In the 4th quarter of 2020, the year-on-year growth rate of median house rental value in new lease agreements was positive (+3.8%) in Portugal, but less than the growth registered in the previous quarter (+5.2%). However, the increase in the number of new lease agreements (+19.4%) outpaced the growth scored in the 3rd quarter (+10.7%).
Nevertheless, the evolution of house rental value in the territory was very heterogeneous. In 15 out of the 24 municipalities with more than 100 thousand inhabitants, there was a reduction in median house rental value. In the metropolitan areas, the municipalities of Lisboa (-9.1%), Oeiras (-8.1%), Porto (-7, 7%), Cascais (-3.7%) and Amadora (-2.7%) stood out for scoring higher house rental values of new lease agreements and, simultaneously, a decrease of year-on-year growth rate. In 18 out of the 24 municipalities with more than 100 thousand inhabitants, there was a reduction in the year-on-year growth rates of median house rental value in the 4th quarter compared to the previous quarter. The reductions were more intense than the national reference (-1.4 percentage points) in 14 municipalities, particularly, Santa Maria da Feira (14.2 pp), Gondomar (-12.8 pp) and Coimbra (-11.3 pp) and, at some distance, also Sintra (-7.2 pp) and Porto (6.0 pp).