Average time it takes to sell a house in Portugal fell in 2018

The average time that Portuguese properties are on the market has fallen / Pixabay

26 February 2019, 17:38

House prices have gone up enormously in Portugal recently, but this doesn’t mean that properties are on the market longer before being sold. On the contrary, the average time it takes to sell a house in Portugal has plummeted in the last five years (since 2013), especially in 2018.

In 2018, it took an average of 6 months to sell a house in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto, less time than in the same period from the previous year (7 and 8 months, respectively) and than in 2013 (9 and 11 months, respectively). In the Algarve, the annual fall is even greater, since the average sales time shortened by three months last year, from 12 to 9 months.

According to the Diário de Notícias Portuguese newspaper, and supported by data from Confidencial Imobiliário (Ci), this new outlook for the Portuguese real estate market has spread throughout the country and allows us to conclude that consumers now have greater purchasing power.

"At the height of the economic crisis, the time it took to sell a property increased. This variable never has very drastic variations, but it does reflect the decrease or increase in the liquidity of the economy," said Ricardo Guimarães, director of Ci, quoted by the publication.

Luís Lima, president of the Association of Real Estate Professionals and Companies of Portugal (Associação dos Profissionais e Empresas de Mediação Imobiliária de Portugal or APEMIP), said that "there are fewer houses to trade… And the ones that will be available will be the scrap that nobody wants."

He also warned that "contrary to what happened two years ago, or even last year, when buyers immediately accepted the proposed sale value, there are now more negotiations on sales prices and we are returning to normality… as time goes by, there will be more negotiation.”