Source: Freepik Author: Redaction The European elections are taking place on 9 June . Precisely because its the day before the public holiday, many people take the opportunity to take a few days off to rest. So, in order to continue exercising their right to vote, registered voters in Portugal can register to vote in advance, in a municipality of their choice, on a mobile basis. Mobile voting is a method that the Portuguese can opt for, and they only have to register in advance for this purpose, which is taking place until 30 May. Early voting must be exercised on 2 June, one week before the elections. If you are abroad, you can exercise your right to vote between 28 and 30 May. To have access to this mobility, voters must register at a polling station of their choice in a municipality on the mainland or in the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira, on the government website or by post sent to the General Secretariat of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Read more in SUPERCASA News
Source: SUPERCASA Author: Redaction In an increasingly hectic world, where stress and anxiety can be commonplace, having a haven of peace and tranquillity at home is a more common and desirable trend. In this scenario, a garden reveals itself as a private oasis , offering a series of benefits that go beyond aesthetic beauty. Thus, having a garden at home is a refuge for the body and mind, helping with relaxation and well-being, but also as an incentive for physical activities and connecting with nature , making it an excellent excuse to spend more time outdoors and enjoying these kinds of activities from the comfort of your own home. However, the most popular options, especially at a time when summer, popular saints and rising temperatures are approaching, are to use the garden for large gatherings with friends and family, and for themed parties that can bring all your loved ones together. On the other hand, having a garden can also represent a closer contact with nature, since you can use this space to grow fruit, vegetables and/or aromatic herbs, as well as an escape from your routine, making it your hobby. So dont let your chance of having a home like this pass you by and find the perfect place to live through the options we suggest at SUPERCASA . 2 bedroom flat in Oeiras, Lisbon - 355.000€ 2 bedroom villa in Ramalde, Porto - 420.000€ 3 bedroom triplex in Loures, Lisbon - 495.000€ 2 bedroom flat in Porto - 760.000€ Detached House 4 Bedrooms in Albufeira e Olhos de Água, Algarve - 890.000€ 2 bedroom villa in Grândola, Setúbal - 950.000€ Explore also: Leiria: a tour of the Wests most iconic district capital
Source: Freepik Author: Redaction If you have a real estate website, you know that its important to analyse data and try to obtain it in the most automated way, so that you dont waste hours looking for information. If the terms Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Tag Manager sound familiar, but you dont quite understand what theyre for, in this article youll discover that theyre very easy to use. 1 - Integrating Google Analytics with the Real Estate Website to analyse metrics Real estate agencies using eGO Real Estate CRM can have their Google Analytics account linked to their website . The eGO user can then analyse the results of their site and find out about visits and the profile of visitors by entering the ID code provided by Google Analytics on the eGO Real Estate site. Google Analytics is a free marketing tool from Google, which you can access by logging into your gmail account and accessing Analytics. You should know that setting up Analytics on your property website is very quick and simple! The eGO Real Estate CRM has a free tutorial available if you want to set it up yourself. If youd prefer someone to do it for you, you can contact the technical team and theyll take care of everything in no time. The advantages of Analytics are many: you can find out who visited your site, their age and region, which properties they searched for the most, what content they read the most, whether they consulted the site via computer or smartphone, and so on. By getting to know the public that visits your site and consults your property portfolio better and better, you can measure all this data correctly in the form of a beautiful, easy-to-understand report. This way, youll easily realise where you can improve and what actions you can take to turn these visitors into customers. 2 - Integrating Google Search Console with your property website to analyse performance Google Search Console is a free marketing tool from Google that allows real estate agents to index their eGO site in organic searches (e.g. from Google). Through this tool, Google analyses the performance of your site and how potential clients reach it. Like Analytics, you can access it from your gmail email account. eGO Real Estate provides its customers with a free tutorial to set it up simply. It also has a technical team to help you. The advantages are many: it helps your site stand out in search engines. Search Console analyses all the pages on your site. So, if a potential client searches for your property, theyll be able to find it through any of these pages. The aim is also to find out which pages are faulty and correct them so that they work and open in search engines. All these