Family difficulties cause home sales to decrease by 20%

The market already expected that 2023 would achieve this result. In a year marked by high interest rates and inflation, and with housing prices reaching historic levels, Portuguese families postponed what for the vast majority of them is the investment of a lifetime: buying a home. In 2023, they purchased 116,752 homes, a decrease of 19.8% compared to the previous year. Even in 2020, when the pandemic hit and the real estate sector ground to a halt for months, very few homes were sold (118,751).

However, in line with estimates by sector experts, prices did not suffer from a decline in demand. It rose by 8.2%, although there was a slowdown compared to the growth recorded in 2022 of 12.6%. In this context of the continued rise of real estate assets, the average acquisition value in the family sector reached €201,374, an increase of 7.5%. . Due to the lower number of homes sold, these households invested 13.8% less than in 2022, i.e. 23.5 billion euros.

Being the driving force par excellence of the real estate market, the decline of families has been reflected in the general behavior of the sector, which includes other investors, especially foreigners. As the National Institute of Statistics revealed yesterday, a total of 136,499 homes were sold in 2023, 18.7% fewer than in 2022. This is the lowest record number since 2017, the National Institute of Statistics noted. This decrease in the number of transactions was more pronounced in existing homes (-21.4%) than in new homes (-6.1%).

Global sales reached €28 billion, representing a decrease of 11.9% year-on-year. The value of families reached 85.5% of the total number of homes dealt with and 83.9% of the invested value. According to the National Institute of Statistics, the value of transactions for used homes decreased by 16.5% compared to 2022, reaching a total of 20.1 billion euros. The volume of new home sales increased by 2.6% to 7.9 billion. It should be noted that existing home prices rose by 8.7%, less than the 6.6% recorded for new properties.