5 ms·
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 digi
by 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 agoI 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 agoI 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 agoI 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 agoAnother 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 agoAirbnb 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 ago1+ 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.