The Bank for International Settlements looked at 57 economies. Real house prices fell in 14 of them and fell 1.2% globally — and nowhere rose faster than Portugal.

If you want to understand Portuguese housing, the most useful thing you can do is look somewhere else. The Bank for International Settlements — the central bankers' central bank — has just run the numbers on 57 economies. Real house prices rose in 39 of them, held steady in four and fell in 14. Nowhere did they rise as fast as here. Portugal posted 15.2% real annual growth in the first quarter, meaning after inflation has been stripped out. North…

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The Simplified Affordable Rental Regime came into force on 1 September and wipes out income tax on rent entirely, provided the rent stays under a municipal ceiling. The alternative, a flat 10%, expires in 2029.

Anyone with a flat to let in Portugal woke up on 1 September with two sums to do, and the answer changes from one council to the next. The Simplified Affordable Rental Regime, known here by its initials RSAA, has replaced the old rental support programme, and a second instrument came into force alongside it for developers. Both came out of the housing tax package approved in May. The first sum is the easy one. A residential tenancy with rent up to 2,300…

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A running tracker of Portugal's housing market — the INE price index, bank valuations, rents and affordability. Updated with each new data release.

We gather here, in one place, how Portugal's housing market is moving. Instead of one article per data point, we update this page with the essentials: the INE price index, bank valuations, rents and affordability for buyers and renters — which since 1 August also runs through the new mortgage rules, with the debt-service cap down to 45%. Official data is at INE.

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Twelve-month Euribor closed August at 2.954%, a two-year high. On a 150,000-euro loan over 30 years with a 1% spread, a contract resetting this month pays about 712 euros against 642 a year ago.

August is closed, and August is what governs the contracts being reset right now. Twelve-month Euribor finished the month at 2.954%, up 0.099 points on July and the highest reading in two years. The six-month rate, the one most Portuguese contracts follow, rose to 2.713%. Three-month came in at 2.513%. Put that on a loan. On 150,000 euros over 30 years with a 1% spread, an annual reset lands at roughly 712 euros a month. Last September, with twelve-month…

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Supply fell 11%, demand rose 27%, and the national median price moved just 1%. idealista's second-quarter figures show where the squeeze actually landed and where a room still goes for under 300 euros.

A room in a shared flat in Portugal cost 1% more in the second quarter of this year than it did a year earlier. That sounds like the market finally taking a breath. Underneath it, almost nothing was calm: demand rose 27% nationally while the number of rooms advertised fell 11%. The median held because the rises and falls cancelled each other out across the country. Rooms got more expensive in 13 of the 20 municipalities in the study. In two, they got…

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The implicit interest rate on Portuguese home loans rose to 3.135% in July, a second straight monthly increase. The national average now blends two housing markets that no longer resemble each other.

The monthly housing-credit bulletin INE published on Thursday led with two figures: the implicit interest rate across all outstanding mortgages rose to 3.135% in July, up 3.4 basis points on June, and the average monthly payment settled at 414 euros. Four hundred and fourteen euros a month sounds almost manageable. Which is exactly why the rest of the bulletin is worth reading.

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In the second quarter, 43% of rental adverts in the Évora district left the market inside a day. Lisbon managed 5% and Porto 7%. Nationally the figure fell from 11% to 7% quarter on quarter.

House-hunting in Évora is a different sport. Almost half the listings in the city vanish before most people manage to book a viewing. The figures come from idealista/data and cover the second quarter of this year. Across the Évora district, 43 per cent of homes advertised to rent left the market in under 24 hours. Narrow it to the city and the share climbs to half.

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Six-month Euribor fixed at 2.737% on Thursday, its highest since 22 November 2024. All three maturities rose on the same day, and the six-month is the one most Portuguese loans are tied to.

