Brits increase demand for housing in Algarve resorts

  • Lusa
  • 25 October 2022

According to the latest report on the Portuguese 'resorts' market, the number of units transacted in 'resorts' increased by 20% in the first half of the year.

Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic have increased demand from the British market for housing in ‘resorts’ in the Algarve in the first half of the year, especially in Loulé and Albufeira, an industry official told Lusa on Monday.

“There were some factors that accelerated or will have motivated more demand, Brexit [the UK’s exit from the European Union] and also the pandemic, which in the meantime attracted more people to this type of product, of various nationalities, including the British, who have a fairly old relationship with Portugal,” said the executive director of the Portuguese Association of Residential Tourism and Resorts.

According to Pedro Fontainhas, although the British relationship with the Algarve is a “long tradition” and has lasted “for several decades”, those factors help explain the increase in the volume of sales of housing in ‘resorts’ in the first half of the year, with Britons accounting for more than 50% of demand in Albufeira and Loulé.

“The choice of Albufeira and Loulé has to do with the fact that there is more supply and that’s where the so-called golden triangle is located”, in other words, the axis between Vilamoura, Quinta do Lago and Vale do Lobo, in the municipality of Loulé, where there is a “quite distinctive luxury offer”.

Albufeira, one of the Algarve’s most touristy areas, home to half the region’s hotels, is “a very relevant British hub”, he added, recalling that although there is demand in other parts of the Algarve, it is more concentrated in these two adjoining municipalities in the Faro district.

According to the latest report on the Portuguese ‘resorts’ market produced by a real estate company in partnership with the Portuguese Association of Residential Tourism and Resorts, supported by Turismo de Portugal (the country’s tourist board), the number of units transacted in ‘resorts’ increased by 20% in the first half of the year compared to the second half of 2021.

“The greater diversification of nationalities in the various destinations and the strengthening of the British in their traditional market are some of the reasons for the half-year growth of 20% in transacted units to one of the highest levels of activity since 2017,” reads a summary of the report to which Lusa had access.

According to the report, Albufeira and Loulé and the Atlantic Coast – between the West region and the Alentejo coast -, account for about a third of sales each.

“After in 2021 having diversified the destinations to invest in, the British once again focused on the main axis of the Algarve for the purchase of ‘resort’ housing, that is, the Albufeira-Loulé axis,” reads the summary.

The Albufeira-Loulé axis recorded average sale prices of €4.625 per square metre, with Brits accounting for 56% of international purchases in that axis in the first half of 2022.

“This had been the pattern of the international market between 2018 and 2020, but in 2021 the British lost expression on this axis (to around 40%) and showed signs of opening up to markets outside the Algarve,” it is noted.