Foreign buyers are very active in Portugal (Idealista.pt), with 20% of transactions, the majority of which coming from French, British and Chinese buyers:
- Foreign buyers still represent 1 in 5 transaction in Portugal, which places Portugal as #1 destination for foreign buyers in Europe
- France (26%), UK (19%) and China (13%) rank top foreign buyers, the rest (the other 42% that we can’t neglect) being international buyers from Brazil, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Russia, Netherlands, Ukraine, Sweden and Ireland, by order of importance
According to Luis Lima – President of the Associação dos Profissionais e Empresas de Mediação Imobiliária de Portugal (APEMIP) – while French buy in all Lisbon, Cascais, Porto and the Algarve, the Chinese mostly buy in Lisbon and the British in the Algarve.
France, United Kingdom and China
What’s interesting to see is that French buyers are growing by 10% compared to 2014, getting to 26% of total foreign buyers, while Chinese are down 5% but still at 13%. This graph below shows the full trends.
20% of buyers are international home buyers
With 20% of total transactions made by international buyers, Portugal ranks higher than Spain with its 17% of international buyers[2].
60% of foreigners on the luxury real estate market
But when it comes to Luxury market in Lisbon, according to Pedro Lancastre, Managing Director of JLL Portugal who spoke to present the study «Mercado Residencial – Dinâmica Inigualável »[3], foreign buyers represent an astonishing 60% of the market.
Why so many foreign buyers?
To simplify, 1 million euros will get an investor 420 square meters in Lisbon while only 61 square meters in Paris and 19 square meters in London. Those averages provided by Global Property Guide help to have a global understanding, but the study from JLL Portugal also provides more in-depth info about the price per square meter on the Prime real estate market in 12 areas of Lisbon, as you can read below :
- Avenida da Liberdade: 6.000 to 9.000 euros per m2
- Chiado/Santa Catarina: 5.500 to 8.000 euros per m2
- Príncipe Real/São Bento: 4.750 to 7.500 euros per m2
- Zona Histórica: 4.000 to 6.500 euros per m2
- Zona Ribeirinha: 4.000 to 5.500 euros per m2
- Lapa/Estrela: 4.000 to 5.000 euros per m2
- Campo de Ourique/Amoreiras: 3.000 to 5.500 euros per m2
- Avenidas Novas: 3.000 to 5.750 euros per m2
- Colina de Santana: 3.000 to 4.500 euros per m2
- Restelo/Belém: 3.500 to 6.000 euros per m2
- Parque das Nações: 3.500 to 6.000 euros per m2
- Estoril/Cascais: 5.000 to 12.000 euros per m2
Number of houses sold in Portugal each year since 2009
Well, here are the trends in the last 6 years :
- The number of houses sold per year is slowly getting back to what its 2011 level, with now 84,215 transactions in Portugal in 2014 (therefore between 20,000 and 30,000 sales to foreign buyers)
- Prices are up 27% nationwide since Q1 2014 and up 18% on the high-end market, after 5 years of stability (2008 to 2013)
Portugal is luring in Chinese and French buyers with specific programs for international buyers. This way, we can only expect this percentage of foreign buyers to keep being very high in the coming years.
Chinese buyers and the Golden Visa
For the Chinese, the Golden Visa is playing an important role [4]:
« Portugal has been trying to lure in China’s new well-off class by offering them residence permits that allow them to travel freely throughout most of Europe.”
Under the Golden Visa scheme, foreign investors buy a property worth 500,000 euros ($566,000) or more and keep it five years to receive residency rights in Portugal.
The golden visas enable Chinese people to travel freely in Europe.
Since its launch, the scheme has raked in more than 1.2 billion euros. A total of “2,022 golden visas have been granted, mostly to Chinese nationals.”
French buyers and the fiscal advantages offered by Portugal
For the French, it’s the price mostly as well as fiscal advantages that we won’t detail here. According to Ricardo Simões[5], Director of French-Portuguese Chamber of Commerce (CCIFP) : « People who can’t buy in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur end up buying in Portugal, where a house with a pool can cost 250 or 300 thousand euros, while in France that would be 600 to 700 thousand euros. It’s obvious that they sell their apartment in which they lived for years and then use this money to buy in Portugal. »
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[1]http://www.idealista.pt/news/imobiliario/habitacao/2016/05/20/30656-franceses-ja-sao-os-estrangeiros-que-compram-mais-casas-em-portugal
[2] https://foreignbuyerswatch.com/2016/05/04/spain-unusually-well-supported-by-international-buyers/
[3] http://www.idealista.pt/news/imobiliario/habitacao/2016/05/17/30635-casas-de-luxo-em-lisboa-60-dos-compradores-sao-estrangeiros-mas-ha-mais-portugueses-a?gallery-item=2
[4] https://www.yahoo.com/news/portugal-property-continues-lure-foreigners-070814877.html?ref=gs
[5] http://www.idealista.pt/news/imobiliario/habitacao/2015/12/17/29495-porto-esta-a-ser-descoberto-pelos-franceses
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