Access to housing in Portugal

Abstract

The Portuguese housing market underwent significant changes in the transition between the 2010s and 2020s, directly impacting access to housing. The sharp rise in housing prices has been a widespread phenomenon throughout the country but with more intensity in the urban areas. This trend of rising housing prices followed a period of economic crisis in Portugal (2011–2014) and endured challenging times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021) and, more recently, the inflation crisis and rising interest rates on credit (2022–2023). This paper aims to assess the evolution of the housing market in Portugal between 2016 and 2023 and to understand how the market has responded to the different periods. The fundamental aim of the work is to identify the factors that have led to the recent rise in real estate prices and to evaluate the contemporary evolution of access to housing in Portugal.