November saw property sales at their best for the last three years.
According to data from the Portuguese Housing Market Survey (PHMS), the penultimate month of 2013 registered the highest number of property sales since September 2010.
And what’s even better, sales expectations are improving and new buyer inquiries have increased for the last four months.
House prices, though still falling, are doing so at a lesser rate than they were earlier in the year.
And further data shows that price expectations for the next three months are now a great deal less negative than at any point since the survey’s inception.
“Taken together, the sales market dynamic is steadily improving and this month’s results support this notion,” says the document.
In the lettings sector, the PHMS registered a “modest rise” in tenant demand but new landlord instructions fell. Lettings volume expectations also rose marginally.
But the tendency of recent surveys continues, the document reads, as rents continue to fall and are anticipated to reduce further over the next three months.
On a regional level, Lisbon leads the way in terms of sales market improvements. But several indicators in the Algarve were better this time round, according to the document.
On the other hand, the survey shows that Porto appears to be “lagging someway behind”. In the lettings sector, Porto was the only region to experience a fall in demand and negative lettings’ expectations.
Josh Miller, a senior economist at Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), said that the latest survey suggests “transaction levels in the sales market are at long last beginning to pick up, which is reflective of the better economic news flow across the country.”
Despite this, Miller explained that “for the time being however, this has yet to filter through into house prices”.
The PHMS is a survey organised by the RICS and Confidencial Imobiliário (CI) that gathers and analyses the opinions of real estate professionals about the prices, availability and demand of residential property in three areas of the country: Greater Lisbon, Greater Porto and the Algarve. Read the full survey results at www.confidencialimobiliario.com
Algarve lives up to expectations, according to ‘expats survey’
Meanwhile, the ‘2013 Meravista Algarve Expats Survey’, conducted by property portal Meravista.com, concluded that the Algarve is indeed “a great place to live”.
Anita van Huson from Meravista said: “We’re delighted to report that the boxes ticked and the comments penned by participating expats indicated that the Algarve has lived up to expectations as a great place to live, work, raise children, relax and inspire a little joie de vivre into everyday living. In fact, our survey confirmed our suspicions that the Algarve’s promise of a great lifestyle is one of the main pulls for people looking to relocate or retire abroad.”
The majority of those who completed the survey originated from the UK (over 76%), but there were responses from Dutch, German, Belgian, French, American and Canadian nationals. Forty-five per cent of respondents had retired to the Algarve, but the remaining 55% comprised people of all ages, some with school-age children, a number employed in the region and several running their own enterprises. Read the full survey results meravista.com (article under ‘blog’ – Through the Meravista Keyhole’)
