An American client called me this week. He has been searching for a place in Luz for three years and finally has a trip booked for November, so we are building toward that. His question stopped me for a second: how do you actually track this market when Portugal has no MLS? I pointed him to the Confidencial Imobiliário index, the INE data, and the market tool on my own site, which is actually aggregating the real price from INE and comparing it to Idealista’s asking prices. (Trust me it’s worth a look)

Good timing, because those same numbers just told us something worth passing on to everyone who owns here, not only buyers. Portugal has posted its eighth straight monthly record for asking prices, yet the buyers who actually complete are getting harder to find. One number below explains the gap.

€3,156/m² · Portugal's asking price, an 8th straight monthly record, but the buyer pool behind it is thinning

National asking prices reached €3,156/m² in June, an eighth consecutive monthly record, and Eurostat has Portugal leading the entire EU for house price growth in Q1 (+17.8% year on year). But look past the headline and the pace is slowing, from over 10% a year ago to 8.9% now, and non-resident purchases, the buyers who set the ceiling in a market like ours, are down 15.6% year on year. If you own here, that is the number to sit with. Your buyer is still likely international and still likely to pay more than a local would, so the top of the market is intact. But there are fewer of them completing right now, so price to today's real demand, not to last year's growth rate.

Source: Eurostat Q1 2026 house price index; idealista national asking-price index (June 2026); INE non-resident purchase data. General market commentary, not investment advice.

Praia da Luz

Modern Semi-Detached Villa, 500m from the Beachfront
2 bed · 2 bath · 170 m² built · 249 m² plot · A energy · built 2026
€820,000

Every buyer who has asked me about Luz this year describes some version of this: close enough to walk everywhere, new enough that nothing needs fixing, small enough to lock up and leave. This one hits all three. Five hundred metres from the sand and the old village centre, an A-rated build finished this year, with its own pool and garden inside a gated new development. At €820,000 for two bedrooms, it is priced for exactly the kind of buyer who is still completing right now: someone who wants Luz today, not a renovation project in three years.

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Curious what a place like this could earn as a short-term rental? Run the numbers with my Short-Term Rental Simulator.

This is the most useful thing you can do with this email: forward it. If someone in your circle is thinking about buying or selling out here, a personal introduction from you carries more weight than any ad I could run. And if it turns into a deal, I look after you for it: 10% of my net commission, paid at completion, no cap. On a typical Lagos sale that is upwards of €1,500 for a five-minute forward. Not in the Algarve? Send them anyway. Through the eXp network I can place them with a vetted agent in 25-plus countries, and you still earn when it closes.

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