Property News | The future's bright for ‘positive' Portugal

Browse By Subject

Money

Property

Social

Professional

The future's bright for 'positive' Portugal

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Source: Catherine Deshayes

The Portuguese property market has seen a shift in buyer attitudes recently, with investors increasingly choosing to buy for pleasure rather than profit, claims one expert.

Stephen Anderson, Managing Director of Infinito Real believes the recent "boom" in business to the Portuguese property market can be attributed to a number of factors.

He explaineds: "The start of 2010 has seen more positive press coverage for the property industry as a whole, and with less focus on the global recession, confidence to invest has started to increase.

"We have seen that a number of buyers who postponed their plans in 2009 are now ready to move which has created a backlog of buyers wanting to move as soon as possible. The small increase in the exchange rate from £1 - €1 throughout most of 2009, up to £1 - €1.15 has provided a 15% "discount" from previous months and has had a profound effect."

A further notable has been the vast reduction in the number of distressed sales, a forced sale with a discount of at least 20% from the original price. Even though distressed sales have always been available, the economic downturn saw a considerable increase of people in financial difficulty including both individual sellers and also larger developers.

Stephen added: "Ironically, 2009 was the best possible time to buy a property in Portugal and the worst time to sell. At the peak of the recession we had in the region of 150 "distressed sale" properties and with high appeal to the majority of investors they sold very quickly. We currently have less than 10 and with the restabilising of the market place I think it is unlikely we will see any further bouts of desperation from developers slashing prices."

Source: Infinito Real - www.portugalvillasandapartments.net