Real Estate 4 August 2026

The decision to expropriate land in Portugal has just moved to the town hall

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 government. That requirement is gone.

What the change covers

Decree-Law 160/2026 applies to the expropriation of immovable property and the rights attached to it, tenancies included, and also to the creation of administrative easements — the restrictions imposed on private land to run a pipe, a power line or a path across it without ownership changing hands.

The decree was issued under the legislative authorisation granted by Law 25/2026 of 1 June, which parliament passed specifically to strengthen the hand of municipal assemblies in these decisions.

The government’s case for it

The reasoning rests on three claims: speeding up procedures that currently route through Lisbon and stall there, moving the decision closer to the people it affects, and reinforcing the autonomy and democratic accountability of local government. The body deciding is now one elected within the municipality, and it is that body affected owners will be able to petition.

Decentralised is not the same as easier, though. An expropriation still requires a genuine public-utility justification, still carries a duty to compensate, and can still be challenged in the administrative courts. What has moved is the address of the first decision, not the safeguards around it.

For anyone tracking the sector, this is another instalment in a year of property rules being rewritten piece by piece, much like the end of rent controls on new leases. The full text is published in the Diário da República.

The real test arrives in about a year, in the municipal works currently sitting idle waiting for a signature.

By Duarte Figueiredo

Image: Bruno Esteves / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Real Estate 11 August 2026

Two new Tagus crossings are promised within ten years (and one of them lands in Barreiro)

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…

Tugadaily chart: months of unpaid rent before a landlord can end the lease, three today and two under the government proposal

Real Estate 11 August 2026

How much unpaid rent costs you your home in Portugal? Two months, if this reform passes

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…

Bar chart of annual rent growth in July 2026: Faro 34%, Viana do Castelo 19%, Madeira 12%, Guarda 11%

Real Estate 10 August 2026

Faro has overtaken Lisbon as Portugal's priciest district to rent in

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…

Real Estate 10 August 2026

A Spanish fund has bought the old Grémio da Lavoura in Coimbra. Housing is what comes next

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…

Tugadaily chart: median house asking price per square metre, June 2026

Real Estate 8 August 2026

House prices in Portugal: the tracker

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.

Tugadaily bar chart of the ISSI index in the third quarter of 2026, sales at 67 points and rental at 50

Real Estate 7 August 2026

Estate agent confidence in Portugal's rental market has hit a record low

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…

Real Estate 7 August 2026

Sell a home, buy one to rent out, and Portugal may waive the capital-gains tax

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…

Chart showing the share of homes for sale that leave the market within seven days, by Portuguese district

Real Estate 6 August 2026

One in ten homes for sale in Portugal is gone within a week

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…

Real Estate 5 August 2026

Landlords can raise rents 2.5% next year. The number behind it is already set

Portugal's rent update coefficient tracks inflation excluding housing, which came in at 2.51% for July. That is up from the 2.24% applied this year. The official figure lands at the end of August.

If you rent in Portugal, you can already do next year's arithmetic. Average price growth excluding housing came in at 2.51% for July, and that specific measure — not the headline inflation rate everyone quotes — is what the law uses to cap how much landlords may add to a rent the following year. In money: a €1,000 rent becomes €1,025. On €600, you are looking at roughly €15 more a month. Not a shock. Still more than last year. The 2026 coefficient landed…

Chart showing the August 2026 monthly payment on a €150,000 30-year loan across the 3, 6 and 12-month Euribor rates

Real Estate 4 August 2026

The 12-month Euribor is back to costing you €65 a month

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…

Tugadaily chart of median asking prices per square metre in July 2026: Lisbon €6,260, Porto €4,276, Portugal €3,210 and Castelo Branco €1,041

Real Estate 3 August 2026

Portugal's house prices just set a record for the ninth month running

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…

Real Estate 2 August 2026

Lisbon is building 11 affordable-rent flats right next to Jardim da Estrela

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…

Real Estate 2 August 2026

Lisbon University is opening 1,018 more student beds right as placements land

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…

Real Estate 2 August 2026

Estate agencies just had their best half-year ever and still can't find houses to sell

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…