In total, these numbers correspond to 14,800 million euros, 2,300 million more than the previous year. It was the fourth consecutive year to register an increase in house sales, 20,000 more units than the year before, with ‘used’, or not new, houses making up 85% of the total, 2.9% more than the previous year. The Metropolitan Area of Lisbon registered 44,311 transactions in 2016, a new maximum from available records, in absolute terms and in the relative regional quota, 34.9%. The Algarve totalled 12, 361 transactions.
House Price Index up 7.1%
In this context, the House Price Index (IPHab)) recorded a 7.1% increase in 2016, as shown in the report from INE.
This annual growth was 4% higher than that recorded the previous year, confirming an average price growth in existing homes (8.7%) above that of newly built homes (3.3%).
In houses which are not new builds, there has been observed a growth in prices in which the rate of change was approximately double that verified in 2014 (4.3% and 4%, respectively. In new houses, the average annual rate of change was 1.6% more than in 2015, and lower than the maximum in the series observed in 2014, at 4.1%.
In the last trimester of last year, the annual rate of change of IPHab again reached 7.6%, equal to last trimester, which is explained by the performance of existing houses, which registered an increase of 9.2%. The termly variation was 1.2%.