Estate-Agent Confidence Retreats to Its Lowest Since 2024, with Rentals the Biggest Worry

Confidence among Portugal's real-estate agents has slid sharply this summer, and for the first time in a while it is the rental market — not sales — that is causing the most unease.

The barometer is idealista's quarterly Índice de Sensibilidade do Setor Imobiliário (ISSI, Real Estate Sector Sentiment Index), a 0-to-100 survey of estate agents. Sentiment on the sales side fell from 71.6 points in spring 2026 to 67.1 in the third quarter — the largest single drop the index has recorded, and its lowest reading since the second quarter of 2024, when it touched 65.4.

The mood is gloomier still on rentals. Only 25.1% of agents expect to close more rental contracts by September; 28.1% expect the same, 22.2% expect fewer, and roughly a quarter did not answer. On the direction of rents, most agents foresee stabilisation: 56.6% expect them to hold steady in their area through September, 18.2% expect them to fall, and just 16.3% predict increases.

Sales expectations, while down, remain more upbeat: 63.1% of agents still expect to sell more homes in the third quarter, against about 18% who expect fewer. Encouragingly for buyers, 65.5% expect to bring more homes onto the market — a rise in stock that could ease some of the pressure that has driven prices up.

idealista's own market data show a housing market that is cooling rather than crashing. Rents edged up 0.9% year on year in July, reversing six consecutive months of decline, while the annual rise in asking sale prices slowed to 8% in July from 8.9% in June. Rental supply, however, remains tight: the stock of homes available to rent fell 22% year on year in the second quarter.

Agents point to policy uncertainty as a drag on confidence. They cite the government's housing tax package — the pacote fiscal da habitação, which includes a reduced 6% VAT rate on moderately priced construction — and a pending rental-law reform touching evictions and the balance between old and new contracts, still awaiting parliamentary approval. Whatever those measures eventually do for supply, agents note, the effects are years away.

The backdrop is a market that has already lost momentum. Home sales fell 8.7% year on year in early 2026, a second consecutive quarterly decline, with high prices, inflation and elevated interest rates all weighing on buyers. The summer's slump in agent confidence suggests the professionals closest to the transactions expect that caution to persist into the autumn.