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Compared to which country? I agree with the bureaucracy and government inefficiency, but public roads and shit housing quality? Much larger difference between

Compared to which country? I agree with the bureaucracy and government inefficiency, but public roads and shit housing quality? Much larger difference between our and rich? Compared to what? Certainly not the US... And for healthcare, the public health system has many problems but if you have the money/insurance you can use the private one, as you would in the US. Biggest cons of Portugal are: poor economy (when compared to the leading Western countries; this results in low salaries, lack of strong international companies, external dependency, lack of autonomy, fragility to crisis) and a big state (causes high taxes, big companies dependency on the state, corruption, brain drain...). Still probably one of the best countries to retire to in the world.

lagadu 6y ago
Shit housing quality is absolutely true in my experience. For context, I'm Portuguese but I lived abroad for quite a few years and returned while doing the digital nomad thing, mostly because I have plenty of friends here and because I make what locally is considered a ridiculous amount of money. Anyway yeah. In order to get a house to a standard that I consider acceptable (and acceptable != good) I pretty much had to househunt at the very highest end of the market which didn't have much offer (this being in Porto). Granted, it's still stupid cheap compared to what I paid elsewhere but most houses in the country are flat-out appaling in quality and missing basic features or insulation. edit: and public roads too, I often describe half of the city as being effectively goat tracks. I like nice cars, which means low profile tires, hardly a year goes by where I don't damage a wheel or blow a shock absorber, the amount of roads not made of tar is stupid.
- andresp 6y ago
  I am also Portuguese, have lived in 3 other European countries (all of them economically richer) and am still living abroad. If I compare the housing quality of all these countries I disagree Portugal is worse. I can easily find much worse flats listed abroad than in Portugal. I remember seeing unimaginable things like 20 sq m studio with no bathroom (just a plastic separating the rooms) in central London for the rental price of a 1 bed in Porto. Portuguese housing market, like potentially every other market, is smaller than the richer countries, but that doesn't mean house quality is "shit". I looked at idealista a few weeks ago and there are luxury houses being sold for 1M+ in the north (probably even more in the South), mostly obviously targeted to rich foreigners.
  - lagadu 6y ago
    I didn't mention in my previous post: my standard comes from having lived in Oslo and Copenhagen, which admittedly is a high standard. But like I mentioned the high-end market is very small and you have few options for actually nice places. Also I added an edit mentioning roads: The amount of roads made of "paralelos" drives me up the wall (and poorly maintained tar roads outside the city).
    - andresp 6y ago
      I have lived in Stockholm too. I was paying a fortune for a 27sq meter studio in Vasastan. Again, comparatively housing in Portugal is not shit by any measure. You just need to pay for it.
  - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
    Another Portuguese (dozens of us!) I think a lot of these comments are from people looking for 1 bedroom apartment rentals in Lisbon/Porto. The reality is that most of the modern real estate in Portugal is bought not rented. We could go into the reasons mostly around Tenant protection laws and landlord taxation but there is little incentive to rent a brand new property. In practice most of Lisbon and Porto's rental market is pre-1950's or houses from the 1980's construction boom (i.e. low quality construction) with no renovations done. You can certainly find high-end 1 bedroom apartments but it is a small offering and mostly around financial centre areas.
    - wooger 6y ago
      Airbnb is also a factor, and has for sure removed hundreds of beautiful 1 bedroom flats in central areas from the rental market. I'm not sure of the legal status of airBnB in Portugal, but it could be part of the problem.
- brauhaus 6y ago
  1+ My house supposedly has an A rating for thermal isolation, and yet I feel the indoor winter experience to be colder here than my experiences living in Illinois and Salzburg. On the other hand, Portuguese winters are very humid, which makes it feels colder than it is.
bboygravity 6y ago
> I agree with the bureaucracy and government inefficiency, but public roads and shit housing quality? Much larger difference between our and rich? Compared to what? Certainly not the US... Compared to Northern Europe certainly. Housing quality in Portugal is a joke. It's like going back in time a 100 years compared to Northern Europe: no heat insulation, high fire risk due to old electric infrastructure, single-layer walls, illegal structural "fixes" that make multi story buildings weaker, massive cracks in staircase structures that just get painted over, single layer glass windows that don't shut properly, no central heating or any heating at all (unless you are OK with electricity bills for heating that are the price of your rent), pests, large amounts of 100+ year old ruins rotting away in the city center during a housing crisis, illegal settlements/ghetto's, and possibly worse of all: the rental prices are close to what they are in the North for a brand new perfect place there. That tells me that the rich in Portugal (real estate owners) are leeching off the middle class and can get away with anything including letting buildings rot for no reason at all on prime real estate locations. To give another anecdotal reference: the average houses of the Colombian/Mexican/Philippine middle class are of WAY better quality than those of the Portuguese middle class. > And for healthcare, the public health system has many problems but if you have the money/insurance you can use the private one, as you would in the US. This is not accurate as far as I've experienced in 2020. In Portugal the private generalist doctors will often just refer you to the public health system (which is dysfunctional) for more advanced diagnosis and things like surgery. My personal experience: I wanted to get a polysomnography done to check my sleep apnea status. Waiting time to see a generalist doctor in Lisbon: 4 months. Not kidding. I waited those 4 months. 1 day before the appointment I got a call that it was cancelled due to corona virus overload. I paid a private generalist doctor to get referred to what I needed, their answer: oh, I'm sorry we can't do that, you'll have to go through the public system. Most things in Portugal kind of don't seem to work at all in this way. This is what people mean by "terrible bureaucracy": it's just plain impossible to get things done. From VISA's to setting up a business and getting permits, everything seems utterly broken, corrupted and dysfunctional in a way that it isn't in most of the rest of Western Europe. > Biggest cons of Portugal are: poor economy (when compared to the leading Western countries; this results in low salaries, lack of strong international companies, external dependency, lack of autonomy, fragility to crisis) and a big state (causes high taxes, big companies dependency on the state, corruption, brain drain...). Still probably one of the best countries to retire to in the world. I agree that it's still a really fun country to live in, despite all the downsides, assuming you are financially geo-independent. I mean, I still live in Portugal after years. If I had the intention of setting up a serious startup or have a job however, I would not chose Portugal. The thought of the bureaucracy alone makes me anxious. Aside from the bureaucracy, there's almost no capital for investments in startups. Furthermore: if you're thinking about disrupting a Portuguese industry, just forget about it: you're fighting cartels that are strongly coupled to the government. It all strikes me as if sadly Portugal was never really able to shake off the legacy of their recent totalitarian/corrupt history.
wooger 6y ago
Roads I've driven on in Portugal were all much clearer of traffic, less potholed and better signposted than the UK. In particular they have some motorway innovations we should steal: A minimum speed limit, and a zone around junctions where overtaking is prohibited. Also, who needs to drive anyway day-to-day when you live in a dense, walkable city with public transport?
- Gys 6y ago
  The highways are generally good indeed (I understand because most are relatively new; constructed after joining the EU). Roads inside cities and villages are bad. Rough, broken or badly patched asphalt everywhere. No problem for driving cars and Portugues culture values having a car highly. But the road quality make biking and skating APITA.

