Today, families are faced with a high cost of living, rising house prices and even greater difficulty in obtaining a mortgage, due to rising interest rates. All these factors complicate the process of buying a house. But for those thinking of moving to another city, there is good news: there are 192 municipalities in the country where the median house price is less than 1,000 € per square metre (€/m2). And there are still 60 municipalities where you can buy a house for less than 500 €/m2. Find out which are the 10 cheapest municipalities to buy a house in Portugal.
Buying a house in Portugal cost, in median terms, 1,541 €/m2 in the 12 months ending in the second quarter of 2023 (+10% compared to the same period last year), according to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) published on Wednesday 25th October. This means that anyone who goes ahead with the purchase of a 100 square metre (m2) house will spend around €154 thousand.
Analysing the cost of buying a house with a magnifying glass, it is clear that in 252 Portuguese municipalities the median house price in this period was lower than the national median. These figures show that it is the high house prices in the municipalities located in the major urban centres, such as Lisbon, Porto and Faro, that are driving up prices nationwide.
Not least because the vast majority of Portuguese municipalities with available data - the sample includes 301 municipalities out of a total of 308 - have much lower house prices. There were 192 municipalities where the median cost of houses sold was less than 1,000 €/m2 and 60 municipalities where the median price was below 500 €/m2. Discover the median value of houses sold in the last 12 months ending in June on this map prepared by idealista/news.
How much does it cost to buy a house in each municipality?
The 10 cheapest municipalities to buy a house are...
Unsurprisingly, it is precisely in the interior of the country that the cheapest municipalities to buy a house are concentrated. Sernancelhe is even the cheapest of them all, where the median cost of houses sold was 205 €/m2. This means that in this municipality in the Viseu district a house cost around 20,500 €, in median terms, between July 2022 and June 2023.
The second cheapest municipality to buy a house in Portugal is Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo (209 €/m2). And the third is Fornos de Algodres (215 €/m2). In these two municipalities in the district of Guarda, a house sold in the last year ending in June 2023 cost, in median terms, €20.9 thousand and €21.5 thousand €, respectively.
This is followed by other municipalities in the district of Guarda (Mêda, Almeida and Pinhel) and also municipalities in the districts of Castelo Branco (Vila Velha de Ródão), Viseu (Armamar), Santarém (Mação) and Coimbra (Pampilhosa da Serra). And the median cost of housing in these municipalities was a maximum of 30,100 € in this period.
10 cheapest municipalities to buy a house (prices in euros/m2)
Where is it most expensive to buy a house?
Nor is it news that it is precisely in the country's major urban centres, such as Lisbon, Faro and Porto, that it is most expensive to buy a house. In the municipality of Lisbon, houses were sold for a median price of 4,080 €/m2 in the last year ending June 2023. This means that families spent an average of 408,000 € on a house.
Just behind are Cascais and Oeiras, also in the Lisbon district, where the prices of houses sold stood at 3,667 €/m2 and 3,145 €/m2 in that period, respectively, according to the Portuguese statistics office.
The next four places in the ranking of the most expensive municipalities to buy a house in Portugal are made up of municipalities in the Faro district: Loulé, Lagos, Vila do Bisco and Aljezur. Porto comes in eighth place with a median price of 2,684 €/m2.
The last two places on the list are once again occupied by Algarve municipalities: Albufeira (2,660 €/m2) and Tavira (2,570 €/m2).
10 most expensive municipalities to buy a house (prices in euros/m2)
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