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The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

• rationalfaith 4y ago
• bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
  This same story seems to be playing out anywhere that attracts it and allows it.
  • ReptileMan 4y ago
    There are good arguments that foreigners should only be allowed to own real estate only in specific places and that citizenship should be by blood only for small countries - let's say under 100000 sq km and 50 million people. Too easy for them to be overtaken by global elite otherwise.
    • foogazi 4y ago
      > There are good arguments that foreigners should only be allowed to own real estate only in specific places What are the good arguments ? Do you think the “global elite” is invading Portugal ?
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • ReptileMan 4y ago
        The poorer part. The richer are busy fucking up London, New York and Vancouver and other desirable places.
    • outworlder 4y ago
      > There are good arguments that foreigners should only be allowed to own real estate only in specific places In the context of receiving visas, that's exactly what already happens in Portugal.
      • ReptileMan 4y ago
        No. They can buy everywhere in Portugal. The idea is that you forbid them to buy near the desirable coast and force them into the heartland.
    • notch656a 4y ago
      Citizenship-by-investment programs are dominated by small nations. Seems like smaller nations actually disproportionately favor absorbing richer foreigners. The most extreme example is probably Comoros, which up until a few years ago you could become a citizen for $45k over-the-counter.
      • bogomipz 4y ago
        The US and Canada are no strangers to these schemes though.
  • cpach 4y ago
    Unless you have really crappy weather, like here in Sweden :-p
    • cinntaile 4y ago
      What do you mean. Sweden has hugely inflated housing prices.
      • jmauritz 4y ago
        Tourists / foreigners buying houses i guess, although i predict that in the coming 10-20 years we'll be seeing mediterraneans escaping the summer heat in the north.
    • beebeepka 4y ago
      With global warming, the north is going to have the best weather in a few decades, maybe less. You guys are going to have it all.
      • Dma54rhs 4y ago
        It will still be over half of the year, I don't thinking climate change will change that.
• Victerius 4y ago
  Unsustainable. If you're a wealthy individual living in an expensive residence surrounded by other wealthy individuals living in expensive residences, you still need garbagemen to collect your garbage. You still need food. Whether you order from local restaurants staffed by employees, or buy your groceries at the supermarket, staffed by employees, janitorial personnel, security guards, and managers, you're still relying on the labor of ordinary people. If your power goes out or there is a water leak in your home, you need an electrician or a plumber. Preferably one who doesn't have to live five hours away. If you need an ambulance and medical attention, you need doctors, nurses, and medical personnel. Hopefully they didn't get priced out of a 50 mile radius of your home. And if the world consisted of only millionaires and an army of robots, if everyone is a millionaire, no one is. A carton of milk would just cost $700 and a lower end house $30M. Be a YIMBY. Embrace looser zoning regulations and more and denser housing where you live. And don't jack up the rent to market rates if you're already turning a profit.
  • josefresco 4y ago
    Apparently the wealthy with vacation homes on Cape Cod didn't get your memo. Our local businesses don't have enough workers due to unattainable housing. Enjoy your long lines, reduced hours and hollow communities! At least there will be lots of pickleball courts!
    • foogazi 4y ago
      > Our local businesses don't have enough workers due to unattainable housing. due to not paying enough
      • josefresco 4y ago
        There is no workforce. It's not a matter of paying more, it's a lack of workers aka families. The average age of someone living on Cape Cod has increased every year for decades. The cost of housing after COVID went from "unreasonable" to "insane". Local businesses and towns are throwing money at the few young people still here in an attempt to recruit workers but there just isn't enough to handle the scale up for summer volume. The band-aid for years was J1 workers but it's no longer enough. The wealthy don't think about Cape Cod for 1 second once they cross the canal, or leave the runway in Hyannis/MV/Nantucket. They seemingly don't realize that their "tax dollars" which they claim are a gift to the local region, aren't helping or solving any of these problems. What we're seeing now is consolidation of businesses, and the construction of worker "dormitory" housing. That's the future for our region. Multi-million dollar trophy homes, and worker dormitories.
• TekMol 4y ago
  I hope Portugal won't tackle it like my country, with a cap on rent and other market distortions. I think that only makes it worse. Fun fact: I - as a single - live in a way too big, luxurious and expensive apartment because of this. I rented it, when I was still working for the man and was making a killing. Now I live a much more modest 4-hour-workweek life. It would be better for me to move to an apartment half the size. Then a big family could live here nicely. But no way. No landlord in Germany rents to a freelancer who enjoys a "I'm mainly slacking off for a while" lifestyle.
  • consp 4y ago
    There are other ways to be stuck, I'm in subsidized housing which I would like to give to the less fortunate but buying is impossible and leaving would mean half the space and four times the rent making me have less remaining per month than the less fortunate in my current appartment.
