“The data is unequivocal. The historical centre of Lisbon is the market with the highest level of price growth in 2015 reflecting the strong demand that has focused on it in recent years,” the independent property publication said in a report for the 3rd Conference on Urban Rehabilitation.
Adding that its indicator stemmed from property sales figures submitted by owners subject to the right of preference endowed to Lisbon Municipal Council given that the area falls within an Urban Rehabilitation Zone. The magazine also traced recent trends.
Property prices in downtown Lisbon “had experienced positive growth between 2008 and early 2010, rising 12.5 percent” before the financial crisis turned into a sovereign debt crisis and Portugal got backed into a bailout, sending prices down 8 percent between 2011 and 2012.
Confidencial Imobiliário stated that 2013 had first seen a bounce back with a spike of 12.5 percent before a period of retrenchment with a drop of 1.3 percent in 2014.
However, 2015 had seen a roaring recovery with the historical region of Portugal’s capital seeing a 22.3 percent surge in prices in no small part due to rehabilitation being carried out, said Confidencial Imobiliário.
The right of preference sales covered over 8,000 transactions in central Lisbon since 2008 with half of these taking place in 2014 and 2015. Last year saw a total of 2,199 sales for a total of €709 million, up an annualised 11 percent in numbers and 37 percent in financial value.
Confidencial Imobiliário furthermore put the average price of rehabilitated properties in this area at €3,780 per square metre.
The report also detailed how the average price of accommodation in downtown Lisbon stood at around €85 per night against the average price prevailing in the comparable region of Barcelona (Spain), deemed a benchmark competitor of the Portuguese capital, coming in at around €150 per night.