House prices rose where population grew most in the last decade

More inhabitants, more expensive houses. Demography and real estate go hand in hand. The mobilisation of families to the cities, towns or villages of Portugal, implies the search for a new house to live in, generating new dynamics in the real estate business. And this movement creates additional pressure on the residential market of these municipalities that have a structurally scarce supply, leading to a rise in house prices. It's precisely this relationship between demographics and housing prices that is clearly visible in the 20 municipalities where the population has grown the most between 2011 and 2021, data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) analysed by idealista/news shows. As a result, revenue from property sales has more than doubled in these municipalities.

Portugal is experiencing a serious demographic problem, characterised by a low birth rate. But the good news is that the arrival of migrants to our country has helped to balance the balance. INE data shows that the resident population in Portugal grew by 0.26% compared to the previous year, registering 10,421,117 inhabitants in 2021. This was the third consecutive year that a population increase was observed in our country.

But compared to 2011, the reality is different: the resident population in Portugal fell by around 2%, having lost 219,112 inhabitants in ten years. And this is a reality visible almost everywhere in the country. In the North (-2.79%), Centre (-4.32%), Alentejo (-6.97%), Azores (-4.2%) and Madeira (-6.36%) there was a loss of resident population in the last decade. Looking at the 308 municipalities, it is clear that the vast majority have fewer inhabitants today. The most worrying cases are Barrancos and Nisa, in the interior of Alentejo, where the population has shrunk by more than 20% in ten years, as well as Tabuaço and Torre de Moncorvo, in the interior of the North.

This is not, however, a trend observed in the whole country. Population growth in Portugal in recent years has been uneven. And proof of this is the increase of inhabitants in the Algarve (3.62%) and in the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon (1.71%) in 2021 compared to 2011. It is also these regions that have the highest proportion of foreign residents, according to data from the 2021 Census:

• 14.53% of the 467,343 inhabitants of the Algarve region are of foreign nationality (i.e. 67,904 people);
• 8.86% of the 2,870,208 residents in Greater Lisbon are foreigners (254,300 people).

If we look at the demographic reality of the country with a magnifying glass, we see that the population has only grown in 50 boroughs. And it's precisely in the districts of Faro, Setúbal and Lisbon that the municipalities that registered the greatest increase in population between 2011 and 2021 are concentrated, Census data shows. The greatest increase of all was registered in Odemira (13.3%), a borough on the Alentejo coast, where almost 30.000 people now live. Right behind is Mafra, registering a population increase of 12.8% to more than 86,000 inhabitants.