Between 2019 and 2023, requests for the licensing of 128,800 new apartments were received by municipalities across Portugal, reveals Confidencial Imobiliário. Of this universe of planned apartments, however, only 59%, of more than 75,550 homes, were actually licensed and started construction, leaving a 41% share of the potential supply on hold, representing a total of 53,200 apartments.

This pool of unfinished supply is equivalent to the volume of apartments completed in the same period, which were completely absorbed by demand. According to analysis by Confidencial Imobiliário, between 2019 and 2023, 48,900 new apartments will have been completed in the country, and it is estimated that they will have been completely sold, according to projections of transactions carried out by the SIR-Sistema Residencial database. This means that, in the last five years, it would have been possible to double the new residential supply.

The data results from an analysis by Confidencial Imobiliário of data from pre-certificates issued by ADENE, which reflect the investment intentions of real estate development, and data from housing licensing from INE-National Institute of Statistics.

“These data show that there is a very relevant gap between investment intentions and the work actually launched. Furthermore, this gap has been getting worse with each new year, in such a way that the ratio between works, given to us by licenses issued, and projects with licensing requests, given by pre-certificates, has reduced from 74% in 2021 to 53% in 2023”, comments Ricardo Guimarães, director of Confidencial Imobiliário.

“The freezing of such an important share of the planned supply reflects, above all, the cycle of instability of recent years, marked by the pandemic, war, inflation, rising interest rates and, at a national level, the More Housing package, a context that in practice, meant taking 53,000 new apartments off the market.

“This has been a particularly striking situation in the last year, as shown in the Portuguese Investment Property Survey, which we carry out in partnership with APPII, and whose most recent edition reveals that instability and political risks were the factors that most worsened and penalised the increase in supply in 2023. At the same time, the lack of demand appears to be the least of the sector's concerns”, concludes Ricardo Guimarães.