lagadu 6y ago

Shit housing quality is absolutely true in my experience. For context, I'm Portuguese but I lived abroad for quite a few years and returned while doing the digital nomad thing, mostly because I have plenty of friends here and because I make what locally is considered a ridiculous amount of money. Anyway yeah. In order to get a house to a standard that I consider acceptable (and acceptable != good) I pretty much had to househunt at the very highest end of the market which didn't have much offer (this being in Porto). Granted, it's still stupid cheap compared to what I paid elsewhere but most houses in the country are flat-out appaling in quality and missing basic features or insulation. edit: and public roads too, I often describe half of the city as being effectively goat tracks. I like nice cars, which means low profile tires, hardly a year goes by where I don't damage a wheel or blow a shock absorber, the amount of roads not made of tar is stupid.

andresp 6y ago
I am also Portuguese, have lived in 3 other European countries (all of them economically richer) and am still living abroad. If I compare the housing quality of all these countries I disagree Portugal is worse. I can easily find much worse flats listed abroad than in Portugal. I remember seeing unimaginable things like 20 sq m studio with no bathroom (just a plastic separating the rooms) in central London for the rental price of a 1 bed in Porto. Portuguese housing market, like potentially every other market, is smaller than the richer countries, but that doesn't mean house quality is "shit". I looked at idealista a few weeks ago and there are luxury houses being sold for 1M+ in the north (probably even more in the South), mostly obviously targeted to rich foreigners.
- lagadu 6y ago
  I didn't mention in my previous post: my standard comes from having lived in Oslo and Copenhagen, which admittedly is a high standard. But like I mentioned the high-end market is very small and you have few options for actually nice places. Also I added an edit mentioning roads: The amount of roads made of "paralelos" drives me up the wall (and poorly maintained tar roads outside the city).
  - andresp 6y ago
    I have lived in Stockholm too. I was paying a fortune for a 27sq meter studio in Vasastan. Again, comparatively housing in Portugal is not shit by any measure. You just need to pay for it.
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  Another Portuguese (dozens of us!) I think a lot of these comments are from people looking for 1 bedroom apartment rentals in Lisbon/Porto. The reality is that most of the modern real estate in Portugal is bought not rented. We could go into the reasons mostly around Tenant protection laws and landlord taxation but there is little incentive to rent a brand new property. In practice most of Lisbon and Porto's rental market is pre-1950's or houses from the 1980's construction boom (i.e. low quality construction) with no renovations done. You can certainly find high-end 1 bedroom apartments but it is a small offering and mostly around financial centre areas.
  - wooger 6y ago
    Airbnb is also a factor, and has for sure removed hundreds of beautiful 1 bedroom flats in central areas from the rental market. I'm not sure of the legal status of airBnB in Portugal, but it could be part of the problem.
brauhaus 6y ago
1+ My house supposedly has an A rating for thermal isolation, and yet I feel the indoor winter experience to be colder here than my experiences living in Illinois and Salzburg. On the other hand, Portuguese winters are very humid, which makes it feels colder than it is.

