Portugal’s housing market found its footing again between April and June, but the rebound tells two different stories depending on who’s buying. Nationwide transaction numbers bounced back sharply after a rough start to the year, according to fresh figures from Confidencial Imobiliário — yet the same window kept confirming a trend foreign buyers have been living with for three years: their share of the market keeps shrinking.
What the numbers actually show
Portugal’s housing market regained momentum in the second quarter of 2026, with home sales across the mainland rising 7% compared with the previous three months, according to new figures from property data company Confidencial Imobiliário, reversing the 12.1% decline recorded in the first quarter. In raw terms, that meant roughly 39,210 homes changing hands in Q2, up from around 36,650 in the opening quarter of the year — though activity remains below the quarterly average of around 41,000 transactions seen at the end of 2025.
The recovery wasn’t confined to Lisbon. The Lisbon metropolitan area saw 11,790 home sales during the quarter, up 7% after an 8.4% fall in the opening months of the year. In the Porto metropolitan area, transactions increased by 7.9% to 6,500 homes, following a 10.3% decline in the first quarter, and the Algarve also returned to growth, with 2,875 homes sold between April and June, a 6.3% increase on the previous quarter after a sharp 16.6% contraction at the start of the year.
Ricardo Guimarães, the company’s director, put it plainly: “The second quarter marked a turning point after a period of weaker activity,” pointing to stabilising Euribor rates and easing geopolitical tension as factors restoring buyer confidence. Prices, meanwhile, didn’t pause for the slowdown at all — house prices continued to climb, with Confidencial Imobiliário’s Residential Price Index recording quarterly growth of 3.5% in the second quarter, slightly higher than the 3.2% increase registered in the first three months of the year.
Where foreign buyers fit in
The volume rebound is national, driven overwhelmingly by domestic and resident buyers. Foreigners have been moving the opposite direction for a while now. Home sales to non-residents have been falling for three years, and at the beginning of 2026 transactions to non-residents dropped by 15.6% year-on-year, to 1,770 homes. That’s not a one-quarter blip — it’s the continuation of a slide that predates this year entirely.
Zoom out to the full 2025 picture and the same pattern holds across nationalities. EU-resident buyers acquired 4,416 dwellings in 2025, down 9.6% year-on-year, while buyers resident in non-EU countries purchased 4,055 dwellings, down 17.1%. Analysts see a fairly direct line from policy to behaviour here: idealista noted that policy changes may help explain the decline in non-resident purchases, including the end of the Golden Visa real estate route and the replacement of the Non-Habitual Resident regime with a more restrictive framework.
It’s worth stressing that international buyers haven’t vanished — several national policies have changed the conditions for non-resident buyers, while international demand for homes remains visible across many cities, particularly on the islands, and foreign families and investors, including Portuguese emigrants, continue to search actively for residential property in many parts of the country. What’s changed is the pace of actual closings, not the level of interest.
What this means if you’re timing a purchase
For foreigners weighing when to buy, the Q2 rebound is genuinely useful signal, but not for the reason it might first appear. It shows Portuguese demand recovering as financing costs stabilise — which supports the case that prices aren’t about to soften just because fewer international buyers are closing deals. A shrinking foreign share doesn’t mean shrinking competition for the same stock; it mostly reflects that the two routes that used to funnel foreign capital straight into residential property — the Golden Visa real-estate option and open-door NHR — are both gone, pushing overseas buyers toward slower, more deliberate paths: relocating first, securing tax residency, then buying as residents rather than as speculative non-resident investors.
Practically, that means budgeting for the full non-resident cost stack if you’re buying from abroad — IMT transfer tax, stamp duty, and notary costs can run to 8–9% of the purchase price for non-residents — and lining up a NIF and Portuguese bank account well before you make an offer, since neither can be arranged in a rush during a bidding process. Our relocation hub walks through the sequencing most foreign buyers get wrong.
What to watch next
The next data points worth tracking are Confidencial Imobiliário’s Q3 release and Banco de Portugal’s next lending survey, which will show whether the rate-driven confidence holds into autumn or whether the earlier caution about rising borrowing costs resurfaces. Anyone structuring a purchase around visa or tax timing should get current figures confirmed directly with Portal das Finanças and AIMA rather than relying on quarter-old averages — this is a market still finding its new shape, and outcomes depend on individual circumstances and professional advice, not headline percentages. For structuring a purchase, NIF, or residency alongside it, GrowIN’s services team can walk through the current requirements case by case.
This article was produced with AI assistance and editorial oversight in line with our editorial policy. It is general information, not legal or tax advice.