The empty walls and official numbers
The immediate reading of the housing crisis points the finger unhesitatingly at the expansion of Local Accommodation. The current idea assumes that the accelerated growth of tourist beds in municipalities like Évora has absorbed the permanent housing stock, drastically driving up rents for those who work in the region. However, official data reveals a scenario of greater geometric complexity in the territory of Central Alentejo, where tourism pressure coexists with large reserves of unoccupied buildings.
According to data released by the Municipality of Évora in 2024, the concentration of local accommodation in the intra-muros city reached a relative intensity comparable to that recorded in Lisbon and superior to that observed in the municipality of Porto. This isolated indicator fueled the consensus that permanent housing had been emptied by tourist demand. In parallel, the district of Évora stood out in the 2024 Bank of Portugal records among the territories with the highest ratio of local accommodation to housing stock outside the traditional coastal axes.
Despite this strong tourist footprint, the sub-region presents very peculiar real estate dynamics when crossed with the state of conservation of the built environment. According to Statistics Portugal in 2023, Central Alentejo led the country alongside Baixo Alentejo in the proportions of buildings with no need for repair, reaching 75.1% of the built stock. This constructive solidity contrasts sharply with the sudden drop recorded in the formal rental market throughout the year of 2025.
The sudden brake on rental contracts
To understand the recent evolution of the market, it is necessary to look at the statistical series of new residential rental contracts compiled by Statistics Portugal. In the first quarter of 2025, Central Alentejo registered a year-on-year drop of 24.2% in the number of new contracts signed compared to the same period of the previous year. This abrupt contraction in the formalization of rentals contrasts with the expansive dynamics that prevailed in previous years and marks a turning point in the availability of contracted housing.
The evolution of prices accompanied this braking in contractual activity in a downward direction. In the first quarter of 2025, the median rent of new contracts in Central Alentejo recorded a year-on-year variation of -0.4%, making it the only NUTS III sub-region in the entire national territory to present a year-on-year decrease. This punctual deceleration follows a period of strong acceleration recorded at the end of the previous year.
Indeed, in the fourth quarter of 2024, the same sub-region of Central Alentejo had presented a year-on-year increase of 16.1% in the value of median rents for new contracts, according to the quarterly records of Statistics Portugal. To contextualize the regional scale, in the first quarter of 2024, the median rent stood at 5.10 euros per square meter. For national comparison purposes in the first quarter of 2025, the country's median stood at 8.22 euros per square meter, with Lisbon leading by far at 16.00 euros per square meter.
The hidden dimension of vacant housing stock
The recent decompression of median prices contrasts with the structural rigidity of the built stock and the volume of properties that remain outside the commercial circuit. In the municipality of Estremoz, for example, the 2021 Census by Statistics Portugal indicated the existence of 2,024 vacant dwellings, a number that represented 21.55% of the total housing stock of the municipality, as noted in a report by the Municipality of Estremoz published in 2022. This proportion of unoccupied homes illustrates a reality transversal to several municipalities in the Alentejo interior.
In the specific case of the municipality of Évora, the 2021 census data pointed to 1,239 vacant dwellings located strictly within the Historic Center. This expressive volume of unoccupied buildings coexists with a chronic shortage of supply for those seeking permanent housing at affordable prices. This means that a substantial fraction of the built heritage is allocated neither to local accommodation nor to long-term residential leasing, remaining in family patrimonial retention circuits.
Pressure on specific market segments is also reflected in accommodation costs for particular audiences, such as higher education students. In August 2024, the average asking price to rent a single room in Évora reached 335 euros per month, according to data released by the Idealista platform. Compared to the national panorama ascertained by the Casa Yes Observatory and the Imovirtual portal in 2024, the average value of student rooms in the country stood at 397 euros per month, keeping Évora in an intermediate bracket compared to other university cities in the south.
The obvious explanation and what the data reveals
The immediate and generalized reading attributes the entirety of the housing crisis and price escalation to the uncontrolled proliferation of Local Accommodations that remove properties from residential leasing. However, empirical verification through official data from Statistics Portugal (2021 Census) forces a maturation of this premise. The fact that the Historic Center of Évora has 1,239 vacant dwellings and that more than 75% of the buildings in the sub-region do not need works demonstrates that the shortage of long-term housing supply results to a large extent from patrimonial retention and unoccupied homes that never entered the formal rental market.
For the explanation purely based on the direct impact of local accommodation to be entirely supported by the data, it would be necessary to observe a direct and linear correlation between the suppression of licenses and the immediate decompression of inhabited residential dwellings. However, real estate market dynamics involve other structural variables, such as real estate valuation. In April 2024, the municipality of Évora recorded a median bank valuation value of 2,556 euros per square meter, according to data compiled by Confidencial Imobiliário and Luznur Capital.
The existence of recent legal instruments has altered the regulatory framework without their structural effects being yet fully measurable in the quarterly statistical series. Decree-Law no. 76/2024, promulgated by the Government of Portugal in 2024, revoked the national restrictions of the More Housing program, making local accommodation licenses permanent again and transferring the power of regulation and specific containment to the sphere of decision of local authorities. Simultaneously, within the scope of previous exceptional measures adopted in 2021 by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education and the State Secretariat for Tourism, temporary conversions of tourist beds into student rentals were authorized via the National Register of Local Accommodation, albeit with limited expression in Central Alentejo.
The course of investment and the limits of the housing stock
Public responses to mitigate pressure on student and residential accommodation have involved the injection of structural funds into the rehabilitation of the public stock. The Alentejo 2021-2027 Regional Program approved specific funding aimed at the creation and rehabilitation of Higher Education residences in Évora, under the coordination of the Alentejo Regional Coordination and Development Commission in 2023, seeking to mitigate students' dependence on the private room market.
For those who live and work in the municipalities of Central Alentejo, the statistical fluctuation of -0.4% in median rents in the first quarter of 2025 does not represent a generalized drop in the cost of living, but rather a temporary stabilization after increases of 16.1% in the fourth quarter of 2024. The contraction of 24.2% in the number of new contracts signed in the same period demonstrates that the formal rental market remains meager and unfluid, regardless of the cyclical contraction of values per square meter.
It remains to be seen how the new regulatory capacity attributed to local authorities by the 2024 legal regime will influence the reopening of vacant dwellings that the Census will diagnose in the future. Until then, the central issue in Central Alentejo continues to be whether the recent brake on the number of contracts reflects an exhaustion of local demand or the deepening isolation of the housing stock from families wishing to establish residence here.