actions help to optimise your site, giving it more visibility. Whats more, you can see how often your site appears in searches and what keywords potential customers have used to find your page. 3 - Integrating Google Tag Manager with the Real Estate Website to analyse performance Google Tag Manager is a free marketing tool from Google that allows real estate agents to quickly include elements such as Google Analytics on their real estate website to monitor the performance of their website or a Chat feature to quickly communicate with their clients. The great advantage is that you can access metrics quickly and easily, and that you can communicate with clients at the click of a button and at any time. This opens the door to reaching more interested parties and achieving more results. In short, these three free tools can be easily integrated into your property website using an ID code. This option is possible in the eGO CRM by accessing your eGO Real Estate website. Are you interested? Read more: Learn about Smart SEO
Source: Freepik Author: Redaction Nowadays it is essential for any estate agency to have an up-to-date website that is well positioned in search engines. SEO is the set of strategies for optimising a website so that it achieves good organic positioning in search engines. Knowing how to do SEO well really does make all the difference to achieving good results, because your potential clients search for property on search engines. If your website appears on the first page, thats half the battle for your agency to be seen. If you feel that your day-to-day life is hectic with enquiries, visits, meetings, proposals and deeds and that you dont have much time to devote to improving your real estate agencys website, there are great solutions in this sector that allow you to integrate a beautiful, ready-to-use website with a technological component: Smart SEO. Smart SEO is a unique technology that helps you gain an advantage when it comes to indexing your website in Google search list positions, for example. Your site will be at a great advantage over other competitors who dont work on this part. This will help increase the number of visits to your site from potential customers. The next step is to invest in a good content strategy and the best strategy for publicising your property portfolio on the site, as this will generate more interest and visitors will interact more and stay longer on your site. This way, the likelihood of them filling in a form and leaving contact details is very high. So, to establish good SEO, you must have a good website. And to have a good website, you dont need to spend a lot of money. You can invest in a website with integration to your CRM, specifically an eGO Real Estate website. Smart SEO is an exclusive feature for eGO Real Estate CRM customers . They have a specialised team to help you with suggestions and solutions on what you can do to get more contact requests from your real estate website. Interested? Read more about: Do you have a business? Discover 3 marketing trends
Source: Freepik Author: Redaction Commercial property prices reached their highest increase since 2009 in 2023 , according to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) released on Monday 27th May. As a result, commercial property prices, which have been rising at an average rate of 3.8 per cent for ten consecutive years, rose by a record 5.5 per cent in 2023 , 1.3 percentage points higher than in 2022. Since 2009, the trajectory of commercial property prices has been characterised by periods of oscillation, with recoveries and growth, and after a fall between 2009 and 2012, with a decrease of 8.6% in the latter year, the market gradually recovered again. After this fall, the trend reversed, with a positive leap in 2014, when the Commercial Property Price Index (IPPCom) rose by 3.7 per cent, with fluctuations until the end of 2023. In this way, 2023 is marked both by the historic 5.5 per cent rise in the IPPCom and by the less marked difference in growth rates between commercial and residential property since 2015 , with a difference of 2.7 percentage points. In historical terms, residential property has always shown stronger price growth than commercial property. However, given the 4.4 per cent slowdown in the growth rate of the Housing Price Index (IPHab), which grew by 8.2 per cent in 2023, it was possible to calculate a record increase of 12.6 per cent in 2022, due to the pace of growth in commercial property, which resulted in the sharpest difference between the two indices since 2015. Read on: Interest rates: ECB predicts possible cut in June , Spacious homes up to €300,000: six options at your fingertips