Six-month Euribor fixed at 2.737% on Thursday, the highest it has been since 22 November 2024. That is very nearly 21 months, and the move came on a day when all three maturities went up together: the twelve-month added 0.013 points to 2.990%, the three-month added 0.015 to 2.507%. None of those numbers is alarming on its own. What matters is where the increase lands, and it lands on the maturity most Portuguese households actually have in their contract.…

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Law 48/2026 reinterprets the reduced VAT rule for urban rehabilitation works back to 2009. Portugal's certified accountants warn that a four-year assessment window means only VAT due from 2022 onwards can realistically be recovered.

For fifteen years there was a trap buried in the VAT rules on urban rehabilitation. The building sat inside a properly delimited urban rehabilitation area, the contractor charged 6%, and then the tax authority disagreed: the council had never approved a rehabilitation operation for that area, so the rate was 23%. Law 48/2026 has now decided the contractors were right all along. It is an authentic interpretation of item 2.23 of List I of the VAT Code, the…

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The PRR clock stops on 31 August, and 1.º Direito was the housing target easiest to count. In a joint note on Saturday two ministries said the goal will be beaten, with 40,000 homes promised by December.

Portugal's Recovery and Resilience Plan has one date that does not move: 31 August 2026. That is when the country has to show Brussels it hit the milestones it signed up to, and housing was the chapter with the most countable target of all. Twenty-six thousand homes made available to families through 1.º Direito, the public housing access programme run by the IHRU alongside municipalities.

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Portugal's infrastructure minister says the Chelas–Barreiro rail-and-road bridge and the Algés–Trafaria tunnel will both be finished inside a decade, cutting ten minutes off the Lisbon–Barreiro run and thirty off Lisbon–Setúbal.

At the 25 de Abril bridge's 60th birthday, Portugal's infrastructure and housing minister chose to talk about what does not exist yet. Miguel Pinto Luz said the Tagus will gain two new crossings within ten years: a bridge from Chelas to Barreiro, and a tunnel between Algés and Trafaria. His framing was arithmetic, and it explains why the promise sounds large. Major Tagus crossings have historically arrived roughly every thirty years, the 25 de Abril six…

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The urban lease reform approved in cabinet cuts the arrears threshold from three months to two, gives landlords six months to act, frees the starting rent on new contracts and rewrites the rules for pre-1990 leases.

As the law stands, a tenant in Portugal has to fall three months behind on rent before the landlord can terminate the lease. Under the reform approved in cabinet, two will be enough. That is the bluntest change in a package the government presents as a way of coaxing empty flats back onto the rental market, and which it announced as a reform to increase housing supply. None of it is in force. This is a draft law: parliament has to debate and vote it, the…

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Faro hit €22.5 per square metre in July, edging past Lisbon district on €21.4 for the first time in the series. Nationally, rents rose 0.9%, ending six straight months of falls.

For years this question had one automatic answer. In July it stopped having one. Faro district now carries the highest median rent in the country at €22.5 per square metre, ahead of Lisbon district on €21.4. It is the first time that has happened in the series. The figures come from idealista's July rental price index, and they arrive with a second number that reframes the picture. Rents across Portugal rose 0.9% against July last year, to a national…

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Coimbra's agricultural cooperative sold the building beside the disused Estação Nova for €5.8 million after seven years on the market. It carries more than six thousand square metres of buildable area and the deed was signed on Thursday.

It waited seven years for a buyer and changed hands on Thursday. Coimbra's agricultural cooperative has sold the former Grémio da Lavoura building, beside the disused Estação Nova in the city's Baixa, to a Spanish property fund for €5.8 million. The price landed close to what the sellers wanted. Cooperative president Pedro Pimenta says the offers that arrived over the years were low and the internal target sat around six million. What the buyer gets is…

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The idealista index tracking agent sentiment fell in both markets in the third quarter. Rental sits at 50.3 points out of 100 and sales dropped from 71.6 to 67.1.

