Housing prices in Portugal continue to rise, at the same time that the number of real estate transactions is decreasing.
In the third quarter of 2023 (July to September), the price index rose by 7.6% compared to the same period in 2022, with the value of new homes growing by 5.8% and the value of existing homes rising by 8%. %, data released this Tuesday by the National Statistics Institute (INE) show.
If the values used in used housing transactions actually recorded higher growth than the growth of new units year-on-year, the trend was the opposite when looking at the development of the series, from the second quarter to the third quarter, when “new housing price growth (2%) exceeded housing prices List (1.8%).
The Housing Price Index is calculated by the INE based on information sent by the Tax and Customs Authority (AT), taking as reference the anonymised information relating to the municipal tax on burdensome property transfers (IMT) and the municipal property tax (IMI).
In total, 34,256 homes were sold in Portugal in July, August and September, 19% less than in the same quarter of 2022. The trend of the months from April to June was maintained, during which there was already a 22% decrease in the number of transactions. Compared to the same period last year.
Despite the rise in prices, there was a decline in both the number of sales and the total value of family housing transactions, which was observed “in all regions”. “The Algarve region and the Lisbon metropolitan area showed more intense declines than those recorded at the national level,” says the National Institute of Statistics. In the Algarve region, 28% fewer homes were transacted and values decreased by 19% compared to the third quarter of the previous year; In the Lisbon area, the number of operations decreased by 25% and the amount involved decreased by 15%.
Nationally, of the 34.3K sales, 26.6K (78%) were for existing homes (23% decrease in transactions) and 7,612 were for new homes (0.2% increase).
Sales in these three months included homes with a total value of 7.1 billion euros, 12% less than in the third quarter of last year. Of this total, €4,900 million are existing homes, the majority of sales (70% of value), and €2,100 million are new homes.
Of the 34.3 thousand homes that changed hands, 32 thousand homes were purchased by citizens with a tax domicile in Portugal and about 2,700 homes by non-resident buyers in Portugal, with a tax domicile outside the national territory.
According to INE, within the scope of foreign buyers, “the EU category recorded a year-on-year decrease of 9.2% in the number of transactions (-24.5% in Q2 2023), with a total of 1,349 units and in the category of buyers with a tax domicile in other third countries “1,392 transactions were recorded, equivalent to a year-on-year increase of 8.7%, less than the record recorded in the previous quarter (10.8%).”
The North region concentrated on 10.3 thousand deals (30.1% of the total); In the Lisbon metropolitan area, 9.3 thousand sales were registered (27.2%), remaining “2.3 percentage points below the share in the same period of 2022”; in the center 7.8 thousand homes were sold; in the Alentejo and in the Algarve, about 2.6 thousand each, These were the two regions that, along with the North, managed to achieve the greatest growth in terms of shares of regional transactions; in Madeira, 877 units were sold (2.6%), and in the Azores 617 (1.000 units). 8%) .
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