The scarcity of homes for sale is the factor that has most contributed to the increase in housing prices in the country. And the problem has been getting worse. At the end of last year, there were just over 47,000 properties for sale in the national market, the lowest number in the last 15 years.
The total residential offer in the country amounted to precisely 47,200 dwellings in the last quarter of 2022, of which 17,600 were new (37% of the total) and 29,600 were used (63%). The market diagnosis was carried out by Confidencial Imobiliário, which was based on data from the SIR-Sistema de Informação Residencial.
This residential offer is “at a minimum of about 15 years”, says the consultant specialized in statistical data of the sector. In a statement, he stresses that “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”.
As he points out, “the 47,200 homes 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”. The contractions in supply “reflect a persistent trajectory”, underlines Confidencial Imobiliário.
For Ricardo Guimarães, director of Confidencial Imobiliário, “this lack of structural offer continues to be one of the main reasons for the pace of appreciation to remain so high”.
In his opinion, “the downward trend in supply has been visible in both new and second-hand housing, reflecting the double circumstance of low replacement capacity for new products and expanding demand, which has also resulted in a high rate of absorption of existing fires”.
Acute shortage in Lisbon and Porto
In the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto, where there is a high population density, the problem of supply shortages is more acute than in the rest of the country.
The Lisbon region had, in the last quarter of last year, 20,700 homes for sale, also a minimum of 15 years. This number contrasts with the offer recorded two years earlier, which amounted to 29 thousand dwellings. But, as the consultant highlights, the value of the offer on the market at the end of 2022 represented less than half of the standards in 2009 and 2010, when the stock on offer per quarter exceeded 50 thousand units.
In the Porto Metropolitan Area, the volume of supply amounted to just over seven thousand homes, in this case matching the reality of mid-2019. However, a decade earlier, between 2009 and 2012, the region had more than 20 thousand fires per quarter on offer.
Sónia Santos Pereira is a journalist for Dinheiro Vivo
