Following Lisbon and Porto, with over 2,000 homes each, Vila Nova de Gaia and Braga are the cities with the most robust residential pipelines in the first half of this year, according to the latest data from Confidencial’s Pipeline Imobiliário. Both represent more than 700 houses in project in this period, distancing themselves from the other municipalities in the country, being Matosinhos the third most dynamic, where the portfolio does not reach 600 houses.      

In the case of Gaia, this activity (767 homes) even represents a growth of 49% compared to the 516 homes launched, on average, per semester of 2018, while in Braga, the evolution, although positive, is less pronounced. Braga grew 11% from an average of 634 homes in licensing per semester in 2018. It should be noted that in the first six months of 2019, residential development activity grew by 55% in the case of Porto (from 1,370 to 2,130 homes). And 7% in the case of Lisbon (from 2,092 to 2,241 homes), comparing half-yearly homes launch averages.

The tendency for residential development to appear to be strong seems to be common to other major Portuguese cities, with 26 municipalities (in addition to Lisbon, Porto, Gaia and Braga) with portfolios in excess of 200 homes. Unsurprisingly, this list includes many bordering cities of Lisbon and Porto, but there are also several district capitals and medium-sized cities such as Guimarães, Santa Maria da Feira, Barcelos or Famalicão and in the Algarve, Silves, Loulé and Portimão.

In this set of cities with portfolios larger than 200 units, the dominant note was acceleration compared to the launch pace recorded, on average, in the semester of 2018, including some with expressive increases above 50%.