The bank's number: what Portugal's mortgage valuations say, and why they are not the price.

What this number is, and what it is not

INE's Survey on Bank Evaluation on Housing collects the appraisals lenders commission when someone applies for a mortgage. An appraiser visits, or reviews, the actual property, and the bank lends against that valuation. The published figure is the median of those appraisals, per square metre.

So it is not a sale price. No money has changed hands at this number, and no seller has agreed to it. It is not an asking price either. Nobody is advertising at the bank's valuation. It is a lender's view of what a property is worth as security for a loan, taken at the moment a real buyer is trying to borrow against it, and lenders have every reason to be careful: if the loan goes wrong, this is the asset standing behind it.

That conservatism is exactly why the series is useful. Asking prices tell you what sellers hope. Transaction figures, which INE publishes separately each quarter, tell you what buyers paid. The appraisal series tells you what the banking system will underwrite, month by month, while the other two are still being argued about.

September's figures

In August the national median set a record at €2,254 per square metre. September takes it to €2,278, up €24, or 1.1%, on the month and 14.2% on the year. The September figure rests on 32,597 appraisals, 20,281 of apartments and 12,316 of houses.

The pace is the story

Read the annual figure against its own recent past. Appraisals were rising at 17.1% a year in May, 15.2% in July and 14.7% in August. September's 14.2% continues the slowdown: the fourth reading in that sequence, each one lower than the last.

A slowing annual rate is not a falling market. Valuations are still rising every month, from a record base. What changes is the speed, and speed matters to a buyer deciding whether waiting costs money or saves it. Look at the monthly pace, though, before concluding that waiting just got cheaper. September's monthly rise was 1.1%, nearly double August's 0.6%. At that pace, a €500,000 valuation grows by roughly €5,500 a month. Waiting is not free, and in September it became a little more expensive again, even as the annual pace eased.

Apartments stay ahead of houses

Apartments appraised at €2,662 per square metre in September, up 0.3% on the month and 15.4% on the year, against houses at €1,621, up 0.7% on the month and 11.1% on the year. The gap between the two medians was €1,041 per square metre in September, almost exactly where August left it, at €1,045: €2,655 for apartments against €1,610 for houses. The gap did not widen in September. It held, at a level that still says a great deal.

The gap is partly geography. Apartments concentrate in Lisbon, Porto and the coastal cities, where every measure of value runs high. Houses spread across the whole country, including the interior, where values are a fraction of the coast. And the growth gap persists even where the level gap held steady: apartment valuations are still rising half as fast again as house valuations over the year, 15.4% against 11.1%, which says something about where mortgage demand is strongest: smaller homes, in cities, bought by people who need a loan to buy them.

Greater Lisbon and Cascais

Cascais sits inside Greater Lisbon, the most expensive appraisal region in the country. In September, Greater Lisbon apartments appraised at €3,525 per square metre and houses at €2,942, against August's €3,487 and €2,918.

For Cascais itself, INE's municipality table puts the September median appraisal at €4,048 per square metre, with apartments at €4,112 and houses at €3,981. Keep it in its place: it is the median across every mortgaged purchase the banks appraised in the municipality that month, family houses in São Domingos de Rana and apartments in Carcavelos included. Prime Cascais and Estoril sit far above it. It is a measure of the lending market in the town, not a price tag for any street in it.

The gap: what sellers ask, what banks will underwrite

Now set the two numbers side by side. On Idealista's own Cascais price data page, the average asking price across Cascais municipality in September 2026 was €6,173 per square metre, up 4.9% on the year. Within the municipality the spread is wide: the Cascais e Estoril parish averaged €7,202, and Carcavelos e Parede €5,492.

Against the bank's Cascais median of €4,048, that asking average sits €2,125 a square metre higher. Two cautions before treating that as a precise spread. Idealista's figure is an average of advertised prices; INE's is a median of appraisals, so the two are built differently and the gap between them is a range, not a precise spread. And the latest transacted median for Cascais, from INE's local price statistics for the second quarter of 2026, is €5,200 per square metre: asking prices in September sat about €973 a metre, roughly 19%, above what buyers actually paid in the spring.

The order is the point, and it never changes. Sellers ask the most. Buyers pay less. Banks value lower than either, because the bank is not buying a home, it is securing a loan. A buyer who anchors on the asking average is negotiating from the seller's favourite number. A buyer with a mortgage has a second number coming, set by someone with no interest in the seller's hopes at all.

What a low valuation does to your purchase

This is where the series stops being statistics. A Portuguese mortgage is calculated on the lower of the price and the bank's valuation. Agree €600,000 for a house and the bank lends against €600,000 only if its appraiser agrees. If the appraisal comes back at €540,000, a loan set at 80% of value is €432,000, not the €480,000 you had planned. The €48,000 difference does not disappear. It becomes cash you must find, on top of your deposit and costs, or the purchase is renegotiated, or it stops. (Worked example, for illustration: your own figures depend on the loan-to-value your bank offers you.)

Sequence is what turns that surprise into a loss. The valuation usually lands after the CPCV, the promissory contract, has been signed and the deposit paid. A buyer who defaults because the mortgage came up short is, on the face of the contract, a buyer who did not complete, and the deposit is what default costs. This is the same trap our guide to due diligence before the CPCV works through from the paperwork side: the well-drawn CPCV deals with it in advance, by making completion conditional on the mortgage being approved on workable terms, so a valuation that kills the loan is an exit the contract allows rather than a default it punishes.

Three practical defences. First, model your cash on an appraisal below the price, especially in Cascais, where asking averages run well ahead of every official measure. Second, ask your lender early how it treats a shortfall, and get the mortgage properly pre-approved before you sign, not merely discussed. Third, have your lawyer write the financing condition into the CPCV before the deposit moves. None of this requires the valuation to come in low. It requires you not to be ruined if it does.

Three questions to ask before you offer

Which number is this price based on?

If the answer is the asking average or a neighbour's listing, you are looking at hope, not evidence. Ask for completed sales in the same street or parish, and expect the bank to be more sceptical than the seller.

What will the bank say it is worth?

In a town where the asking average is €6,173 a square metre and official valuations run far lower, a gap is the normal case, not the unlucky one. Know your cash position for a valuation 10% under the price before you sign anything.

Is my CPCV protected if the mortgage falls short?

Completion should be conditional on the loan being approved on terms you can actually complete on. If that clause is missing, the deposit is carrying a risk it does not need to carry.

Sources

• INE, "Inquérito à Avaliação Bancária na Habitação", September 2026 (27 October 2026): ine.pt, with the municipality figures from the Tables annex to the same release
• INE, "Inquérito à Avaliação Bancária na Habitação", August 2026 (24 September 2026), baseline figures: ine.pt
• INE, "Estatísticas de Preços da Habitação ao nível local", Q2 2026 (23 October 2026), Cascais transacted median €5,200/m²: ine.pt
• Cascais asking prices, September 2026, Idealista price data, Cascais price evolution page: idealista.pt

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