How Long Is a Rental Contract in Brazil? The 30-Month Line

One statute governs urban rentals in Brazil: Law 8,245/1991, the Lei do Inquilinato (tenancy law) — though article 1 leaves apart-hotéis and hotel-residences authorized to provide regular services to the Civil Code, so a long stay sold as serviced accommodation sits outside every rule below, the 30-month line included. This guide reads the clock in it from the consolidated text: how long the contract runs, how you get out, how the rent moves. Your contract will be in Portuguese, so the words matter even if English carries you day to day. What the landlord may demand before you sign is the other half of the same document.

Why 30 months is the line

Article 46 is short and decisive. For leases agreed in writing for 30 months or more, the contract terminates when the term runs out — "a resolução do contrato ocorrerá findo o prazo estipulado, independentemente de notificação ou aviso". Neither side gives notice.

Its two paragraphs are the practical part. Stay more than 30 days past the end date without the landlord objecting, and the lease is presumed extended for an indefinite term, every other clause intact. He may then end it at any time, giving you 30 days to move out.

A 30-month lease therefore buys 30 months of certainty against a landlord who simply wants it back, and after that a tenancy that closes on one month's notice for no stated reason.

The shorter contract is the stronger one

Article 47 covers the opposite case: a lease agreed verbally or in writing for less than 30 months. It extends automatically, for an indefinite period, and the property can then be retaken only on the grounds listed there:

• the article 9 cases — mutual agreement, breach of the law or contract, non-payment, urgent repairs ordered by the authorities;
• the end of an employment relationship that came with the housing;
• the landlord's own use, or his spouse's or partner's; or residential use by an ascendant or descendant who owns no residential property, their own spouse or partner included;
• licensed demolition, or approved works increasing the built area by at least 20%;
• and item V, "se a vigência ininterrupta da locação ultrapassar cinco anos" — after five uninterrupted years, free retaking returns.

Read the two articles side by side and the usual assumption inverts: a tenant who accepts 12 months thinking it is the weaker deal has taken the stronger one, for up to five years. The contract cannot undo it: article 45 voids any clause designed to defeat the statute's purpose, and names the clause forbidding the article 47 extension as its first example.

"Own use" carries a criminal counterweight

Own use is the ground a tenant is most likely to hear, and the law guards it. Article 47 makes the landlord prove ownership, and prove the need in court if he already occupies another property of his own, for the same purpose, in the same locality.

Article 44 goes further. A landlord who retakes on that ground and, "dentro de cento e oitenta dias após a entrega do imóvel", does not use the property for the declared purpose — or uses it for under a year — commits a crime of public action, punishable with three months to one year of detention that the article itself allows to be replaced by community service. The injured party may also claim 12 to 24 months of the last rent, in separate proceedings.

Leaving early: the penalty is proportional

Inside the agreed term the landlord cannot simply take the property back — that is article 4, and it is narrower than it sounds. The article 9 grounds above run in parallel with the term, not after it — "a locação também poderá ser desfeita", non-payment of the rent and charges included. Arrears end a 30-month lease from the inside, in month three as in month twenty-nine.

You can hand it back too. Article 4, in the wording given by Law 12,744/2012, lets the tenant return it "pagando a multa pactuada, proporcional ao período de cumprimento do contrato" — the contractual penalty in proportion to how much of the term has been performed, not the full amount, or a penalty set by a judge if the contract fixed none.

One full exemption exists, and it describes a common expat situation almost word for word: no penalty when your employer, private or public, transfers you to another locality, if you notify the landlord in writing at least 30 days ahead.

Once the lease is indefinite, none of that applies. Article 6 lets the tenant end it with 30 days' written notice and no penalty; skipping the notice costs one month's rent and charges. That notice needs an address that works, which is where the CEP stops being a formality.

The annual increase is not in the tenancy law

Tenants go looking for the rent index, and the tenancy law has none. Article 17 leaves the rent to free negotiation, and its sole paragraph sends residential adjustment criteria to separate legislation.

That legislation is Law 10,192/2001. Article 2 allows adjustment by price indices in contracts lasting a year or more, and paragraph 1 states that "É nula de pleno direito qualquer estipulação de reajuste ou correção monetária de periodicidade inferior a um ano". The rule is 12 months minimum, whatever the contract says.

The index itself is a negotiated term, and the institution behind the most famous one shows the spread. FGV IBRE's inflation portal offers five indices in its rent calculator — IGP-M, INCC-M, IPC-M, IPC-M for the residential rent sub-item, and IVAR — and states that "O reajuste de aluguel é realizado anualmente, isto é, de 12 em 12 meses". IVAR is the newest and the methodologically different one: launched on January 11, 2022, it is built from values actually negotiated in contracts supplied by property managers in four capitals, instead of asking prices. This guide does not recommend an index; the point is that it is a choice sitting in your contract, and the new amount is paid like any other bill — by PIX, with or without a Brazilian account.

Two clauses worth finding before you sign

Currency. Article 17 bars three things outright: rent stated in foreign currency, rent pegged to exchange-rate variation, and rent pegged to the minimum wage. If you earn abroad, the lease is not where you hedge the exchange rate — and US dollars in Brazil are a separate problem.

A sale during the tenancy. Under article 8, a buyer may end your contract and give you 90 days to leave. The lease survives a sale only if three conditions hold together: fixed term, a clause keeping it in force on sale, and that clause registered against the property's title record. The buyer has 90 days from registration of the sale to act; after that, agreement to keep the tenancy is presumed. Article 27 also gives the sitting tenant first refusal on equal terms, with deadlines in later articles we did not examine.

Then the small things: getting a CPF, what it is, why cashiers ask, 127 V or 220 V by city, apostilles, and the rest of living here.

Sources

• Law 8,245/1991, consolidated text — articles 4, 6, 8, 9, 17, 27, 44, 45, 46 and 47. Accessed September 16, 2026. ⚠️ Planalto publishes this statute at two addresses; the other stacks struck-through 1991 wording above the current text in 22 passages, articles 4 and 62 among them. Everything quoted here comes from the consolidated page.
• Law 10,192/2001 — article 2 and paragraph 1, the annual floor for any adjustment. Accessed September 16, 2026.
• FGV IBRE, Portal da Inflação — the rent calculator, its five selectable indices, the annual rule. Accessed September 16, 2026.
• FGV IBRE on the launch of IVAR — January 11, 2022, negotiated contract values instead of advertised prices, in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte. Accessed September 16, 2026.
• Law 14,286/2021 — article 13, II allows a payment in foreign currency where one party is non-resident, "exceto nos contratos de locação de imóveis situados no território nacional". Accessed September 16, 2026.

What we could not verify

• How many Brazilian leases really run exactly 30 months. The law creates the threshold; we found no official register of contracts measuring how often the market uses it. The claim that everyone signs 30 months is market talk, not a statistic.
• How the proportional penalty is calculated. Article 4 sets the principle, not a formula, leaving it to the contract or to a judge. We did not examine case law on the arithmetic.
• Which index most contracts use, and rent levels. IVAR measures variation, not price levels, and covers four capitals. No official statistic answers either question, so no number appears here.
• Foreign-currency rules outside the tenancy law. Law 14,286/2021 changed the general rule on obligations pegged to foreign currency, and excludes leases of property in Brazil by name. What the Central Bank allows beyond that we did not examine; article 17 was not amended.