Number of houses traded rose 23.7% in the second quarter

The housing buying and selling market continues to accelerate. Between April and June, prices at the national level rose 11.2% year-on-year and the number of transactions rose 23.7%.

45,619 households were transacted, more than the 40,716 of the first three months. And the value of sales amounted to approximately 6200 million euros, 34.9% more than in the second quarter of 2017.

The National Institute of Statistics (INE) Housing Price Index (IPHab) shows that price growth slowed by 1 percentage point over the first quarter, interrupting a period of five consecutive quarters of acceleration. The growth rate of the average rate of change in prices of existing housing was double that of new housing (12.6% and 6.3%, respectively).

Statistics on local housing prices released by the INE do not measure the average value of transactions, but average ones, in order to reduce the effect of extreme values and eliminate possible seasonal effects on price behavior. The INE works with data provided by the tax administration.

The IPHab, which began to be calculated in 2013, shows that "all regions of the continent recorded quarterly sales highs in the period. The Lisbon Metropolitan Area, which accounted for 35.8% of total transactions, recorded 16,331 sales. The North region, the second with the largest number of transactions (29.1%), surpassing for the first time the threshold of 13,000 transactions. For the third time in the last four quarters, the Central region represented more than 7000 sales, while the Algarve surpassed 4,000. Alentejo presented for the fifth consecutive quarter a number above 2000 units.

Between April and June 2018, the value of transactions carried out in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area was approximately 3.0 billion euros, 48.1% of the total. In the North, for the fifth consecutive quarter, the value of transactions exceeded 1 billion euros. Alentejo and Algarve surpassed for the first time, in a quarter, the 200 and 700 million euros, respectively.