The year 2022 ended with a record of residential supply at a minimum of around 15 years, accounting for around 47,200 homes for sale in mainland Portugal in the 4th quarter of the year, as determined by Confidencial Imobiliário within the scope of the SIR- Residential Information System. Of the supply accounted for in the 4th quarter, 17,600 are new homes (37%) and 29,600 are used (63%)
This is the lowest quarterly offer volume since mid-2007 and consolidates two years of successive reductions in the portfolio of housing available for sale in the country. Although these contractions are tenuous, they reflect a persistent trajectory, in such a way that the 47,200 dwellings registered in the 4th quarter of 2022 are 25% below the levels observed at the start of 2021, when accounting for a volume of around 63,000 units
According to Ricardo Guimarães, director of Confidencial Imobiliário, “the tendency to reduce supply has been visible both in new and used housing, reflecting the double circumstance of a low replacement capacity for new products and an expanding demand, which which has also resulted in a high rate of absorption of existing fires. This structural lack of supply remains one of the main reasons why the appreciation pace remains so high.”
The downward trend in supply has been particularly evident in the Metropolitan Areas of Lisbon and Porto. In the 4th quarter of 2022, companies participating in the SIR reported a total of 20,700 dwellings on offer in the Lisbon region, also a minimum of 15 years and in contrast to a quarterly stock of around 29,000 registered two years earlier. But, more importantly, in less than half of what the standards of this market were in 2009 and 2010, when the stock on offer per quarter exceeded 50,000 units.
In the Porto Metropolitan Area, the volume on offer in the 4th quarter of 2022 totaled just over 7,000 units. In this region, even if the offer presents a less consistent behavior – with the quarters oscillating between a reduction and expansion behavior-, the market reality is also currently quite different from the turn of the previous decade. Between 2009 and 2012, the Porto Metropolitan Region had more than 20,000 dwellings
per quarter on offer. In the case of this region, despite the downward trend, the stock for the 4th quarter is not the lowest in 15 years, matching the reality of mid-2019.
