House prices in Portugal will increase by 18.7% annually in 2022, the highest in the past 30 years. To find a variation from this level, we have to go back to 1991, when prices rose by 18.8%, says Confidencial Imobiliário.
It’s a historic rise. In the years before the pandemic, when the market was already showing signs of great vitality, annual house price increases were around 15%, recalls the consultant specializing in sector statistics.
There is even less bad news about the indicators. During the year, the pace of price growth slowed. The rise in interest rates and inflation will not be unrelated to this brake.
According to Confidencial Imobiliário, prices continued to rise until July, with consecutive average monthly increases of almost 2%.
In the second half of 2022, the market showed signs of decreasing intensity, with monthly variations cooling below 1% on two occasions, even reaching negative territory in September (-0.5%).
It follows that, despite reaching a robust value of 18.7%, the year-on-year change recorded in December shows a contraction compared to the records of the second half of the year, when this indicator reached an unprecedented peak of 21.1% (in August), and it is even the lowest since July,” the adviser said in a statement.
Price fluctuations on a quarterly basis confirm this slowing trend. The increases remained significant, but the increases got smaller each quarter.
As Confidencial Imobiliário notes, they went from a 5.5% increase in the 1st quarter of 2022 to 5% in the 2nd quarter, 3.7% in the 3rd quarter and 3.2% in the last three months of the year .
As market agents indicate, prices may stabilize this year. As Confidencial Imobiliário recalls, house prices started to rise significantly in 2017. That year they rose 12.8%, more than doubling the 5.6% increase in 2016.
In 2018 there was a price increase of 15.4%. And in the following year they rose by 15.8%. With the pandemic, there was a setback in this climb and in 2020 prices only increased by 4.8%.
With the Covid-19 outbreak more under control and consumer confidence in place, 2021 saw a further intensification of the increases, with a year-over-year increase of 12.2% in that year.
Source: DN
