12% of all homes bought by foreigners

The Portuguese real estate market continues to be dominated by national buyers, but overseas purchasers now represent 12% of all sales.

According to statistics published by the Bank of Portugal in its Financial Stability Report for November, “For four consecutive quarters ending in June, non-resident buyers represented 11.7% of the value of housing transactions in Portugal. This compared to 8.9% of all transactions made by foreigners the year before”.
The total amount of transactions involving non-resident buyers reached almost €30Bn in the second quarter of the year. In 2021, for the same period, it was below €25Bn.
In the Lisbon Urban Rehabilitation Area (ARU) alone, the Bank of Portugal, citing data from Confidencial Imobiliário, reveals that 801 properties were bought by non-residents, 36% more than in the same period of 2021.
The French were the main group of buyers (15%) in Lisbon, whereas the largest group of buyers that bought homes in Lisbon had been the Chinese with Confidencial Imobiliário recording 1,371 properties purchased by Chinese nationals (18%) for that period.
The Bank of Portugal reveals that housing transactions by non-residents have significantly increased in the recent past, particularly those involving non-EU nationals, and with the demand house prices have gone up.
“Growth in house prices has been sharper in regions where the number of non-resident transactions has been greater and the percentage of transactions of housing financed by internal mortgages is less”, states the Bank of Portugal.