Portugal House Prices 2026: Fastest Rise in the EU
Portuguese house prices rose 17.8% in the year to Q1 2026, the fastest in the EU, while sales fell 8.7%. What that means for buyers and the IMT bands.
Portuguese house prices rose faster than in any other EU country last quarter. Fewer homes actually changed hands.
House prices in Portugal rose 17.8% in the year to the first quarter of 2026, more than three times the EU average of 5.1%. Only 37,745 dwellings were sold, down 8.7% on the year. Both figures come from official statistics, and together they describe a market getting more expensive while it gets smaller.
| Market | Change (%) | |
|---|---|---|
| Portugal | +17.8% | |
| Spain | +12.8% | |
| EU average | +5.1% | |
| Germany | +1.4% | |
| France | +0.1% | |
| Finland | -2.0% |
Why is Portugal the fastest rising market in the EU?
The central bank gives three reasons. In its Financial Stability Report of May 2026, the Banco de Portugal writes that a shortage of supply is pressuring house prices in a context of robust demand, driven by government measures and by the significant participation of foreign buyers. Supply scarcity, state support schemes and international demand, in that order. Foreign demand is a live policy question across Iberia: Spain took the opposite route and ended its golden visa.
The supply side has a number attached to it. Patrícia Barão, president of APEMIP, the Portuguese association of estate agents, told Jornal Económico that Portugal makes roughly 25,000 new homes available each year against real demand closer to 70,000.
The Banco de Portugal also notes that this is not new. House prices rose 17.6% across 2025, against 9.1% in 2024, and Portugal recorded the largest annual residential price change of the countries it compares.
Why are fewer homes selling?
Not for lack of buyers, according to the people closest to the deals. Ricardo Sousa, chief executive of Century 21 Portugal, describes the mechanism directly: the challenge is no longer whether demand exists, it is turning that demand into actual access to housing. Too few suitable homes reach the market at prices families can carry, so interest fails to become a signed deed.
The transaction data comes from Statistics Portugal, the national statistics institute known as INE, which compiles the index from registered deeds rather than advertised prices. It counted 37,745 dwellings sold in the first quarter, down 8.7% on the year and 12.4% on the previous quarter, while total transaction value still rose 3.2% to 9.9 billion euro.
The affordability side of that squeeze is measured. The Banco de Portugal reports that in 2025 house prices rose 17.6% while disposable income rose 5.7%, and that prices have grown well above household income since 2015.
Foreign buyers are not the missing explanation either. Sales to foreign residents fell 15.6% in the first quarter, a third consecutive year of decline, according to figures reported by Dinheiro Vivo. In the same piece, Alfredo Valente, chief executive of iad Portugal, says the structural scarcity of supply keeps working as the support under prices.
Which homes are rising fastest?
Existing homes. INE records prices for existing dwellings up 19.7% over the year against 12.6% for new ones. That matters for scale as well as price, because the Banco de Portugal reports existing homes made up roughly 80% of all transactions in 2025.
| Market | Change (%) | |
|---|---|---|
| Existing homes | +19.7% | |
| All dwellings | +17.8% | |
| New builds | +12.6% |
IMT Jovem 2026: who pays no transfer tax?
Buyers aged 35 or under, on a first permanent home, up to a price the 2026 budget just moved. IMT is short for Imposto Municipal sobre as Transmissões Onerosas de Imóveis, the municipal tax paid when a property changes hands. The State Budget, Lei n.º 73-A/2025 of 30 December, updated the IMT transfer tax brackets in Article 83, and with them the ceilings that govern the young buyers' scheme: under IMT Jovem a qualifying purchase carries no IMT and no stamp duty up to 330,539 euro, with partial relief taxed at 8% up to 660,982 euro. The exemption is assessed against the whole property value, so a price above the first ceiling moves the purchase out of full exemption entirely.
For scale: divide INE's 9.9 billion euro in first quarter sales by its 37,745 transactions and the average sale works out to about 262,000 euro, still inside the full exemption ceiling.
There is a date attached to the wider package. Under Decreto-Lei n.º 44/2024 of 10 July, the state guarantee that lets eligible buyers under 35 finance up to 100% of a first home priced up to 450,000 euro applies to credit agreements signed by 31 December 2026. Caixa Geral de Depósitos, the state owned bank, lists the same conditions.
What the central bank is watching
The Banco de Portugal names a correction in residential property prices as an important risk to the Portuguese financial system, and its report lists housing credit growth and household indebtedness alongside it. That is a statement about system wide risk, not a forecast for any individual property, and the bank does not put a date on it.
We do not give buying or selling advice. What the published data does support is narrow and checkable: prices are rising fastest in the existing stock, fewer homes are trading, and the IMT threshold is a fixed number in a market that is not standing still. AiMYNDi reads the listing, the financials and the legal paperwork for a specific property so you can check those things yourself. You can see an example of what a report looks like before signing up.