Source: Freepik Author: Redaction Property investors can often benefit from rising inflation . This is partly because the rising costs of building materials or labour put a brake on new construction, making existing properties more valuable. But many types of property also have direct links to inflation, as Shroders explains in a statement sent to SUPERCASA Notícias . Rental contracts in all types of sub-sectors can have explicit commitments to inflation-linked rent increases. In some cases, they have fixed brackets or rent reviews at specific times. All these factors give investors the opportunity to obtain a real return, i.e. higher than inflation . The specific factors of supply and demand are fundamental However, not all property assets are equal. Investors need to pay close attention to the specific type of property they are investing in. Some types of property - housing, hospitals - are essential. Others are benefiting from strong demand and limited supply, such as student accommodation or data centres, for example. We can assess the growth of data centres by looking at trends in energy consumption, which are certainly encouraging, to give an example of a real estate sub-sector that seems to have strong prospects for future growth. On the other hand, some sectors are not essential and/or are experiencing weaker demand. So while the growth of e-commerce and work-from-home trends since Covid-19 have benefited certain industrial property segments, such as logistics, they have also weakened many retail and office sub-sectors . As a result, pricing power, i.e. the ability of landlords in these areas to pass on inflationary rent increases to tenants, has been severely affected. However, urbanisation has remained a lasting underlying structural trend and demand for housing in cities is now reaching record levels , with rents rising, benefiting the flat sector, for example. In fact, so-called shelter costs are one of the reasons why inflation in the US economy as a whole has proved so difficult to control. Rapidly discounted interest rates in classified property valuations Investors can tap into these trends by investing in the full range of property assets, from self-storage to prefabricated homes, industrial and other fast-growing digital economy assets. Data centres certainly fall into the latter category. Even before the mass adoption of AI (which relies on data centres to remotely house the processing and storage infrastructures of cloud computing solutions), supply was struggling to keep pace with demand in major metropolitan areas. The potential size of the data centre opportunity is still the subject of heated debate, but analysts estimate that total demand could reach 35 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 in the US, more than double the 17 GW in 2022 (see graph above). Structural growth trends like these explain why listed property can be an interesting option for global equity income and capital growth opportunities, as Shroders points out. Follow more Real Estate topics in SUPERCASA Notícias
Source: Freepik Author: Redaction According to the ePortugal portal, 157,389 applications have been submitted so far for the salary premium for the valorisation of qualifications , with a tendency to increase. The support, known as tuition fee reimbursement, is aimed at anyone who has obtained a bachelors or masters degree, who has stayed working in Portugal and fulfils the eligibility requirements for the support. If you have a bachelors or masters degree and have not yet applied, you have until 31 May 2024 to access ePortugal, do the simulation and submit your application. Dont forget that you must also submit your personal tax return, as the tax authorities will be checking whether you had any income in 2023. If no income is declared, the tuition fee refund may be refused. With regard to applications that have already been submitted, the Directorate-General for Higher Education will verify the information provided with regard to the academic degree. In turn, the Tax Authority will have 30 days to validate the request in order to proceed with payment of the prize to the IBAN indicated. Find more topics like this in SUPERCASA News
Source: Freepik Author: Redaction An interest rate cut may be closer than ever, with the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) maintaining its position on a rate review. The next meeting takes place next week and a rate cut is possible. Chief economist Philip Lane announced today that the European Central Bank has indicated that it is prepared to go ahead with a possible first cut in interest rates at its next meeting: Barring any major surprises, at the moment there is enough in what we see to remove the upper level of restriction . The ECB is not among the first banks to start cutting interest rates: leading the way are the Swiss, Swedish and Hungarian banks. Nonetheless, the chief economist warns that the reduction should remain cautious, as the aim is for inflation to continue to fall. Find more topics like this in SUPERCASA News
Source: Freepik Author: Redaction It was at the end of the meeting with the parties, this Friday, May 24, that the Government launched the possibility of an extension of the VAT reduction in construction projects, from 23% to 6%. This was a measure previously implemented in the projects of rehabilitation and construction of real estate for housing, limited to prices, and therefore restricted to Urban Rehabilitation Areas. Now, the door is opened to the possibility of including, also, the component of construction projects. The Portuguese Association of Real Estate Developers and Investors (APPII) expressed its satisfaction with this enlargement, however, the Secretary of State for Housing did not leave deadlines for the implementation of the measure, except that it must be well calibrated . Find more topics like this in SUPERCASA Notícias