The people who make a living selling and letting homes in Portugal are gloomier than at any point in the last two and a half years. The quarterly index that measures that mood, the ISSI, put the rental market at 50.3 points on a 0 to 100 scale for the third quarter of 2026. That is the lowest reading since the index began, and the steepest quarterly fall it has recorded. Sales look less dramatic but point the same way. Agent expectations slid from 71.6…

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The 2026 housing tax package lets sellers roll their gain into property destined for residential letting, cuts income tax on rents up to 2,300 euros until 2029, and extends 6% VAT to works on homes worth up to 660,982 euros.

For years the rule was tight and easy to state. Sell a property at a profit and, to avoid capital-gains tax, that profit had to go into another main home. Anyone who wanted to put it into rental property paid the tax and moved on. Portugal's 2026 housing tax package redraws that. It is now possible to sell at a gain and avoid capital-gains tax if the money is reinvested in property destined for residential letting. That is the single furthest-reaching…

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Roughly 10% of sale listings came off the market in under seven days in the second quarter. In Madeira and Porto it was 15%, in Guarda just 3%.

Some homes sit on the market for months. Others barely make it onto the market at all. In the second quarter of this year, around 10% of sale listings in Portugal disappeared in under seven days — less time than many buyers take to book a first viewing. The gap between regions is the part worth paying attention to. On the island of Madeira and in the district of Porto, 15% of advertised stock was gone inside a week. Aveiro follows at 12% and Coimbra at…

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INE closed the calculation on 31 August: inflation excluding housing came in at 2.56%, and that is the ceiling landlords may apply from 1 January. This year's figure was 2.24%.

The number is in. The inflation measure that sets Portugal's annual rent update came in at 2.56%, according to the flash estimate INE published on 31 August. That is the ceiling landlords may apply to existing contracts from 1 January 2027, and it sits above the 2.24% used this year. In money: a €1,000 rent becomes €1,025.60. On €800, you are looking at about €20.48 more a month. Not a shock. Still more than last year. Headline inflation accelerated to…

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Decree-Law 160/2026, published on Tuesday, hands municipal assemblies the power to declare public utility for expropriations and administrative easements.

An amendment to Portugal's Expropriations Code appeared in the official gazette on Tuesday, and it changes who decides. The declaration of public utility — the act that lets the state or a council take a plot or a building for a project of collective interest — now falls to the municipal assembly of the territory where the property sits. Until now, a council wanting to expropriate land for one of its own projects had to wait for a decision from central…

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On a €150,000 loan over 30 years with a 1% spread, an August reset takes the payment to €703.64 — €64.83 more than a year ago.

If your Portuguese mortgage resets this month, the bill goes up. All three maturities — three, six and twelve months — went into the August revision above where they stood at the previous one, and that lands straight on the monthly payment. The reference averages came in at 2.417% on three-month Euribor, 2.638% on six and 2.835% on twelve. Applied to a €150,000 loan over 30 years with a 1% spread, DECO PROTESTE's simulations give this: anyone resetting on…

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The median asking price hit €3,210 per square metre in July. Annual growth cooled to 8% from 8.9% in June, with Lisbon the slowest-rising city and Viseu the fastest.

July produced two numbers that pull in opposite directions. Annual growth in Portuguese asking prices slowed to 8%, down from 8.9% in June. And that was still enough for a ninth consecutive record. The median asking price closed the month at €3,210 per square metre, according to the idealista index. Quarter on quarter, prices barely moved at all: 0.4%. The market is decelerating. It is just decelerating at the top. Lisbon remains the priciest city to buy…

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Lisbon city council has opened a €1.4 million public tender for a municipal building with 11 affordable-rent homes beside Jardim da Estrela.

Eleven homes do not fix Lisbon's housing crisis. But eleven affordable-rent homes two minutes from Jardim da Estrela, in a neighbourhood where renting at market price demands a salary almost nobody earns, are rather more interesting than the number suggests. Lisbon city council has approved a public tender for the build, with a base price of €1.4 million. The building is municipal, the flats are earmarked for below-market rent, and the council already…

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ULisboa goes from 488 to 1,506 residence beds for 2026/2027, on more than €80m of investment. Higher-education placements come out on 22 August.

