According to the real estate consultant, the data obtained show “in the immediate moment a behaviour of stability on the part of the market”.
This is the lowest monthly variation since the beginning of 2019, when prices have shown monthly increases always above 1.0 percent, with August last year being the only exception, with a variation of 0.6 percent .
Compared to March 2019, Confidencial Imobiliário’s Residential Price Index (IPR) registered a growth of 15.6 percent, still representing a decrease of 0.2 percentage points compared to the rate reached at the end of 2019.
However, the consultant considers that the values are “in line with the recent profile of the market”, since the annual variations of the index have been “consistently between 14.5 percent and 16.0 percent” over the last two years, due to the appreciation in the city of Lisbon, first, and later, the appreciation of the peripheries and the city of Porto.
For the director of Confidencial Imobiliário, Ricardo Guimarães, quoted in a statement, the first results of the market already in a period influenced by Covid-19 “confirm something that could already be expected”, not surprising that “in a first phase there is a brake in the price growth”.
In a second phase, the official expects “that prices can remain stable, given that there is still much uncertainty about the duration of the pandemic crisis, with resistance from the owners to accept high discounts”.
“I admit that, later on, greater fluctuations in prices may be seen, much in the face of concrete cases of financial difficulty on the part of the sellers. Of course, everything will depend on the duration of the current pandemic”, adds Ricardo Guimarães.
Confidencial Imobiliário’s IPR tracks the evolution of real transaction prices in the national housing market, based on data from the Residential Information System (SIR).