Housing stock for sale in Portugal fell by 38.6% in the space of a decade. In the second quarter of this year, just over 58,000 properties were on the market, but at the end of 2014 there were close to 95,000. From then onwards housing stock has been falling, with particular emphasis from 2018 until June, according to data from Confidencial Imobiliário based on the Residential Information System.

The numbers show a trend in the country according to Ricardo Guimarães, director of the consultancy and reported in Dinheiro Vivo, and "they highlight a lack of supply", which has led to "increased demand in a context of low levels of new construction".

There are several factors that explain this demand for housing. The 2021 Census showed that there was a significant increase in single-parent families in Portugal. That year, 579,971 households made up of a mother or father and children were recorded, an increase of 20.7% compared to 2011, which is not unrelated to the increase in divorces and separations. The country has also gained international notoriety for both living and working. Since 2015, there has been an increasing movement of foreigners living in the country.

"In the last decade, there has been a degradation in the state of conservation of the building stock, a disinvestment by the State in housing and a slowdown in private investment", explains Manuel Reis Campos, president of AICCOPN (the association that represents the construction industry). On average yearly around 15 thousand homes were licensed, a number that compares with the 68 thousand registered in the previous decade. According to the association leader, the current lack of housing supply is no longer a cyclical problem, "it is rather a structural problem".