There are two weeks in August that decide the year for thousands of families: the ones where higher-education placements come out and you suddenly have to find your kid somewhere to sleep in Lisbon. The arithmetic shifts slightly this year, because the University of Lisbon is adding 1,018 residence beds for the 2026/2027 academic year. Added to the 488 that opened last year, ULisboa ends up with 1,506 beds of its own. Total investment runs above €80…

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The first half of 2026 was historically strong for estate agencies in Portugal, even as the stock of homes for sale fell 14% in the first quarter. The housing deficit is estimated at 800,000 to one million homes.

There is a paradox in Portuguese property that has stopped being a paradox: estate agencies have just closed the best half-year in their history while complaining they have nothing to sell. Both are true at once, and that is precisely why prices refuse to stop. Official market figures are not out until 22 September, but the networks are already describing historic growth over the first six months. The backdrop is severe scarcity: in the first quarter, the…

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The Bank of Portugal's new recommendation cuts the debt-service ratio from 50% to 45%, trims exceptions to 10% and ends 100% financing on bank-owned property. In force since 1 August.

Anyone filing a mortgage application from today is measured with a different ruler: the recommended maximum debt-service ratio has fallen from 50% to 45%. In plain terms, the bank now wants your combined monthly loan payments to eat no more than 45 cents of every euro coming in. It is the share of monthly income tied up in loan repayments — mortgage, car, cards, all of it added together. The Bank of Portugal used to recommend a 50% ceiling and has cut it…

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Buyers from the Netherlands have overtaken Germans and Britons in Spain's property market for the first time, even as overall foreign demand falls.

For decades the typical foreign buyer of a Spanish home was British. On some counts they were German. This year the order changed in a way almost nobody flagged in advance: the Dutch went past both. The 2025 figures already told the story — 6,289 homes bought by non-resident buyers from the Netherlands, against 6,233 for Germans and 6,152 for Britons. Small gaps, but enough to invert a ranking that had held for years. Two things at once. The first is tax:…

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Almost half the foreign direct investment that entered Portugal in 2025 went into real estate — the highest share in roughly 17 years, led by hotels, offices and data centres.

Forty-six per cent. That is the slice of foreign direct investment entering Portugal in 2025 that ended up in real estate deals — almost half of everything, and the heaviest weight in at least 17 years. Total FDI in 2025 came to 8.5 billion euros, well down on the 13.1 billion of the year before. Within investment into the equity of Portuguese entities, which totalled 11.9 billion, 3.9 billion went to property. So: less money arrived from abroad than in…

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The Government pushed the revised RJUE building-permit regime back to 1 October 2026. Councils get two more months to ready their platforms; until then the old rules apply.

If you had a permit application on hold waiting for Monday, you now have two more months to wait. The Government approved a decree-law pushing the revised Legal Regime for Urbanisation and Building back to 1 October 2026, from the 3 August start date that had been set. Because of the councils. The reform forces municipalities to rebuild their IT platforms, configure fully digital workflows and publish their own supplementary rules, and a good share of…

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Portugal's first national inventory of state-owned property closed six months early with 60,000 buildings and plots identified. The target is around 80,000 by the end of 2026.

For decades the Portuguese state did not really know what it owned. Now it knows a large chunk of it: the first systematic survey of public real estate has closed with 60,000 properties identified, and it closed six months ahead of its own deadline. The work was done by ESTAMO, the public company that manages state property, and it is the first attempt to put all of this on one national map. That matters more than it sounds. You cannot sell, renovate,…

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Portugal's second IMI property tax instalment falls due on 31 August 2026, and only applies to owners paying more than 500 euros a year. How to check and how to pay.

If your IMI bill this year came in above 500 euros, put 31 August in your calendar. That is the deadline for the second of three instalments, and it is the one that catches the most people out, because it lands mid-holiday and nobody thinks about property tax with their feet in the sand. The rule is worth memorising, because plenty of owners assume they have instalments they do not actually have. IMI is split according to the total due for the year: up to…

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