The Impact of the 2008 Financial Crisis on Lisbon’s Housing Prices

Abstract

Real estate markets are frequently affected by growth and contraction cycles. Given the social and economic impacts of changes on real estate prices, the understanding of these cycles is crucial from a socio-economic perspective, but also, and more importantly, from a public policy view. The literature has provided several contributions focusing on the deconstruction of the main determinants of housing prices. This research focuses on the analysis of housing prices variation with a particular emphasis on the analysis of the impacts of the 2008 financial crisis. Within the existing body of knowledge, few studies have focused on this particular issue, and even fewer have focused on countries where the financial crisis led to an external bailout, as was the case in Portugal. The analysis confirmed that the 2008 financial crisis had a negative impact on real estate prices, and the ex-post growth in GDP and low interest rates had a positive impact. The paper also provides a long-term analysis of housing price trends over the last decades.