Loulé Council Wants to Rent Move-In-Ready Homes From Private Owners, and Gives Sellers of Homes and Building Land Another 30 Days
Loulé has opened a consultation to rent homes from owners, with offers due by 22 November, and extended its calls to buy homes and land for 50 or more homes. Who can offer, how offers are scored, and how the council pays.
Loulé council, in the central Algarve, has asked property owners to offer homes the council could rent, as part of its Estratégia Local de Habitação (Local Housing Strategy) for 2019 to 2032. In the same Diário da República (the official gazette) of Friday 23 October, it gave owners another 30 days to offer homes and building land for the council to buy.
All three are market consultations: exploratory, non-binding exercises in which the council asks what is on offer before deciding whether to sign anything. The notices say the council is not obliged to sign a minimum or maximum number of contracts.
Homes to rent: offers by 22 November
Edital n.º 1359/2026, signed by mayor Telmo Pinto on 7 October, opens a consultation to rent homes anywhere in the municipality. The homes must be ready to live in immediately. The council will not accept homes that need works or rehabilitation, or properties with charges or encumbrances that would get in the way of renting them.
Offers can be made for 30 consecutive days from the day after publication, until 23:59 on 22 November. The edital says the conditions, the requirements for the homes, the documents needed and the criteria for assessing offers are in a full notice on the council's housing page. When we checked on Saturday night, that page carried the documents for the two purchase calls but not yet the rental notice, so we cannot report the rent levels or lease terms the council has in mind.
Homes and land to buy: 30 more days
Two notices, Aviso n.º 26357/2026/2 and Aviso n.º 26356/2026/2, extend by 30 days, counted from 26 October, the consultations to buy homes and land that opened on 25 September. That takes them to about 24 November.
Both calls are open to individuals and companies, Portuguese or foreign, who own property in the municipality and have no outstanding debts to the tax authority or Social Security.
Homes. The notice for homes asks for finished properties that are ready to live in and meet the definition of adequate housing in Decreto-Lei n.º 37/2018, which set up the 1.º Direito (First Right) housing programme. Owners send the land registry certificate, the caderneta predial (property tax record), the ficha técnica da habitação (the home's technical file), the licença de utilização (occupancy licence), the energy certificate, the floor area and a price per square metre. The council scores offers on four factors:
- Price (30 percent): the price per square metre is compared with the latest median price per square metre of new homes sold in Loulé, as published by INE (the National Statistics Institute). The cheaper the offer against that benchmark, the higher the score.
- Condition (30 percent): excellent, good or average, after a technical inspection.
- Controlled-cost housing (20 percent): whether the home was built under the controlled-cost housing scheme and certified under Portaria n.º 65/2019.
- Energy performance (20 percent): whether it meets the "nZEB+20%" efficiency standard set for housing paid for by the Recovery and Resilience Plan.
Land. The notice for land seeks building land or plots, free of charges and unoccupied, with room for more than 50 homes. Several plots can be offered together if they are covered by the same allotment permit, are next to each other or sit in the same block. Offers are scored half on the price per square metre of residential floor area that may be built, with full marks below 100 euros and none above 401 euros, and half on the price per home that could be built, with full marks below 20,000 euros and none above 45,000 euros.
How a sale would work
Every admitted property is valued by an appraiser, and that valuation is the most the council will pay. A negotiation follows. The council pays no deposit or advance: the full price is paid in one go when the deed is signed. The municipal company Loulé Concelho Global handles the analysis and the valuations.
Offers for the purchase calls go through the online form on the council's housing page, by email to [email protected], or in person at the council's front office in Travessa de S. Pedro, Loulé, on weekdays from 9:00 to 12:30 and 13:30 to 17:00.
For the wider market, INE's latest local figures, released on Friday, showed prices rising more than 20 percent in 135 of the 303 municipalities it measures in the year to June.
