Foreigners buy 40% of refurbishment properties

Overseas citizens represented around 40% of property sales for refurbishment in Portugal in 2020 according to figures for Areas of Urban Rehabilitation.

And the amount invested by International buyers in Portuguese property only fell 3% despite the pandemic.
Foreigners invested €739 million in purchasing houses and apartments in areas earmarked by the government as Areas for Urban Rehabilitation (ARU), an amount which represented a fall of just 3% on the €761.8 million transacted in 2019.
In terms of the number of properties, the fall was 10% with 1,509 transactions in 2020 compared to 1,673 in 2019.
The data was released by Confidencial Imobiliário and covers housing transactions made by private individuals in the zones covered by ARU Lisbon.
Overseas capital therefore represented 40% of the total amount invested in residential property in the Lisbon ARU and 30% of all properties transacted in those areas in 2020.
On the other hand, national investment in residential property in these urban regeneration areas in Lisbon fell 19% in terms of the amount invested to €1.1Bn and down 22% in terms of the number of properties to 3,462 units.
In 2019, 35% of the amount invested in housing in the Lisbon ARU was international and 65% was national.