The rental housing market is starting to show signs of cooling down. This summer, 22,138 new contracts were signed in the country, a decrease of 5.5% compared to the same period last year. This downward trend was driven by lower demand in the country’s urban areas, but median rental values did not follow suit. They continued to rise in the third quarter, with a year-on-year increase of 7.6%, despite a decrease in the number of new contracts in 17 of the 24 Portuguese municipalities with more than 100 thousand inhabitants and in 15 of this universe there was there was a decrease greater than controlled at the national level.
In Vila Nova de Gaia, a municipality in the metropolitan area of Porto, data released yesterday by the National Institute of Statistics shows a 20.5% drop in the number of new leases, the highest of the 24 most populous municipalities in Portugal. the country. This is followed by Setúbal, with a drop of 15.2%, Loures, with a drop of 14.2%, and Sintra, with less than 14.1%. Lisbon and Porto are not escaping this trend, with the capital seeing the rental market shrink by 13.3%, and Porto registering a smaller decline, but above the national, of 8.9%.
Contrary to the law of supply and demand, rental values per square meter continued to increase year-on-year, reaching €6.55 nationwide, which translates into a growth of 7.6%, as mentioned earlier. In the universe of cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, all recorded higher increases and only Famalicão saw the median value of rents fall, with a negative year-on-year variation of 0.6%. The largest increases occurred in Barcelos (25.5% more), Funchal (20.2%), Cascais (20%), Braga (17.4%) and Guimarães (16.4%). In Lisbon the increase was 16% and in Porto 10.5%.
In the third quarter of this year, the five municipalities with the highest square meter value in the country were – not surprisingly – Cascais (13.63 euros), Lisbon (13.18 euros), Oeiras (11.79 euros), Porto (10 euros) and Almada (9.2 euros).
In the period considered, the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto concentrated almost half of the new leases, exactly 49.8%, a slight decrease compared to the second quarter, when they accounted for 52.3% of the market. Between July and September, the rental value in the AML reached 10.16 euros per square meter, an increase of 12.6%, and 7.27 euros in the AMP, more than 9.2%.
Please note that rental updates next year will be limited to 2%. The government has set this brake – otherwise the increase would be 5.3%, due to the average inflation recorded in August without housing – as a support measure for families to mitigate the effects of the cost of living increase. In November (latest data available) inflation reached 9.9%.
Yesterday, the Imovirtual portal also released a study reporting continuous increases in rental values. According to platform data, the average rental value in the country reached 1405 euros in this fourth quarter, an increase of 360 euros compared to the same period in 2021. The Lisbon district is already above 2 thousand euros (average), following Porto (1267 euros) , Faro (1167), Évora (1167) and Setúbal (1157). With more attractive values, there are Portalegre (378 euros) and Guarda (485). The rental market in Évora is already in full swing. The district recorded an exponential increase of 99.2%, with the rental value rising from 586 euros to 1,167 euros in one year.
Sónia Santos Pereira is a journalist for Dinheiro Vivo
Source: DN
