House prices accelerate at the start of the year with a 16.3% rise
More than 41,000 homes were sold in the first quarter, with the total value rising 43% to 9.6 billion. House purchases by foreigners fall to lowest level since 2021.
House prices rose by 16.3% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025, accelerating by 4.7 percentage points compared to the previous three months and reaching a new all-time high, according to data released this Monday by INE, the Portuguese Statistics Institute.
Between January and March, 41,358 homes were sold in Portugal, 25% more than in the same period last year. The value of purchases and sales of residential property soared 42.9% compared to the first quarter of 2024, to 9.6 billion euros.
During this period, the increase in prices was more significant for existing homes (+17%) than for new homes (+14.5%). In terms of value traded, there were year-on-year variations of 43.2% in existing homes, totalling 7.0 billion euros, and 42% in new homes, totalling 2.6 billion euros.
Compared to the last quarter of 2024, the Housing Price Index increased by 4.8%, with the existing housing category also recording higher price growth than new housing, with variations of 5.3% and 3.7%, respectively.
According to the statistics office, 87% of the homes transacted in the first three months of the year were bought by families, “the highest relative weight since the second quarter of 2022”, totalling 35,967 units (27.2% up on a year earlier, but 7.4% down on the previous quarter). In terms of the value transacted, sales of homes to families totalled 8.3 billion euros, 86.2% of the total — up 46.3% year-on-year, but down 3.8% in quarter-on-quarter terms.
Only 5.1% of homes transacted in the first quarter (or 2,098 units) involved foreign buyers, of which 2.7% were residents of the European Union and 2.4% from other countries. “The relative weight of purchases by buyers with a tax domicile other than the national territory was the lowest since the second quarter of 2021”, says INE.
