As previously mentioned, the pandemic has changed people's habits and way of life. One of the new habits of the Portuguese population comes from adapting to remote working, which many companies have adopted, not only for this time of pandemic, but for an indefinite period. With this change, many people then decided to leave the big cities and go inland, in order to build more spacious houses, where families can grow and have more space outdoors. All of this resulted in an appreciation of the land due to the high demand they now have.

The Idealista portal conducted a study that shows that during this pandemic the demand for land increased, not only the demand for urban land for housing construction, but also the demand for rustic land, which are used for agriculture (caring for animals, growing food, tree planting, among others) or construction of larger houses. This study refers to the 18 districts of Portugal, which show variations between the demand for "stock" and prices, between March 2020 and March 2021.

However, this great demand for land has caused their prices to increase, both the rustic land and the urban land. With this increase, it can be said that there are two possible scenarios: the existing stock follows demand, which causes the value of the lands to stabilize; or else the existing stock decreases considerably, influencing the increase in unit prices.

Even so, we cannot ignore that because of the pandemic, there was an increase in the number of lands for sale for subsistence reasons, and those who were already on the market saw prices going down, the so-called reverse logic.

Among the plots where you can build, there was an increase in demand in 16 out of the 18 districts in Portugal. Bragança registered an increase in demand of 600%, in addition to that the unit price rose 22%, being that in March 2021 the value was 89.4€/m². In second place is the district of Braga, which was one of the regions that showed the greatest demand for land for construction, with an increase in demand of 219%. Among the regions that had a reduction in demand, it is possible to find Guarda and Castelo Branco, with a drop of 52% and 3%, respectively.

Regarding the availability of land for sale (or stock), Vila Real was where the exception was seen, with an increase of 54%. Referring to unit prices of land, the increase was seen in half of the districts that were analysed and we can highlight Évora and Vila Real with 39%, Bragança and Coimbra with 22% and 21% respectively, between March 2020 and March 2021.

Regarding rustic land, we can say that there was an increase in all districts of Portugal, and in half of these districts there was a doubling of the demand during the pandemic, as for example in Faro with an additional 250%, Setúbal with an additional 186%. With lower demand, but showing a positive percentage, we have Portalegre with 19%. In relation to the existing stock, the variation is more heterogeneous compared to urban land.

Finally, as of unit prices, there was also an increase in 13 of the 18 districts analysed. Portalegre had an increase of 51%, and the value of rustic land increased from 2.5€/m2 to 3.7€/m². In second place was Lisbon and in third Vila Real, with an increase of 37% and the price of the soil at 6€/m².

We can conclude that investing in land in Portugal is a good opportunity, both for housing construction, as well as for agricultural or production use, in any region of the country. And on Portal, you can find different types of land, both rustic and urban.