It takes 11 years to buy a house

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a decade ago, it would have taken families 9.5 years to purchase a property of 100 square metres.

The Portuguese family will need 11.4 years of disposable income to be able to buy a house of 100 square meters, without resorting to loans. The calculations are from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and are included in the “Brick by Brick: Building Better Housing Policies” report, released on Monday.

Disposable income refers to the amount families keep after taxes and Social Security deductions, for example. This exercise illustrates the rise in housing prices in most Member States in recent years.

Looking back at the last decade, the Portuguese need to work a little harder to be able to buy a house of a similar size, which would match the T3 – three bedrooms, living room and kitchen. In 2010, using the same scale, it would take 9.5 years to accumulate enough value. In other words, there was an increase of 1.9 years. It has always been on the rise, even in times of a pandemic, the Paris-based organization says.

Portugal appears in the group of countries where the price / income ratio (which allows us to understand the purchasing power of families) during the year of Covid-19 kept “ongoing increase”, and it appears alongside countries such as Austria, Chile, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg or Switzerland.

The same is true for housing prices. Portugal appears in the group of countries where, between 2019 and 2020, the increase in real house prices was more expressive: 7%, as for example in Germany.

13%

Luxembourg was an OECD country where there was a significant increase in house prices between 2019 and 2020, in the range of 13%.

40%

The OECD study on housing reveals that a third of the poorest families spend at least 40% of their income on home rent.