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%.