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In Five Years, International Buyers Acquired More Than 70,000 Homes in Portugal

30 October 2018

Foreign investment “encouraged” and boosted the recovery of the Portuguese real estate market in recent years. The figures leave no room for doubt: in the five years between 2012 and 2017, international buyers acquired 70,700 homes in Portugal, for a total of 11.1 billion euros.

According to the Association of Construction, Public Works and Service Industries (AECOPS), non-residents invested around 800 million euros in real estate in the Portuguese market in 2012. That figure more than tripled by 2017, when investments reached a total of  €2.8 billion.

2014 was the year in which the relative weight of international buyers in the total amount of transactions reached a peak (15.7% of the total), declining since then to 11.5% in 2017. “A significant part of the acquisitions” in 2014 went to properties worth over 500,000 euros, accounting almost 44% of purchases. This representativeness declined, however: by 2017, properties exceeding this amount represented just 36.3% of acquisitions.

The Algarve is still the preferred region for foreign investors. The area accounts for 43% of the acquisitions in 2017, followed by Lisbon and the Alentejo (37%) and North/Center (17%). Almost half of the total amount transacted by non-residents in the last five years corresponded to purchases made by residents from the United Kingdom (18.3%), France (17.9%) and China (12.7%).

Original Story: Idealista

Translation: Richard Turner