Source: Freepik Author: Redaction The Minister of Youth and Modernization, Margarida Balseiro Lopes, indicated this Thursday, May 23, during the briefing of the Council of Ministers dedicated to young people, that f ree passes can be extended to all young people up to 23 years, regardless of being, or not, students. We have started negotiations so that we can extend the free passes until the age of 23 to study or not to study, said the Minister. Free passes are currently available for young students up to the age of 23, which i nclude travel by metro, train, bus or boat at no cost. However, the Government now intends to extend this gratuity to all young people of this age group by supporting them in their journeys. Stay to read: 450M€ of the PRR will be used for works in schools
Source: Freepik Author: Redaction It is possible that, in the near future, applications for the Porta 65 Jovem programme will become much more accessible, covering a greater number of beneficiaries, after the decision adopted on Thursday, May 23, in the Council of Ministers. According to the new rules, young people will be able to access support without the maximum rent being an exclusion factor , and will not need to present a contract, or the promise of contract, lease, since it is possible, through the new measure, to carry out the application first, and it is the State that subsequently decides the amount of support to be allocated. After these steps, young people have two months to find a home in the rental market. The program was thus reinforced with 26 million euros, to reach 40 thousand young people, and the goal is to adapt the rules of Gate 65 to what is the reality of the young Portuguese , as indicated by the Minister of Youth and Modernization, Margarida Balseiro Lopes, at the end of the briefing of the Council of Ministers dedicated to young people. Maximum income is eliminated as an exclusion factor. A young man can find a house today, but in the county where he got the maximum rent was 400 euros, but the house he got was 401 euros. Therefore, according to the rules in force, it is no longer eligible to receive such support , she explained. But there is another difficulty that is real and makes the door is often closed and the young man does not have access to this support (...) the young man must first arrange the lease or the promise of contract and then the State says what amount of support he will receive. This system makes no sense, she said. Therefore, in order to resolve these difficulties, the Minister explained how the novelties intended to mitigate this inaccessibility will work: Young people go first to the housing portal and will apply without attaching any contract or promise of contract and the State, through this program, will tell the youth what amount of support they will receive. Only then does the young man go looking for the house, according to the support he already knows he will receive. In addition to this novelty, the Minister indicated that it is now possible to apply for young people who have been working for only three months, unlike the previous six required by the programme: Today, to apply for a young person has to be working for six months, because the program requires the IRS statement of the previous year (young people who were not working do not have it, were dependents) or six paychecks, she explained. We reduce the number of salary receipts required from six to three , concluded Margarida Balseiro Lopes, indicating that in practice, this measure, which seems to be administrative, will accelerate the lives of young people in three months. Find in SUPERCASA Notícias more topics like this
Source: Freepik Author: Redaction The European Commission has allocated EUR 4.9 million to the Coimbra City Council for the promotion of a sustainable tourism project, which was the only Portuguese city selected by the European Urban Initiative, an initiative that aims to develop and support sustainable practices. Led by the municipality of Coimbra, the project will involve several local partners and aims to develop monitoring tools and support the development of more sustainable practices . According to the Coimbra City Council, this project will respond to the challenges associated with mobility, job creation, quality of service provided and residents perception of the impact of tourism . This funding followed Coimbra’s application to the European Urban Initiative programme, supported by the European Commission’s Regional Development Fund. After 22 applications were approved, the only Portuguese city to be selected was Coimbra, standing out among the 112 applications submitted by 12 member states of the European Union . According to the municipality: these partners will now work together in the implementation of the actions and measures proposed , referring to the various partners, such as Tourism of Portugal, the University of Coimbra, the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra, among others, who decided to join the project. Thus, with the collaboration of all, the project will place Coimbra in an innovative way on the national, international and European institutions tourist radar, including the European Commission itself, and will greatly contribute to the creative affirmation of the Coimbra brand, competing in a solid way for tourism development, of the municipality of Coimbra , stresses José Manuel Silva, Mayor of Coimbra. Find more topics like this in SUPERCASA Notícias
