while their value jumped 13.1% to 31.8 billion euros ($34.28 billion). Portugal's economic growth slowed to 0.2% in the fourth quarter from 0.4% in the third but the country is experiencing a housing crisis exacerbated by the arrival of richer foreigners attracted by government incentives.
Foreigners bought more than 10,000 homes last year, up a
fifth from 2021, with a total value of 3.6 billion euros, INE
said.
The Portuguese paid 179,201 euros on average for a house
last year, while European Union (EU) citizens paid 279,063 euros
and those outside the EU paid 406,267 euros.
Activists and opposition politicians have criticised the
government's recent housing package, saying it would not lower
prices in the short term.
Hugo Ferreira, head of Portugal's property developers
association APPII, said the country was building less than a
third of the houses it built in the early 2000s due to licensing
delays, expensive raw materials and high taxes accounting for
between 40% and 50% of the final price of properties.
"That's why prices will naturally remain high," Ferreira
told Reuters. "The wealthy Portuguese middle class and
foreigners are the only ones who can buy houses at the prices we
do."
($1 = 0.9276 euros)
(Reporting by Sergio Goncalves; Editing by Catarina Demony;
Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