    • substation13 4y ago
      Indeed. Price caps turn an expensive market into a lottery. Hardly an improvement, in my view.
    • andrepd 4y ago
      Large amounts of public-built housing (and I mean large, in the order of at least ~20% of the market) have a track record of working amazingly well to lower the cost of housing to acceptable levels and to give everyone a chance at homeownership.
  • aprdm 4y ago
    Similar in Vancouver. If you've been renting for 7+ years, you won't move even if the place doesn't fit you anymore. You would be paying close to double.
  • WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    Heavily taxing houses that stay empty and limiting short duration rental could be quite effective. The issue is somewhat the same in Paris. It’s very hard to afford living there because non local use properties as an investment and prefer them staying empty than risking them degraded and people who want to rent make more money on Airbnb. It’s fine if you want the city to become Disneyland but very depressing otherwise.
• smm11 4y ago
• blfr 4y ago
  I do think that a state should exist primarily for the benefit of its citizens but this view had long been decried xenophobic at best. However, you can't have it both ways. If > countless stories of flats left uninhabited by some rich person who arrived at the building, bought two flats so that he could get a visa, and doesn’t even live there then clearly not > wealthy foreigners from all over the world, to whom we offer a paradise where they enjoy the same services but where they don’t pay or pay less tax than the general population Either they live there and use services or not.
  • swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
    Not contradictory at all - they buy property, sit on it, and vacation there
    • iostream25 4y ago
      No mention of the vast holdings the church or bombeiros have in Lisbon and the insane amount of empty un-renovated buildings that are essentially just place-holders until the right CML-connected developers show-up with lots of money?
  • outworlder 4y ago
    Yeah, the article wants to argue both sides of every issue. However, > countless stories of flats left uninhabited by some rich person who arrived at the building, bought two flats so that he could get a visa, and doesn’t even live there So, the way it works is, as a golden visa applicant, you have to spend 7 days in the first year. The next 2 years, a combined 15 days (which can be spread whichever way you like). Subsequent renewals are different (21 days / 3 years). You can already live there when you apply, but you are not _required_ to. You have to maintain your investment for at least 5 years (or until you become a permanent resident) and renew the golden visa twice. Then you can apply for permanent residency (or citizenship if you qualify), if you want to. It's entirely conceivable that people would buy property and only vacation there. Which, if we are honest, is not a problem, given that large cities are excluded from the program. And cheaper housing does not qualify, either. So you would be taking property that's pretty expensive already (€500,000, €400,000 for low density areas) - OR requires the property to be older than 30 years old, and a minimum of €350,000 (or €280,000 in low density areas).
• dougmwne 4y ago
  Sounds like the Portuguese government should start building flats as fast as possible. Other countries in the EU do it and it works.
  • cinntaile 4y ago
    What EU countries? The only ones I am familiar with have housing prices spiraling out of control just like in Portugal.
    • dougmwne 4y ago
      I believe most EU countries do this in some form, but Austria by far has the largest and most successful public housing scheme. It is very effective at controlling prices.
      • cinntaile 4y ago
        How so? It makes it cheap for the people inside the system but expensive for those that are outside of it. You don't solve a housing crisis by essentially subsidizing the cost.
        • dougmwne 4y ago
          No, the Austrian government builds a large amount of housing, which increases the overall supply of housing. People living in social housing do get lower rent prices, but having a massive builder in the market that keeps pumping out new inventory helps to make it a buyer’s market and keep prices low. Simple supply and demand.
    • Drunk_Engineer 4y ago
      Austria. In Vienna, for example, 44% of the rental stock is public housing.
      • em500 4y ago
        In Amsterdam 57% of the rental stock is rent-controlled housing (capped at below €800/month). But that doesn't help at all when you don't keep building more: the average time on the waiting list for a new allocation is 13 years, and rarely move out. And if they do move out physically, it's popular to not move out administratively and illegally sublet it for a lot more than that they're paying (that's the story I've been told by locals).
