The scarcity of homes for sale is the factor that has contributed most to the increase in house prices in the country. And the problem has gotten worse. At the end of last year, there were just over 47,000 homes for sale on the national market, the lowest number in the past 15 years.
The total housing supply in the country amounted to exactly 47,200 homes in the last quarter of 2022, of which 17,600 are new (37% of the total) and 29,600 are in use (63%). The market diagnosis was made by Confidencial Imobiliário, which is based on data from the SIR-Sistema de Informação Residencial.
This housing offer is “at least about 15 years”, says the consultant specialized in statistical data of the sector. In a statement, he stressed that “this is the lowest quarterly supply volume since mid-2007 and is a consolidation of two years of consecutive reductions in the country’s for-sale portfolio.”
As he notes, “the 47,200 registered homes in the 4th quarter of 2022 are 25% below the level of early 2021, taking into account a volume of about 63,000 units”. The contraction in supply “reflects an ongoing trajectory”, emphasizes Confidencial Imobiliário.
For Ricardo Guimarães, director of Confidencial Imobiliário, “this lack of structural supply remains one of the main reasons why the pace of valuation remains so high”.
According to him, “the downward trend in supply is visible in both new and second-hand housing, due to the dual circumstance of low replacement capacity for new products and growing demand, which has also resulted in a high rate of absorption of existing fires. “.
Acute shortage in Lisbon and Porto
In the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto, where there is a high population density, the problem of supply shortages is more acute than in the rest of the country.
The Lisbon region had 20,700 homes for sale in the last quarter of last year, also for a minimum of 15 years. This number is in stark contrast to the supply of 29 thousand homes registered two years earlier. But, as the consultant emphasizes, by the end of 2022 the value of the supply on the market was less than half of the norms in 2009 and 2010, when the supply of stock exceeded 50 thousand units per quarter.
In the metropolitan region of Porto, the supply amounted to just over seven thousand homes, in this case corresponding to the reality of mid-2019. However, a decade earlier, between 2009 and 2012, the region had more than 20 thousand fires offered per quarter.
Sónia Santos Pereira is a journalist for Dinheiro Vivo
Source: DN