bboygravity 6y ago

> I agree with the bureaucracy and government inefficiency, but public roads and shit housing quality? Much larger difference between our and rich? Compared to what? Certainly not the US... Compared to Northern Europe certainly. Housing quality in Portugal is a joke. It's like going back in time a 100 years compared to Northern Europe: no heat insulation, high fire risk due to old electric infrastructure, single-layer walls, illegal structural "fixes" that make multi story buildings weaker, massive cracks in staircase structures that just get painted over, single layer glass windows that don't shut properly, no central heating or any heating at all (unless you are OK with electricity bills for heating that are the price of your rent), pests, large amounts of 100+ year old ruins rotting away in the city center during a housing crisis, illegal settlements/ghetto's, and possibly worse of all: the rental prices are close to what they are in the North for a brand new perfect place there. That tells me that the rich in Portugal (real estate owners) are leeching off the middle class and can get away with anything including letting buildings rot for no reason at all on prime real estate locations. To give another anecdotal reference: the average houses of the Colombian/Mexican/Philippine middle class are of WAY better quality than those of the Portuguese middle class. > And for healthcare, the public health system has many problems but if you have the money/insurance you can use the private one, as you would in the US. This is not accurate as far as I've experienced in 2020. In Portugal the private generalist doctors will often just refer you to the public health system (which is dysfunctional) for more advanced diagnosis and things like surgery. My personal experience: I wanted to get a polysomnography done to check my sleep apnea status. Waiting time to see a generalist doctor in Lisbon: 4 months. Not kidding. I waited those 4 months. 1 day before the appointment I got a call that it was cancelled due to corona virus overload. I paid a private generalist doctor to get referred to what I needed, their answer: oh, I'm sorry we can't do that, you'll have to go through the public system. Most things in Portugal kind of don't seem to work at all in this way. This is what people mean by "terrible bureaucracy": it's just plain impossible to get things done. From VISA's to setting up a business and getting permits, everything seems utterly broken, corrupted and dysfunctional in a way that it isn't in most of the rest of Western Europe. > Biggest cons of Portugal are: poor economy (when compared to the leading Western countries; this results in low salaries, lack of strong international companies, external dependency, lack of autonomy, fragility to crisis) and a big state (causes high taxes, big companies dependency on the state, corruption, brain drain...). Still probably one of the best countries to retire to in the world. I agree that it's still a really fun country to live in, despite all the downsides, assuming you are financially geo-independent. I mean, I still live in Portugal after years. If I had the intention of setting up a serious startup or have a job however, I would not chose Portugal. The thought of the bureaucracy alone makes me anxious. Aside from the bureaucracy, there's almost no capital for investments in startups. Furthermore: if you're thinking about disrupting a Portuguese industry, just forget about it: you're fighting cartels that are strongly coupled to the government. It all strikes me as if sadly Portugal was never really able to shake off the legacy of their recent totalitarian/corrupt history.

wooger 6y ago

Roads I've driven on in Portugal were all much clearer of traffic, less potholed and better signposted than the UK. In particular they have some motorway innovations we should steal: A minimum speed limit, and a zone around junctions where overtaking is prohibited. Also, who needs to drive anyway day-to-day when you live in a dense, walkable city with public transport?

Gys 6y ago
The highways are generally good indeed (I understand because most are relatively new; constructed after joining the EU). Roads inside cities and villages are bad. Rough, broken or badly patched asphalt everywhere. No problem for driving cars and Portugues culture values having a car highly. But the road quality make biking and skating APITA.