Portugal and Brazil: house prices and mortgage credit at different stages of the cycle

Portugal and Brazil are at different stages of the housing cycle. In Portugal, prices continue to rise at a high pace, but new housing credit has lost momentum compared with 2025. In Brazil, the appraisal values of financed properties and new mortgage lending are accelerating at the same time, after a weak 2025. Three years of official series show how the two markets reached this point and what is worth monitoring next.

Two different measures, so the pace is what gets compared

In Portugal, the price series is the INE house price index, which tracks the prices of transactions with constant quality. In Brazil, it is the median appraisal value of properties offered as collateral in loans, published by the Banco Central do Brasil. One measures transactions; the other measures bank appraisals, which also change with the type of homes being financed.

For that reason, price levels and amounts are not compared, and each country stays in its own currency. What is compared is the change in each quarter against the same quarter of the previous year, which shows whether the market is accelerating or slowing down.

Portugal: two years of accelerating prices

The year-on-year price increase stood at 7.6% in the third quarter of 2023 and at 7.0% in the first quarter of 2024. It then rose quarter after quarter to 18.9% in the fourth quarter of 2025, the highest value in the window: in less than two years, the pace more than doubled. Since then it has eased to 17.8% and 16.5% in the second quarter of 2026.

It is still a double-digit increase, and Rivesta reads the pace as stable, because the latest quarter does not deviate by more than 2 percentage points from the average of the three previous ones. Slowing the rise is not the same as prices falling: in each quarter, housing remains more expensive than a year earlier.

Portugal: new credit has passed its peak

In 2023 new housing credit was still falling, by -13.4% in the third quarter. It then accelerated strongly: 36.7% in the second quarter of 2024 and 42.9% in the second quarter of 2025, the maximum of the window. It then slowed to 36.4%, 20.0% and 11.7%, and settled at 12.7% in the second quarter of 2026. Over the last four quarters, new contracts totalled 24,593 million euros.

Credit is still growing, but far below the pace of a year ago. The last two quarters, almost equal, suggest that the slowdown has stopped, although two points are too little to say so with confidence.

Brazil: a more irregular series, now rising

The median appraisal value fluctuates more than a price index, because it also depends on the type of properties financed in each quarter. After increases of 19.6% and 15.4% at the end of 2023, it was almost flat or falling throughout 2024 and 2025, with a low of -5.5% in the fourth quarter of 2024. From the fourth quarter of 2025 it reversed: 8.7%, 14.5% and 14.2% in the second quarter of 2026. Three consecutive quarters of strong growth give the reading more weight than a single one.

New mortgage lending for housing followed the same path, with greater amplitude. It grew 38.7% in the second quarter of 2024, fell 5.0% and 4.5% in the second and third quarters of 2025, and accelerated again: 14.5%, 18.4% and 26.8% in the second quarter of 2026. Over the last four quarters, R$ 271.2 billion was contracted.

Out-of-step cycles

In 2024, new credit accelerated strongly in both countries, with increases of 36.7% in Portugal and 38.7% in Brazil in the second quarter. Since mid-2025 they have separated: in Portugal credit slows after the peak, in Brazil it recovers from a weak base. Prices follow the same division, with Portugal at a high level and Brazil accelerating. In both countries, credit and prices move together; the data show that coincidence, not which one drives the other.

What to monitor in the coming quarters

In Portugal, the question is whether the slowdown in credit reaches prices. With new credit growing less and prices still rising at double-digit rates, the signal to watch is whether the year-on-year price change keeps falling from quarter to quarter.

In Brazil, the question is whether the acceleration holds across both series. Because the median appraisal also rises when larger or more expensive homes are financed, the safer confirmation comes from credit.

What this means for buyers and investors

In Portugal, one should expect high prices and less credit impetus than in 2025. When financing stops growing quickly, negotiating on the basis of recent sales in the area and simulating the loan with a comfortable margin carry more weight in the decision.

In Brazil, the latest data describe a recovery phase. Anyone following the market from Portugal compares paces rather than prices, and must separately account for the exchange rate, which these figures do not include.

For those following both markets, three years of data show that Portugal and Brazil do not move as a bloc: a phase of growth in one country says nothing about the other.