Renting an Apartment in Brazil: What the Landlord Can Demand

Law 8,245 of October 18, 1991 — the Lei do Inquilinato, Brazil's tenancy act — is light on paperwork and unusually specific about guarantees. Checked on September 16, 2026, its consolidated text carries every rule below. Read that one: the federal portal also serves a page with the 1991 wording struck through, and on some articles the dead text says the opposite of the live text.

One guarantee, never two

Article 37 opens with what the landlord may require — pode o locador exigir do locatário as seguintes modalidades de garantia — and lists four: caução (a deposit, in money or in goods), fiança (a personal guarantor, the fiador), seguro de fiança locatícia (rent guarantee insurance) and the fiduciary assignment of investment fund shares, added in 2005 by Law 11,196. The caput never says "only", so read the list as what a landlord can demand, not as a sealed universe.

The sentence after it does the real work: É vedada, sob pena de nulidade, mais de uma das modalidades de garantia num mesmo contrato de locação. More than one guarantee in the same lease is void.

Article 43, II then makes demanding two a contravenção penal — a criminal contravention, the lesser of the two labels the act uses, since it saves the word crime for article 44. The penalty is prisão simples — simple imprisonment — of five days to six months, or a fine of three to twelve months of the last updated rent, revertida em favor do locatário: paid to the tenant, not to the State.

So insurance plus a deposit, because you have no guarantor, is not a stricter deal. It is a void clause with a penalty attached, and it is the strongest line a foreign tenant has.

The deposit, and the account it has to sit in

Article 38, § 2 sets three things at once. A cash deposit não poderá exceder o equivalente a três meses de aluguel. It goes into a caderneta de poupança, the regulated savings account. And the yield follows the tenant: revertendo em benefício do locatário todas as vantagens dela decorrentes when the sum is withdrawn.

So a demand for six months' deposit is over the ceiling, money parked in the landlord's current account is not what the article describes, and the interest is not his to keep.

The caput and § 1 allow a deposit in movable or immovable goods instead, registered at a cartório de títulos e documentos or noted in the margin of the property record. Only the cash form carries the three-month limit.

The fiador, and the exit the act wrote for him

The fiador is where most foreigners stall: the market expects a Brazilian property owner to sign beside you. Two articles decide how long that signature binds.

Article 39, in the wording given by Law 12,112/2009, says that unless the contract provides otherwise any guarantee se estende até a efetiva devolução do imóvel, even after the lease has rolled into an indefinite term. The guarantee follows the keys, not the calendar — and what makes a lease roll over in the first place is the 30-month line in the same act.

Article 40, X, is the release valve. Once the lease is indefinite, the guarantor may notify the landlord that he wants out, remaining bound durante 120 (cento e vinte) dias após a notificação ao locador. The sole paragraph then turns his exit into your problem: the landlord may require a new guarantee within 30 days, sob pena de desfazimento da locação.

Rent insurance is the tenant's bill

Article 41 defines the scope: rent guarantee insurance abrangerá a totalidade das obrigações do locatário — the totality of the tenant's obligations, not the rent alone. Article 23, XI puts the bill on that same tenant, obliged to pagar o prêmio do seguro de fiança. The landlord is the beneficiary; you pay the premium.

Keep the layers apart: the article states the legal scope of the modality, while what a given policy covers, excludes and demands at signature is a contract between insurer and landlord. Ask for the condições gerais, the policy's published general conditions, before treating any coverage claim as settled.

The capitalization bond an agency will push

A título de capitalização sold as a rental guarantee gets presented as a fifth route, invented for people with no guarantor. The insurance regulator files it inside the act, not outside. CNSP Resolution 384/2020, article 32, creates the guarantee-instrument modality so the bond's mathematical provision secures an obligation in a main contract, and its § 1 says the link exists only if that contract expressly provides for this modality ou outra enquadrada como caução — or another classified as a deposit. Classified as a deposit, it lands in item I of article 37, and so inside the ban on stacking.

On the money, SUSEP Circular 656/2022, article 40, requires that at the end of the term the provision for redemption correspond to no mínimo, a noventa e cinco por cento of everything the subscriber paid, and only if every payment was made on its scheduled date. Its sole paragraph excludes monetary restatement and the bonus provision from that total. That is a regulatory floor: below 95% is not allowed, and a full refund is a product feature, not a rule.

Article 33 of the resolution fixes a minimum term of six months, lets the holder ask for early redemption sem aplicação de qualquer penalidade if the lease ends first, and requires the landlord's consent for any redemption while it runs. Articles 38 and 39 of the circular require the enrollment form to warn that the bond secures only the main contract, and to name the party it secures with a CPF or CNPJ. A form that does not name your landlord is not securing your lease.

What the act never asks you for

Read the whole statute and the absence is the finding. "CPF" appears zero times, and so do cadastro and passaporte. No article requires an identity document, a tax number, proof of income, a guarantor, or even a written contract — article 47 regulates a lease ajustada verbalmente, agreed by word of mouth. The only place personal documents appear is article 71, V, about the guarantor in a renewal action, and that instrument belongs to non-residential leases. Hold the layer: the tenancy act imposes none of it, which is not the same as saying nothing in Brazil does.

