The municipalities where it is cheapest to buy a house are in the interior of the country, show INE data analysed by idealista/news.
Choosing the perfect place to buy a home is no easy task, at a time when prices continue to rise (albeit at a slower pace) and interest rates on home loans are on the rise. Those who want to escape the frenetic life of the big urban centres, have more contact with nature and a better quality of life, can consider living in the interior of the country. And you also have the advantage of buying a house at a more affordable price. Especially because it is precisely in the interior where the 10 cheapest municipalities to buy a house in Portugal are located.
In Portugal, buying a house cost €1,509 per square metre (€/m2) in the last 12 months ending in March 2023 (+12.1% compared to the same period of the previous year), data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) published this Thursday (13 July) indicate. This means that those who went ahead with the purchase of a 100 square metre (m2) house spent, on average, around €151,000.
But the truth is that in 251 of the 300 municipalities with data available for the same period (out of a total of 308 municipalities), houses were sold for prices well below the national average. Of these, there are 193 municipalities where the prices of dwellings were less than 1,000 €/m2 and 64 municipalities with prices of less than 500 €/m2.
The 10 cheapest municipalities to buy a house are...
You have to travel to the interior of the country to find out about the cheapest municipalities to buy a house, where a home costs, on average terms, less than €30,000, as shown by data from the national statistics office.
Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo is even the municipality in the country where it is possible to find the cheapest houses of all, having registered the average price of 143 euros/m2 between April 2022 and March 2023. In other words, a 100 square metre house cost around 14.3 thousand euros in this municipality in the district of Guarda.
The second cheapest municipality to buy a house in Portugal is Sernancelhe, in the district of Viseu (201 €/m2) and the third is Fornos de Algodres, in the district of Guarda (217 €/m2). In these two municipalities, a house sold in the last year ending March 2023 cost, in average terms, €20.1 thousand and €21.7 thousand, respectively.
The 10 cheapest municipalities to buy a house are spread across the districts of Guarda (4 municipalities), Viseu (3), Castelo Branco (2) and Santarém (1), all in the interior of the country.
| Ranking | District | Municipality | Price (euros/m2) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Guarda | Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo | 143 euros/ m2 |
| 2 | Viseu | Sernancelhe | 201 euros/ m2 |
| 3 | Guarda | Fornos de Algodres | 217 euros/ m2 |
| 4 | Viseu | Armamar | 233 euros/ m2 |
| 5 | Guarda | Almeida | 233 euros/m2 |
| 6 | Castelo Branco | Vila Velha de Ródão | 234 euros/m2 |
| 7 | Guarda | Pinhel | 250 euros/m2 |
| 8 | Santarém | Mação | 252 euros/m2 |
| 9 | Castelo Branco | Penamacor | 270 euros/m2 |
| 10 | Viseu | Vila Nova de Paiva | 283 euros/m2 |
Which are the 10 municipalities where it is most expensive to buy a house?
As you might expect, it is in the country's major urban centres - the districts of Lisbon, Faro and Porto - that you will find the most expensive municipalities to buy a house in Portugal. In first place is the country's capital, where houses were sold for an average price of €3,965/m2 in the last year ending March 2023. That is, in the municipality of Lisbon a house cost almost 400 thousand euros.
Cascais and Oeiras, also in the district of Lisbon, followed, where the prices of houses sold stood at 3,574 euros/m2 and 3,093 euros/m2 in that period, data from the Portuguese statistics office also reveal.
In this list, four Algarve municipalities follow: Loulé, Lagos, Aljezur and Vila do Bisco, where buying a house was more expensive in the last year than in the Invicta city. It should be noted that the municipality of Porto appears in 8th place, with the average house price at 2,609 euros/m2.
At the bottom of the list of the 10 municipalities where buying a house is most expensive is Albufeira (€2,586/m2), in the Algarve, and Odivelas (€2,448/m2), in Lisbon.
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