Construction costs for new housing in November up 1.6% MoM, 8.5% YoY

Construction costs for new housing in Portugal rose 1.6% in November to a level 8.5% higher than the same month in 2020, and the highest level in 13 years, according to a release from Statistics Portugal (INE) on Thursday.

The year-on-year increase in construction costs is also the largest since September 2008, when costs were also up 8.5% on the year, according to the INE series.

By components, the prices of materials were up 9.4% on the year (after a year-on-year increase of 8.9% in October) while labour costs were up 7.3% (having been up 5.2% in October).

According to the INE, the cost of materials contributed 5.4 percentage points to the formation of the year-on-year rate of change of the New Housing Construction Costs Index (5.1 percentage points in October) and the labour component contributed 3.1 percentage points (2.2 percentage points in the previous month).

November’s 1.6% increase from October was made up of a rise in materials costs of 0.8% and of labour costs of 2.8%.