There was welcome news for consumers and the economy at the start of this week as fresh figures confirmed that Portuguese real estate continues to flourish, with Lisbon tipped to be “the market to watch” for 2019, while the cost of fuel fell to its lowest level since 2016.
The sale price of real estate on mainland Portugal has risen by more than 15 percent in the space of this year.
According to the Confidencial Imobiliário Residential Price Index, the cost of property was up 15.6 percent in September 2018, when compared with the same month the year before.
The research also found year-on-year increases of over 10 percent have now been recorded every month since July 2017.
This year alone, valuations were consistently above 13.5 percent, reaching a high of 16.4 percent in May and settling in at around 15 percent ever since.
The housing price recovery cycle began five years ago, Confidencial Imobiliário says, in the last quarter of 2013, but for two of those years, year-on-year increases remained below three percent.
It was only in 2016, according to the national real estate specialists, that the pick-up really began to accelerate, with prices rising by between 3.5 percent and nine percent by the middle of last year, and significantly increasing the pace of growth since then, with double-digit year-on-year variations.
This cycle of successive increases led to prices being 10.6 percent above the pre-crisis period (2007) and having recovered 41.4 percent from their lowest level in June 2013.
More good news for the national real estate sector is that Lisbon has been announced as the number one European real estate investment destination for 2019.
This is according to the most recent edition of the ‘Emerging Trends in Real Estate’ study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the Urban Land Institute, which highlighted that “after the heyday of mature markets, interest is now moving to small but dynamic cities”.
After not featuring in the top ten this year (2018), the Portuguese capital is tipped to surpass cities like Berlin – 2018’s no.1 “Market to watch” – Dublin or Madrid, in terms of demand next year.
“With some of Europe’s major markets judged to be peaking, attention is shifting to smaller, dynamic cities: the “rising stars’”, the report explains, adding: “Lisbon is this year’s choice for overall prospects, rising 10 places to Number 1”, largely thanks to its “still relatively cheap labour and real estate”, “outsize returns” and “quality of life”.
The report states that the ten major cities earmarked by investors for 2019 – Lisbon, Berlin, Dublin, Madrid, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Helsinki, Vienna and Munich – are a “mix of smaller newcomers and larger tried and tested markets”.
It adds Brexit could benefit the rising cities, which traditionally are not always on investors’ radars.
The Portuguese economy “growing at a healthy pace” is another factor that, according to PwC, has helped its capital become “an international destination for companies, investors and tourists”.
Meanwhile, more positive news is that this week, fuel prices registered their biggest drop in almost three years.
The welcome drop was recorded on Monday morning, as oil prices continued to fall across the globe.
Diesel became cheaper by 3.5 cents a litre in Portugal, while unleaded fuel was reduced by three cents a litre.
The latest drop in petrol prices is the biggest since the beginning of 2016, while overall prices are now the same as they were back in May this year, following several successive months of price hikes.
Since last month, diesel has fallen by seven cents a litre, while unleaded petrol is now 12 cents a litre cheaper.
