Buying a house in Portugal is getting more and more expensive. In addition to inflation and rising construction costs, demand continues to heavily outweigh supply, and housing prices have reached levels incompatible with families' incomes - many of whom are already being pushed to the outskirts of major urban centres. Despite this, a ranking by British insurer CIA Landlords, places Lisbon, the city where expats also claim to be happiest, as one of the cities where the price of the square metre (m2) to buy a house is the cheapest. The average size of the houses is, nevertheless, less than 100 m2.
The British company analysed the average size of the houses in 30 of the most populated cities in the United Kingdom, comparing this data on a global scale, namely the cost of buying a house by average size. And in the 23 cities of the world analysed, Lisbon appears as the fifth cheapest city to buy property. Ahead of the Portuguese capital are the cities of Athens (Greece), Brussels (Belgium), Ottawa (Canada) and Madrid (Spain).
An 84 m2 house in Lisbon costs over 460 thousand euros
According to the study, to buy a mid-size house in the Portuguese capital (84 m2) you need to spend £4,881.83, about €5,543.55 at the current exchange rate. The cost of buying this house is therefore £410,073.72 (about €465,719). Lisbon appears in the fifth position of the cheapest cities to buy property in the world, but is also one of the cities with the smallest houses - it occupies 16th place if we analyse only the average size.
Canberra, in Australia, is the city with the largest houses - the average size is around 214 m2 - followed by Wellington, in New Zealand, (202 m2) and Washington, in the USA (201 m2). Unsurprisingly, Hong Kong presents itself as the most expensive city-state in the world to buy a home. The price per square metre stands at £25,099.05 per square metre, around €28,528.48. The cost of an average size house, 45 m2, comes to £1,129,457.25, about €1,284,198.24. Beijing, in China, as well as London, in the United Kingdom, and Paris, in France, also appear in the top of the cities where the average cost is highest.
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