Rooms to rent in Portugal barely got dearer this year (demand for them jumped 27%)
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 cheaper.
Lisbon leads, the interior holds the line
Lisbon is the most expensive place to rent a room, at a median 550 euros a month. Funchal follows at 500 and Porto at 450, with Ponta Delgada (430), Faro (420) and Setúbal (400) close behind.
At the other end sit the cities where a room still goes for under 300 euros a month: Leiria (300), Vila Real (285), Beja (280), Viseu (275), Castelo Branco (250) and Portalegre (240). Coimbra, one of the country’s big university cities, comes in at 335.
Where the pressure actually built
The sharpest price rises were not in the obvious places. Funchal and Vila Real led, both up 14% on the year, followed by Beja at 12% and Ponta Delgada and Santarém at 8% each. Bragança and Portalegre were the only two where prices fell, 4% in both.
Demand tells a different story again. In Beja it rose 160%. Coimbra was up 120% and Porto 104%. Over the same period the number of rooms on offer fell 48% in Coimbra and 43% in Porto, two cities where term starts in a matter of weeks and where there is now roughly half the choice there was a year ago. Not everywhere shrank: listings grew 94% in Ponta Delgada and 73% in Bragança.
This is not only a student market any more
The picture here is bigger than September and a suitcase. idealista notes that renting a room has stopped being a students-only arrangement, with more young professionals sharing because they cannot carry the cost of a flat in a big city on their own.
It is the same pressure that showed up when rental demand started spreading into Portugal’s interior, and the reason the University of Lisbon opened another 1,018 student beds for this academic year. The municipality-by-municipality figures, including the year-on-year change for each, are published in full by idealista.
If you are hunting for a room right now, the number that matters is probably not the price. It is the supply. Arrive in Porto or Coimbra in September and you will be looking at close to half the listings that were there last year.
Chart: Tugadaily, with data from idealista