• madaxe_again 4y ago
  There’s much truth here, but it isn’t the entire picture. Lisboa and Oporto are hideously overpriced, and it is indeed hard to see how a normal Portuguese earner can afford to live in either. Even Vila Nova de Gaia, which was the “cheap” side of Oporto, is now parlously expensive. This effect has bled along the coast, and many coastal villages now ask €200k for an unmodernised one bedroom house. But… the interior of the country is still facing depopulation, and property prices and rents here (between Bragança and Miranda) are still low. A five bedroom house in a town in decent condition can be had for €100k. There’s a beautiful 16th c. T8 palazzo needing modernisation in our nearest town for €80k. People don’t earn much here, but they don’t spend much, either - a lot of food is home grown or hunted and bartered, heating is from firewood, and most folks drive perhaps 50km in a week, as they live within walking distance of where they work. Almost every house that’s had modernisation done uses solar for hot water and to supplement power. They deployed a gas network four years ago, and shuttered it last, as nobody is using it. Property taxes on the above properties are about €100 a year. They’re desperate for people to move out here - lots of vacancies, not enough people to fill them. They’ve rolled out gigabit fibre to the villages, which they are literally giving away. We’re the only estrangeiros in the county, bar returning Brasileiros. So. The reality is that which is being played out all over the world. Cities are becoming unaffordable for mere mortals - and, in my view, that’s ok, as cities are past their useful life as industrial hubs and have principally become destinations and speculative investments. I’m not advocating some sort of “return to the land”, but rather that people are going to have to consider that perhaps they don’t all have to live in the top 5 cities in their country. Sure, I can’t get takeout here, but I can breathe fresh air, sit at a quiet cafe and chat with my friends in the village without enduring traffic whilst drinking my €0.60 coffee, and support local businesses run by local people, rather than vast corporate chains. Since we’ve moved here, particularly during the pandemic, we have seen quite a few young Portuguese couples move here from Oporto - some with family ties, some without - they’re starting businesses, families, renovating old abandoned homes. It’s genuinely exciting to see the beginning of something. The pendulum swings, the market speaks, the world turns. Sure, we may be facing down collapse - of the current way of doing things. Not of all things. Edit: just to demonstrate the veracity of my statements re property prices here: https://www.idealista.pt/comprar-casas/braganca/vimioso/vimioso/ https://www.idealista.pt/comprar-casas/braganca/vimioso/vimi...
• gr1zzlybe4r 4y ago
  What countries aren't struggling with this sort of dynamic? I almost think that the US is doing pretty well with this in the sense that you can still move somewhere that's cheap relative to your salary, but that only holds true if you're able to do it with remote work. So, maybe it's not true at all.
  • davidw 4y ago
    The US is pretty bad from this point of view from what I recall, compared to other places where it's generally legal to build a broader variety of housing in cities. But perhaps it just got bad here early compared to other places. Portugal's demographics, like much of western Europe, didn't look like they were going to change dramatically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Portugal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Portugal - so getting set up to build a bunch probably wasn't a priority. It looks like immigration picked up a lot, and also there has been an influx of wealthier immigrants. It will be interesting to see how they handle it. Having people with money move to your country ought to be a positive thing, but you need to build housing for them so they're not competing with locals - and winning.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      The US is pretty bad if you force yourself to remain in the same area (which, to be fair, most people do). But the US is large and there are places where housing really isn't the issue (but there can be other issues, too).
      • davidw 4y ago
        That's changing quickly though. Most of the cheaper places did 'cheap' via sprawl, and that's kind of low hanging fruit that you need to move beyond in terms of housing options, sooner or later. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/housing-crisis-affordability-covid-everywhere-problem/671077/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/housing-cr...
        • 4y ago
• mupuff1234 4y ago
  I wonder how much Airbnb is to blame on the raising rents around the world. Why charge a "local" rate when you can charge 5x that rate for a tourist paying in $$$? Even if you don't, just knowing about Airbnb's extremely high prices will most likely put inflationary pressure on rents.
  • davidw 4y ago
    I live in a touristy place in the US, and while STR (short term rentals) clearly don't help, the city's own statistics show they're not a huge factor. More than anything, NIMBY neighbors keep killing less expensive forms of housing... 100's of homes, I would say, in the time since I started observing the situation. STR's make for a convenient bogeyman that people can point their finger at. It's a bit more disturbing when you realize it's actually your neighbors; kind, ordinary people in most regards.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      STRs almost by definition can't be the entirety of the problem, except in cases where there's an absolute limit on available units, and it's highly desirable as a tourist destination (Venice, for example). STRs just slipped past the NIMBYs because they weren't on the lookout for it; it won't happen again!
  • dorchadas 4y ago
    In August 2019, ~1600 places were up for rent in Dublin. In August 2020, it was double that. Mostly from tourist hotspots with AirBnB people trying to shift to long term lets. They're back on AirBnB now, and housing is even shittier than it was before. Yes, there's other issues, but AirBnB has been a known problem in Ireland since at least 2016 when I was first looking at places to rent in the country. The government has said they're going to start tackling the issue of short term lets this month. I'll believe it when I see it.
