Economic activity ground to a halt in April and with it the sale of homes. In total, 25,042 transactions were signed during the month, down by 28.1% compared to the previous month and by 39.2% compared to April 2019, according to the Transmission of Property Rights Statistics published on Thursday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE). That represents the lowest figure in a month of April since 2014.
April was the first full month to experience the impact of the pandemic on the residential market, since the lockdown measures to contain the virus were only introduced in the second half of March. INE itself acknowledges that the data is provisional and that the final number of transactions will not be published until a year from now.