Over 50% of houses in Lisbon for sale are for over €500,000

An imbalance in the Lisbon housing market has resulted in house prices skyrocketing in recent years, making the prospect of buying affordable housing increasingly out of reach for the middle classes.

There is virtually nothing available for under €300,000 across the Greater Lisbon Area while in Lisbon over 50% of all properties for sale cost over €500,000 and in Porto the number of properties for sale over this amount has duplicated.

This imbalance has taken around a decade to build up, with growing demand for properties driving sales prices in a market with little new build where developers for reasons of financial viability have focused on premium and luxury developments for HMWIs.

And while the Covid-19 pandemic put the brakes on house inflation, when it was over, in the past fiver years the market has played catchup to reach ever more exorbitant prices, beating all records since they began in the late 1980s.

Prices have gone up by 100% in some places putting values up from €200,000 and €300,000 to over €500,000.

In Lisbon, the proportion of homes for sale at €200 or less fell drastically from 27% in 2020 to just 4% in 2025 according to Idealista, while in Porto homes up to €200,000 represented 42% of offer in 2020, now down to 9% in 2025.

And looking at houses in Lisbon up to €300,000, 45% of houses were at this level in 2020 while in Porto they were 66%.

Today, only 18% of homes in Greater Lisbon can be found for €300,000 and 35% in Porto.

“The comparison between 2020 and 2025 shows a strong shift in offer to more premium categories of houses both in Lisbon and Porto, reflecting the impact of the increase in property prices in recent years”, said Ruben Marques, a spokesperson for the online estate agency and housing market analysts Idealista.

In effect, 26% of offer in Lisbon is for sale for between €300,000-€500,000 while in Porto the band of available properties on the market in this price range stands as 37%.

And properties available for more than €500,000 have almost doubled their share, going from 34% to 56% in Lisbon or more than half of the houses on the market in the capital.

But where can you still pick up a property for under €300,000 in Portugal’s two main cities? Looking at the price per square metre, there are now only five districts in Greater Lisbon under this threshold – Amadora, Loures, and Mafra where there are still properties for under €300,000. But both have gone up by around 13% and 14% respectively in the past year while Loures went up by 9%.

Properties in Loures now cost around €2,982 per square metre on average, but Vila Franca de Xira, 36km from the centre of Lisbon (well on the outskirts) is the most affordable in Greater Lisbon at €2,500 per square metre. Even so, the latter has seen prices skyrocket by 90% in five years.

On the south bank of the River Tagus, in districts such as Almada, Seixal, Alcochete and Sessimbra are now over €2,500 per square metre, although Moita, Palmela, Barreiro and Montijo stand at between €2,100 and €2,400, although Moita has seen properties shoot up by 143% in five years.

In Porto, Oliveira de Azeméis e Vale de Cambra show house prices per square metre at 44% and 42% respectively below the €2,278 per square metre average for the Porto Metropolitan Area, with prices around €1,000 per square metre.

There are seven district in Greater Porto with prices under €2,000 peer square metre while another 4 (Gondomar, Póvoa de Vazim, Valongo, and Vila do Conde which are slightly above this level.

Vila Nova de Gaia, on the other side of the Douro river have average price values around €2,538 having risen by almost double the increases seen in Porto in one year and 112% in just five years.

Source: Idealista/Negócios