Portugal house prices rise 18.4% in Q2 2026 as home sales fall 9%

A record price rise alongside fewer sales

Statistics Portugal (INE) published its latest local housing price figures on Friday, 23 October 2026. The median price of the 37,854 homes sold in the second quarter of 2026 reached 2,445 euros per square metre, 18.4% above the same quarter of 2025. That is a slight slowdown from the 19.8% rise recorded in the first quarter, which PÚBLICO described as the highest increase on record. Compared with the previous quarter, the median rose 4.6%.

Over a longer span, the increase is steeper. INE data cited by PÚBLICO put the rise between the second quarter of 2025 and the same period of 2026 at about 93%, which means prices have almost doubled in five years. The last recorded fall in house prices dates to 2013, when Portugal was under a financial adjustment programme imposed by the troika.

Demand has moved in the opposite direction. The number of transactions fell 9.0%, from 41,608 in the second quarter of 2025 to 37,854 in the same period of 2026. Sales had already dropped 10.5% in the first quarter, so the decline in transactions has persisted while prices kept climbing.

Rises in every sub-region

Prices rose in all 26 NUTS III sub-regions compared with a year earlier. The strongest increases were in Médio Tejo (25.4%), Oeste (24.0%), Lezíria do Tejo and the Azores (both 23.9%) and the Setúbal Peninsula (22.2%). Greater Lisbon recorded an 18.4% rise, equal to the national rate.

Price levels are highest in Greater Lisbon at 4,030 euros per square metre, followed by the Algarve at 3,500, the Setúbal Peninsula at 3,069, Madeira at 2,816 and the Porto metropolitan area at 2,669. The lowest median price was in Beiras e Serra da Estrela at 759 euros per square metre, while the smallest annual rise was in Terras de Trás-os-Montes, at 5.2%.

Foreign buyers paid more than residents. In Greater Lisbon, the median price per square metre for buyers with a tax residence abroad was 47.0% higher than for buyers with a tax residence in Portugal. In the Porto metropolitan area the gap was 37.5%.

Municipal divergence

Among the 24 municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, prices accelerated in 10 during the second quarter, down from 11 in the first. Loures (up 9.7 percentage points) and Matosinhos (up 9.5 points) recorded the biggest accelerations, while Guimarães posted the largest slowdown, down 13.4 percentage points.

Lisbon and Porto both decelerated, by 8.9 and 5.4 percentage points respectively. Lisbon remains the most expensive municipality at 5,299 euros per square metre, ahead of Cascais at 5,200 and Oeiras at 4,704.

PÚBLICO also reported on the most expensive parish in the country, in Lisbon, where a 30 square metre T0 (studio) has a median price of more than 223,000 euros, or over 7,400 euros per square metre.