We didn’t need the demonstrations by the Casa para Viver platform, which this weekend returned to the streets of several cities, to denounce that the housing crisis remains unsolved, but sometimes it’s good to remember what the real collective priorities are that we hope to see reflected in the political agenda. And the housing crisis in Portugal not only persists, but is worsening at a disturbing pace, with house prices hitting successive highs, rents rising above inflation and evictions rising by almost 50% in 2025.
We are facing one of the main social problems of this generation, if not the main one. The causes are known and are well identified. Portugal has become highly attractive to international demand – from investors to digital nomads and global middle classes – and an attractive destination for both tourism and immigration. As economist Félix Ribeiro recently mentioned, we put “Portuguese land on the international market”. The problem is that supply did not grow at the pace of demand and Portuguese income did not keep up with this globalization.
At the same time, several of the measures already adopted by this Government – such as the exemption from IMT and Stamp Duty for young people, combined with 100% credit with a public guarantee, for example, in the commendable attempt to keep young people in the country – end up having a pernicious effect, increasing demand in an already saturated market, while measures to increase supply will only be visible in the medium and long term. Also in rent, as we know, the concept of “affordable rent” includes values that are far from being manageable for the middle class, which does not solve the fundamental problem.
The current picture of the market shows us that prices continue to rise, affordable rentals are not really affordable and the market continues to be inflated by the logic of investment.
It will be necessary to balance this legislative balance a little, as some countries that are also dealing with the housing crisis have already begun to do, regardless of the ideological matrix of governance. There are several examples of more effective regulation, such as limiting purchases by non-residents in critical areas, increasing the taxation of vacant houses, restricting Local Accommodation where there is greater pressure or penalizing the accumulation of multiple properties. Without this, any effort on the supply side risks always being short – and here too the State continues to leave the market almost exclusively in the hands of private individuals, when it could, for example, create a public park for affordable rentals.
Today, Portugal is the country in the European Union with the most overvalued houses, according to Brussels. Currently, it is not only difficult to enter the market, people are no longer able to maintain their homes. In an unstable international situation like the one we are experiencing, with the volatility of the cost of living caused by the unstable moods of some of the main actors in international politics, the housing crisis is a social time bomb in an accelerated countdown.
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