The application fee is the same argument. Article 43, I punishes demanding quantia ou valor além do aluguel e encargos permitidos by reason of a lease, which reaches a candidate who has no contract yet, and article 22, VII puts brokerage and administration fees on the landlord, nestas compreendidas as despesas necessárias à aferição da idoneidade do pretendente ou de seu fiador.

The tax authority is a separate layer with a separate answer. Its reporting instructions for property agencies still tell them to write a sigla NDP (Não domiciliado no País) for a tenant not domiciled in Brazil — a page dated "Publicado em 11/05/2015" whose caveat points at a rule since revoked, checked on September 16, 2026, and "not domiciled" is not somebody moving here for a year. IN RFB nº 2.172/2024 obliges anyone holding contas bancárias, de poupança ou de investimentos in Brazil to register, and nearly every long-stay tenant opens an account. Sort out what the CPF is and how a foreigner gets one before the lease — it is the same number a cashier asks for and the one that gates PIX.

Renting with no guarantee at all

This is where a foreigner with no guarantor gets pushed, and the act treats it as the exception it is.

Article 20: o locador não poderá exigir o pagamento antecipado do aluguel, outside the article 42 case and a holiday-season lease. The verb carries the rule — what is banned is demanding — and article 43, III makes charging rent in advance a contravention outside those same two cases.

Article 42 is that exception: with no guarantee contracted, the landlord may require payment até o sexto dia útil do mês vincendo, the month about to begin. Compare article 23, I, the default when a guarantee exists — the sixth business day of the month after the one already lived. The guarantee decides which month you are paying for.

The cost sits in article 59, § 1, IX. Miss a payment with no guarantee in the contract and the landlord can obtain an injunction to vacate in 15 days, independentemente da audiência da parte contrária, provided he posts a bond of three months' rent. Paragraph 3 is the way out: inside those same 15 days, and independentemente de cálculo, the tenant deposits the full amount due in court and the injunction falls. Either way a judge is involved — article 5 routes the landlord to an eviction action whatever ended the lease.

Sources

• Presidência da República — Law 8,245/1991, consolidated text: arts. 5, 20, 22, 23, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 47, 59 and 71. planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/leis/l8245compilado.htm (accessed September 16, 2026). The other page, l8245.htm, carries 22 struck-through passages and is not the text in force.
• Presidência da República — Migration Act, Law 13,445/2017, art. 3, XI and art. 4: housing among the principles of migration policy, and the clauses that name health, education and work (accessed September 16, 2026)
• SUSEP — Circular 656/2022, arts. 38, 39 and 40: the enrollment warning, the named beneficiary and the 95% floor. PDF served by SUSEP (accessed September 16, 2026)
• SUSEP — Circular 676/2022, in the Diário Oficial da União of October 14, 2022: it amends arts. 6, 33 and 52 of Circular 656/2022, and no other article (accessed September 16, 2026)
• SUSEP — Technical Manual on capitalization bonds, 2024 edition, transcribing CNSP Resolution 384/2020, arts. 32 and 33. Manual, PDF (accessed September 8, 2026; CNSP Resolution 446/2022 checked September 16, 2026, and it touches neither article)
• Receita Federal — IN RFB nº 2.172/2024, art. 4, II, in the Diário Oficial da União of January 10, 2024: who must hold a CPF. in.gov.br (accessed September 16, 2026)
• Receita Federal — DIMOB questions and answers, the NDP code. gov.br/receitafederal (page dated May 11, 2015; accessed September 16, 2026)

More about how these guides are checked is on our method page, written by Jeff Bruno in Curitiba. Other guides in this topic are under living here, and everything published so far is in all guides. Also useful before signing: how much English you will meet and what a Brazilian address looks like.

What we could not verify

• Whether renting counts as a "real estate operation of any kind" for CPF purposes. IN RFB nº 2.172/2024 obliges whoever carries out operações imobiliárias de quaisquer espécies in Brazil to register, and defines the expression nowhere — nor did the four instructions that amended it through December 2025, checked on September 16, 2026. The bank-account rule is the clear path; this one is not.
• The multiple of income agencies ask for. The act has no income criterion. We opened no SUSEP-registered insurer's published general conditions, so we print no number: treat any multiple you are quoted as that company's policy.
• What happens legally if a landlord changes the locks. The act sends him to court, but the conduct itself is absent from articles 43 and 44. Whatever would punish it sits outside Law 8,245, and we did not check that norm.
• Whether a landlord may refuse you for being foreign. We found no rule forbidding it. The Migration Act names housing among the principles of migration policy (art. 3, XI), but that article is a list of principles addressed to the State, and the express anti-discrimination clauses of article 4 reach health, education and work, not leases.
• The regulator's own file. The Circular 656/2022 PDF that SUSEP serves is the original March 2022 text, not a consolidated one — Circular 676/2022 later amended arts. 6, 33 and 52, and the three articles cited here are untouched, checked September 16, 2026.