Source: Freepik Author: Redaction The stress rate is one of the crucial elements when applying for a home loan , acting as the limit for the charges of an aggregate , since it includes the net monthly expenses and income . This calculation will serve as the basis for the allocation of your credit, and there is a recommendation from Banco de Portugal that banks avoid granting loans to people with effort rates above 50%. To be balanced, your effort rate, ideally, cannot exceed 30%, so it is necessary to maintain a prudent and organized management of your finances. And to have this control, it is important to understand the relevance of the effort rate, and that we explain to you in this article. What is the effort rate for? In addition to being a crucial indicator for assessing the financial health of a household, it represents the percentage of total net income for the payment of installments of claims, namely mortgage credit. Determine the ability to pay The effort rate acts as a thermometer of the capacity of a household , determining whether or not it has the financial capacity to meet its commitments, namely a home loan. A very high rate will mean a great effort in the extraordinary payment of expenses, compromising not only their saving capacity, but also their investment capacity, and access to new credits may be restricted. Foster financial sustainability As we explained above, Banco de Portugal recommends that the effort rate of an aggregate should not exceed 50%, where at most only half of a family’s net income can be allocated to the payment of instalments. This board serves to mitigate the financial vulnerability risks of the aggregate, leading to possible defaults, and thus promote financial sustainability that maintains balance in their budgets . To assess the credit risk When a credit is contracted, banks are required to use the stress rate as one of the key indicators in assessing a potential client’s credit risk , as this will influence their responsiveness in unforeseen situations that may arise , whether they have the resources to make ends meet. How do you calculate the effort rate? This is a relatively simple calculation, which we will show you: Mónica earns 1,200€/month net and Dinis earns 820€/month. The two have a housing credit in the amount of 600 € and a car credit in the amount of 95 €. But they also have, monthly, credit card charges, in the amount of 50 €. Doing the math, the couple’s effort rate is 36.8%. Find out how we got to this percentage: Effort Rate = ((600 + 95 + 50) /1,200 + 820) x 100 = 36.8% In this example, the aggregate effort rate is 36.8%, which means that 36.8% of its net income is destined to the payment of installments of credits. This figure is within the recommendation of Banco de Portugal, but it is important to monitor the stress rate on a regular basis and take measures to reduce it if necessary. How can you reduce your effort rate? In situations where effort rates are very high, it is important that you try to renegotiate your loan if you have one. By doing this, you can achieve better financing conditions and a reduction in your effort rate, which can occur through an extension of the payment term. Alternatively, you can always transfer your credit to another bank or financial institution, looking for the best conditions and, if you have more than one loan, consider combining them into one. Here are some tips to reduce your effort rate: • Renegotiate credits that have contracts and try to get better conditions; • Write off the capital of the outstanding claims; • Avoid new credits; • Increase family income; • Reduce unnecessary expenses A controlled effort rate will also allow you greater control over your finances and, consequently, greater financial stability. You will be able to save and invest more, opening doors to new opportunities! Stay with other topics: Differences between a fiador and a avalista: understand them , Housing Credit: what is it and how does Spread work?
Source: Freepik Author: Redaction According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the economic growth of the 30 countries that make up this organisation reached 0.4% of GDP in the first quarter of this year, compared to the previous quarter, while in Portugal the pace of growth was higher, setting 0.74% when compared to the previous quarter. The chain growth in Portugal had been 0.72% in the last three months of last year and, as the OECD indicates: although the GDP growth rate for the OECD as a whole changed little in the first quarter of 2024, the economies of three-quarters of the OECD countries for which data are available performed better than in the fourth quarter of 2023 . Thus, the countries with the highest growth recovery were the United Kingdom, with an increase of 0.2%, and Germany, with 0.2% , between January and March 2024, after contractions of 0.3% and 0.5%, respectively, in the fourth quarter of 2023. As indicated by the organization on Thursday, May 23, in a statement, w hen compared to the growth of the Portuguese economy in year-on-year terms, there was a slightly less marked growth of 1.35%, compared to the other OECD countries. We indicate other topics that may interest you: BdP bought 3.6 billion euros in national public debt , Inflation in April shows slight decline, settling at 2.2%