The access to housing is deteriorating in Portugal. Families find it difficult to buy a house, due to high prices, high interest rates on housing loans and tight purchasing power. And they also find it difficult to rent a house, as rents keep rising.
That's exactly what data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) released this Friday, December 22nd, shows: the median income rose 10.5% in the summer of 2023 compared to the same period last year, standing at 7.25 euros per square meter (euros/m2). And, as a result, fewer lease contracts (-2%) were signed. But compared to the previous quarter, the reality is different: there is a slight decrease in rents and an increase in contracts.
Provisional data from INE reveal that the median income in Portugal stood at 7.25 euros/m2 in the third quarter of 2023. “This value represents a year-on-year growth of +10.5%, although it is lower than the year-on-year variation recorded in second quarter of 2023 (+11.0%)”, explains the institute in the note released this Friday.
Compared to the previous quarter, house rent decreased slightly (-0.3%).
This was the house rent (in median terms) calculated taking into account the 23,717 new rental contracts signed during this period. And, on this point, the national statistics office concludes that in the summer of 2023, “the number of new rental contracts was lower than that recorded in the same quarter of 2022 (-2.0%), although, compared to the previous quarter , there was an increase of +14.3%”.
The cost of renting a house rises in the most populous municipalities
Data from INE also show that, in the summer of 2023, there was an increase in the median income in all 24 municipalities with more than 100 thousand inhabitants compared to the same period last year, with the most significant increases being recorded in Setúbal (+23.1 %) and Lisbon (+20.9%).
In fact, in 18 municipalities there was an increase in the cost of renting that was higher than that of the country. And, as a result, all the most populous municipalities in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto recorded median rents equal to or higher than the national one, with the exception of Santa Maria da Feira (5.28 euros/m2).
Even so, between July and September this year there was a slowdown in house rents in 13 of the 24 municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants – three more than in the previous quarter.
Read full article here!
Source: Idealista
Comments