More than 85% of respondents concerned with access to housing

A most (64.8%) of the participants in a study of the Catholic-Lisbon SBE live in their own housing, but 85.1% show high levels of concern with access to housing and 92.1% with the evolution of prices, has been released today.

Conducted in July 2026 and now available, the “Observatory Study of the Portuguese Society 2026”, prepared by the ‘Behavioral Insights Unit’ of the Catholic-Lisbon SBE based on the opinion of 964 participants on various aspects of the national reality, points out that 85.1% shows high levels of concern with the ease of access to housing (levels 5 to 7 on a scale of 1 to 7), and 51.7% indicates the maximum level of concern.

At the same time, 92.1% of respondents show great concern about rising prices (levels 5 to 7), of which 64.6% declare themselves at the maximum level of concern, with “an almost total consensus” that house prices continue to rise in the area of residence, indicated by 98.1% of participants.

As far as housing-related financial effort is concerned, most households (74.9%) reported affecting less than 40% of their income to household benefits or income, while 25.1% channelled more than 40% of their income to that destination.

The study also results in a “moderate perception of current economic conditions in Portugal” and “some caution about its future evolution” by participants.

In this indicator, 58.3% of the responses are positioned in the intermediate levels of the scale, dividing between 29.4% of neutral evaluations and 28.9% not favorable, while negative classifications total 26.7% (being 15.5% weak and 11.2% very weak).

On the contrary, only 13.1% classify the economic situation as good and 2.0% as very good or excellent.

As for future expectations, 28.0% of respondents anticipate that conditions will worsen slightly, 22.1% will worsen and 18.8% will worsen significantly. Already 22.0% considers that the situation will remain stable.

In the field of family income, more than half (59.0 %) of households assess their monthly net income moderately positively (levels 6 to 10), compared with 20.3% which show more evident difficulties in covering expenses (levels 0 to 3).

As for the perception of inflation and the cost of living, the Catholic-Lisbon SBE says there is “an increase in the minimum values considered necessary to cope with expenditure”: 27.4% of participants claim to need at least EUR 2,000 per month to meet expenditure (14.4% are between EUR 2,000 and EUR 2,499 and 13.0% by EUR 2,500 or more).

In response to economic uncertainty, 68.4% of respondents claim to be very interested in saving, which represents an increase of 5.8 percentage points over 2025.

At this level, the work shows a “strong guidance for the prudent management of financial resources”, with 91.5% of participants claiming to be careful about how they spend their money, 82.9% trying to save some of the available income and 89.0% disagreeing with the idea of immediately spending their money.

“In general, the data reveal that the majority of the population feels globally happy and satisfied, in addition to demonstrating a positive perception of their health status and general well-being,” the authors concluded.

“ However, the study also identifies significant concerns related to the cost of living, financial sustainability, access to housing and the state of the National Health Service ", adds.

The sample of this study consists of 964 participants, of whom 55% were female and 45% male, aged between 18 and 70 years or older.

Of the participants, 14.5% were between 20 and 29 years, 21.7% between 30 and 39 years, 26.1% between 40 and 49 years, 23.5% between 50 and 59 years and 12.4% between 60 and 69 years. Only 0.3% of the sample is under 20 years old, while 1.4% is 70 years old or older.