Construction costs hit new record
Building costs have hit a new record in Portugal according to the latest statistics from Portugal’s National Statistics Institute (INE).
The New Housing Construction Costs Index displayed an average variation of 5.7% in 2021, which represents a 3.3 percentage points increase on 2020. The increase was fuelled by the rising costs of building materials and manpower in 2021, with like-for-like variations of 8.0% and 5.1%.
Back in 2016, the average annual variation for the costs of building new houses didn’t even reach 3% and stayed there until 2021 when it hit a new record of 5.7%.
Despite the sharp increase in construction costs in 2021, there was a slight alleviation in costs in December on November. The total variation rate was -1.4% or -0.7% for building materials and -2.3% for manpower that month.
November witnessed the greatest average variation rate at 8.3% (provisional figures). That month, the cost of materials climbed 9.4%, and manpower 6.8%.