Foreigners boosting property market in Portugal
The demand by foreigners to buy houses in Portugal grew twenty-one percent in January and February this year, compared to the last two months of 2021, according to data released from the real estate portal Imovirtual.
According to data released, this equates to 450,000 property searches to buy houses in Portugal. Compared to the same period last year (January and February 2021), searches by foreigners on Imovirtual stabilised, with an exception of a slight decrease of minus three percent. In total, international traffic represented over sixteen percent of demand for the months in question.
Representing just over ten percent of homebuyers in Portugal, data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) shows that foreign investors spend an average of €375,000 on a property.
Most searches came from Brazil (twenty-five percent of total international traffic), which ranks first among foreign users looking for a home in Portuguese territory. In line with the trend, already registered in 2021, France was second with fifteen percent followed by Switzerland with eleven percent and the United Kingdom with eight percent and the United States with six percent.
Foreign investors spend an average of €375,000 on property acquisitions in Portugal.
In relation to last year's total international traffic, a decrease in web searches from the United States was observed which in 2021 represented nine percent, already in regression compared to previous years and which at the beginning of 2022 was overtaken by the United Kingdom.
Nevertheless, market data reflects that between 2019 and 2021, around 25,000 homes were sold in Portugal to international investors, representing an investment of €7.3 billion which comprised of €3.8 billion coming from buyers in the European Union and €3.5 billion from buyers outside the EU.
"After some inevitable stagnation in the demand for real estate in Portugal by foreigners, due to the constraints of the pandemic, this growth compared to the end of 2021 is a positive sign of the increase in market dynamics again,” said Ricardo Feferbaum, managing director of Imovirtual. “Last year international traffic represented 16% of the total demand for Imovirtual, but this year we believe to resume or even exceed the values of 2019, above 20%".
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