By Andrea Hargraves 
The Portuguese increasingly want to live in a garage or an old shop, and now with the use of housing in a simplified way, reveals on Monday “Diário de Notícias”: The most economical solution is to attract clients, but the supply is scarce, according to real estate agents. Which ensures that real estate transfer is insufficient to mitigate the crisis.
The “Simple Urban Licence”, published in January this year, has increased the demand for these spaces: the scarcity of houses on the market, as well as high prices, have led the Portuguese to find alternative housing solutions: but, according to the publication, here too there is demand. More than the show.
Between February and April of this year, Re/Max reported an 8.2% increase in demand for garages, 7.6% for stores, and 1.1% for warehouses compared to the three months before the diploma was published. Manuel Alvarez, President of Portugal, recalls that the RE/MAX network “received, on average, 1,921 orders per month from stores in the previous three months, but in the following three months the number of orders exceeded 2,000 orders per month, with an average of 2,067 being worked on per month.” January reached 2,375 orders. He points out that “if we limit ourselves to buying and selling businesses only, demand for stores increased by 18.4% between the two periods, and across the three types of properties it reached 14%.”
Roy Torgal, CEO of Era, is aware of the “clear increase in demand for this type of property since the beginning of the year.” In the first five months of this year, Era Portugal recorded “an 84% increase in reported sales from garages, 172% from stores, and 158% from warehouses” compared to the same period in 2023.
According to Marco Tairom, CEO of Keller Williams Portugal, the demand for these spaces is due to an economic problem. “Garages, warehouses, and in some cases shops and offices, have a more attractive price per square meter than residential properties,” he asserts. However, although the spaces can be reconverted, the number of spaces for sale equals 2023 – approximately 800 spaces. Era reported a 30% year-over-year increase in garage listings in the first five months of this year, but a 30% decline in commercial space acquisitions and a 25% decline in warehouses.
The supply is concentrated in large cities. In Re/Max, 8.6% of these properties are located in the municipality of Lisbon, 5.1% in Sintra, 3% in Braga, 2.8% in Guimarães, 2.7% in Oeiras and 2.3% in Porto. In Era, the two largest cities in the country are adding the most exposure, but Leiria has emerged as the city with the most garage listings in the last five months.
The Simplex urban licensing system allows the conversion of real estate for residential use for qualified spaces for equipment, commerce and services. Interested parties simply have to inform the municipality of their intention in advance, which has 20 days to respond or initiate the inspection process.