Applications for residential housing planning permission rose to 11,400 in 1H

Municipal Council licensing departments received applications for the licensing of 11,400 new housing projects for mainland Portugal in the first half of 2025.

This is added to a future potential of 35,000 new homes and of these 24,000 (69%) are apartments and 11,000 (31%) are town houses.

This is according to data from Pipeline Imobiliário gathered from Confidencial Imobiliário from statistics based on energy pre-certification statistics issued by energy agency ADENE.

The Metropolitan Areas (MA) of Lisbon and Porto each account for 21% of the total number of dwellings in progress in the country in these six months, corresponding to regional portfolios of around 7,300 dwellings. The two regions are home to 12 of the country’s 19 municipalities with pipelines of more than 400 homes, led by Porto, with 2,300 new homes submitted for licensing in these six months; Vila Nova de Gaia, with another 2,100; and Lisbon, whose pipeline up to June totals 1,750 homes.

Among the municipalities with the highest volume of new residential developments in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area are Loures (850 homes), Sintra (610), Oeiras (500), Seixal (490), Cascais (470) and Almada (455). The Porto region also includes Maia (670 homes), Matosinhos (565) and Gondomar (600).

On a par with strong investment in regions with high population density, other cities in the country also stand out such as Vila Nova de Famalicão which saw the most investment alongside Porto, Vila Nova de Gaia and Lisbon with over 1,000 homes in portfolio (1,005), as well as Barcelos and Coimbra where the volume of homes submitted for planning permission to June was 590 and 520 units respectively, and also Viana do Castelo (450) and Aveiro (425).

Also worth noting is a continuing trend to invest in large-scale projects with 18 in 1H with over 100 homes out of 2,840 homes or 8% of the national pipeline.

The largest of these projects is in Vila Nova de Gaia and totals 348 apartments, also highlighting the fact that the national pipeline also includes three other buildings with over 200 units, located in Lisbon, Oeiras and Porto.