According to Ricardo Guimarães, director of ConfidencialImobiliário, "never before in any of these cities has there been a quarterly increase of such magnitude".

The SIR-Arrendamento Residential Rent Index reveals that new leases signed in Lisbon between July and September this year reached an average of 16.8 euros/m2 and in Porto, 12.6 euros/m2.

"These are unprecedented levels", says Confidencial Imobiliário in a statement sent to the Press.

For Ricardo Guimarães, this increase is directly linked to the government's decision to limit the update of rents celebrated until 2021 to 2% next year, in order to mitigate the effects of the increase in the cost of living on tenants.

"The timing of this increase in the current situation and the fact that it occurs simultaneously in both markets, suggests a position of the owners in relation to the limit for updating rents for the next year", says Ricardo Guimarães in a statement.

In his opinion, "this unprecedented quarterly increase of 10% could be a way to cover inflation through the new contracts, anticipating the losses that may result from the impossibility of doing so in the current contracts due to the ceilings imposed on the updating of rents".

It should be remembered that if the government had not decided to intervene, the increase in rents in 2023 would be 5.43%, according to the average inflation recorded in August without housing, which determines the coefficient for updating contracts.

In the State Budget for 2023, António Costa's executive decided to compensate landlords for this measure with benefits in terms of IRS and IRC, which should cost around 45 million euros.

Rents on new contracts in Lisbon have been rising since mid-2021, after two years of decline. Quarterly changes were around 2.5% but have now galloped to 10%.