Portugal House Prices: Bank Appraisals Hit €2,240/m² in July

The price Portuguese banks put on housing reached €2,240 per square metre in July 2026 — a median 15.2% higher than a year earlier, per INE’s bank-appraisal release of 26 August.

This is not an asking-price survey. It is the avaliação bancária, the bank appraisal: the value a lender puts on a home it is asked to finance — and, under Banco de Portugal’s rules, the number a mortgage is capped against whenever it comes in below the agreed price.

If you are buying with a Portuguese mortgage, this is your number. Annual growth is slowing — 16.6% in June — but slowing is not falling.

What did INE actually publish?

INE’s release, published on 26 August 2026, covers July. The headline figures:

Measure (July 2026)	Value
Median appraisal, all dwellings	€2,240/m², up €12 (+0.5%) on June
Change on a year earlier	+15.2% (16.6% in June)
Apartments (release’s Figure 1)	€2,627/m²
Houses (release’s Figure 1)	€1,606/m²

Behind the median: around 34.1 thousand appraisals in the period, up 1.4% on the previous one and 0.6% on the same period a year earlier. The spread is wide — the chart labels on the release’s Figure 1 put half of all appraisals between €1,549 and €3,059 per square metre. The same chart runs from July 2019 to July 2026, and July’s median is the highest point in the seven years of data INE charts. The release does not use the word record, so neither will we.

INE surveys the financial institutions that provide housing-acquisition loans — seven reporting units, together representing around 90% of the total amount of new housing loans in Portugal. The value is a median, measured in euros per square metre of gross floor space, and monthly figures are compiled on a three-month moving average, so each month carries some of the two before it.

So this is the price of bank-financed Portugal, not of every sale — a cash purchase never enters the series.

Why does the bank’s appraisal decide what you can borrow?

The asking price is not the number your bank lends against.

Banco de Portugal’s Recomendação Macroprudencial n.º 1/2026, which applies to contracts whose solvency assessment happens from 1 August 2026, sets the loan-to-value calculation out plainly. The loan goes on top. Underneath goes, in the recommendation’s own words, “the minimum of the purchase price and the appraisal value of the property given as security” (our translation of Artigo 3.º). The limits on that ratio: 90% for an own permanent home, 80% for any other purpose.

The recommendation requires that valuation to be carried out by a perito avaliador, a certified property appraiser, under article 18 of Decreto-Lei n.º 74-A/2017 — it is not a number you or the estate agent negotiate.

Follow the mechanism through, because it is where buyers get caught. If the appraiser’s value comes in below the price you agreed, the percentage applies to the smaller number. The loan shrinks. The seller’s price does not. The difference has to come from your own pocket, and budgeting from the asking price alone can hand you a cash gap you did not plan for at the appraisal stage.

The euros per square metre the appraiser signs off are exactly what this INE series aggregates. That is why a valuation statistic deserves a buyer’s attention at all.

The rule cuts one way, though. If the appraisal comes in at or above your agreed price, the minimum is the price you already knew, and nothing changes for you — the gap opens only when the valuation falls short. For what the banks publish for non-resident borrowers, and the taxes on top, start with our guide to buying property in Portugal as a foreigner.

Is the market slowing down?

Slower, yes. Cheaper, no.

The annual rate has now eased for three months running: 17.1% in May, 16.6% in June, 15.2% in July. Stringing those together is our own arithmetic across INE’s June and July releases — the releases print the individual rates, and we lined them up. Meanwhile the level itself kept rising: July’s median was €12 above June’s, and June’s €2,228/m² was €20 (+0.9%) above May’s.

The split by type is wide: €2,627/m² for apartments against €1,606/m² for houses in July, per the release’s Figure 1.

Waiting for relief also has a financing cost. The 3-month Euribor, the rate most Portuguese variable-rate mortgages track, averaged 2.18% in April 2026, 2.23% in May, 2.34% in June and 2.43% in July (ECB Data Portal, monthly averages). A buyer waiting for the market to cool is paying a little more each month to borrow against it.

One caveat before you draw conclusions: this is a lending statistic, not a transactions index, and the method note above about cash purchases applies to everything in this section. Where prices go from here, we will not guess — the honest answer is that July shows a strong market decelerating, and no more.

What should you do next?

• Financing a purchase? Our guide to buying property in Portugal as a foreigner covers the process end to end — the IMT and stamp duty arithmetic, and the lending caps this post leans on.
• Not yet sure the sums work at all? Weigh the whole monthly budget with the cost of living in Portugal before you price a deposit.
• Renting first while you decide? Our Lisbon and Porto hubs quote INE’s median rents — a different INE series from the appraisals here — for what each city costs to live in.
• No Portuguese tax number yet? Nothing in the process starts without it: how to get a NIF is the first move.

This is general information, not financial advice. The figures above come from INE’s bank-appraisal release of 26 August 2026 and Banco de Portugal’s Recomendação Macroprudencial n.º 1/2026. INE’s next release is due on 24 September 2026 — verify the current numbers at ine.pt before you commit money.