to urban properties. These are the first steps towards creating real-time, up-to-date databases relating to all available information on rural and urban properties.”

“This could be a crucial moment for real estate reform in Portugal. Today, each owner has multiple property papers, documentation, and registration numbers. Being able to do with the properties what was done with the citizen's card is perhaps the most important part of the work of identifying the owner and the location of each property”, explained the Secretary of State for Justice, Anabela Pedroso, quoted by the newspaper.

The launch of the NIP will be done step-by-step along with the identification and registration of land and properties. The NIP is part of the Balcão Único do Prédio (BUPi), which allows rural land owners, without organised documentation or properties that aren’t properly identified, to update their registration.

According to the newspaper, the NIP will start as a pilot project in areas that are more vulnerable to the risk of fire, mainly in the Centre region but it will expand through 2023.

Although there is no deadline for all properties to have a NIP, the paper advanced that by the end of 2025, “there will be several properties” having NIP, including in cities.