    • nickpp 4y ago
      Didn’t Ireland have a campaign against greedy landlords with rent controls, 52% tax, no deductions, no evictions?! That would explain much better the disaster in rental market…
• motohagiography 4y ago
  Some Canadian cities responded to this with a foreign buyers tax, notably in Vancouver. Florida has a method for balancing its "snowbird" population to do with foreign buyers. Personally, I think this is the effect of governments themselves no longer believing in nations and borders or a responsibility for them, and simply importing polarized populations of both very rich and very poor people whose effect in concert squeezes out the middle who made the country desirable. The cynicism comes from the 90's where multinationals globalized and just became financial rails for stateless revenue flows, and now governments saw the opportunities and are globalizing their constituencies, where if they want to stay in power, all they need is money and votes that come from importing wealthy people in exchange for buying Gold visas and "donations," and poor people to depend on their extractive policies. What we're watching is the intentional dissolution of the nation state and replacement of relatively equal populations with polarized ones. It's barely right/left at all, it's just nihilistic power as its own end.
  • rmbyrro 4y ago
    The Portuguese case is quite different, I think. Canada has a well-developed and diversified economy. Portugal needs to import a lot from the world, but has very little to offer in exchange. They found something: their real estate and city center spaces. The country NEEDS this foreign income. It's not a self-sustainable economy and the world won't work for them for free. If the Portuguese want to solve this issue, one way is to study what else could they develop internally that would be attractive in the world trade market. Also, foreigners are looking for the European passport, not for Portugal per se. If Portugal were to follow UK's path, demand for their Golden Visa would drop dramatically. It doesn't benefit the rich, only. By raising real estate prices, it stimulates the construction business, which is labor intensive and has a long supply chain. It benefits the entire economy of the country.
    • caycep 4y ago
      The question in my mind is how can a country like Portugal grow something home grown, industry/economy wise to ameliorate this situation? Ukraine had traditional industries but it seems like the IT/knowledge worker base they built up over the past 5-10 years seems to be softening some of the economic blows of the war for them, but I can't imaging IT is the answer to every country...
• marcodiego 4y ago
  One of my students got a job offer in Portugal before the pandemic. He personally came to thank me for being his teacher; he is a good, dedicated student. Pandemic came, he stayed in Brazil doing remote work. Found him a few days ago. He told me he gave up going to Portugal and decided to stay in Brazil for now mostly because cost of living there. His initial salary would be 1.6K euros.
  • joshlemer 4y ago
    1.6k euros per... month?
    • rcarmo 4y ago
      Yeah, that would be the kind of money you’d get as a junior “anything”, even outside tech.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • outworlder 4y ago
      Yeah. It's a decent salary for a junior, when converted to BRL. Heck, even for senior positions outside tech.
    • joao_lopes 4y ago
      Also, in Portugal you receive 14 months per year instead of 12 (one extra on summer holiday and another on Christmas).
      • pb7 4y ago
        This is all the more reason to state it as a yearly salary. There are only 12 months in a year. You might get 2 extra paychecks but those are bonuses/irregular payments; there aren’t magically 2 extra months in the year.
    • llanowarelves 4y ago
      Always bugs me that Europeans use the word "salary" to mean monthly payments when in the US it defaults to meaning yearly.
• mtw 4y ago
  This is not just Portugal. I see similar sentiment in Canada where young professionals in Vancouver or Toronto complain they can't buy their first home and Vancouver has been "sold out" to foreigners. Similar sentiment in Australian major cities as well.
  • paxys 4y ago
    I can't think of any major urban area in the world and any time period in history where "housing is too expensive" hasn't been the popular sentiment.
    • ttymck 4y ago
      This is interesting, because (at least in America) the current rhetoric is that housing was laughably affordable up until the 70s(?). Now, even in suburbs, housing is far more expensive than most wage earners could expect to afford. Maybe we are thinking of two different sides of the same coin, but I would genuinely be interested in reading articles from the ~mid-century describing what you suggest.
      • buscoquadnary 4y ago
        The problem in the US is pretty obvious. We are the time period where the largest generation of Americans (the boomers) are at the retirement, or about to retire point, at the same time the Zoomers, which are a decent sized generation, are entering the housing market. Over the next several decades as the boomers die off or move to retirement homes the housing supply will increase substantially, and the value of properties in most of the US will plummet.
        • pessimizer 4y ago
          I see the same cause, but to me Boomers aren't limiting supply as much as many are relying on passive income to maintain luxury lifestyles. When they downsize, they're going to move to retirement homes that have $4-6K/mo rents at the midrange. As they die, and pass on their property, their kids will just retire young and rents will still rise, along with the prices of luxury goods. I'll believe that house prices are high because of constrained supply when I see the prices of luxury goods drop.
• kmeisthax 4y ago
  I see three colluding factors causing a global cost-of-living crisis: - Increasing income inequality short-circuiting the backpressure role of market pricing (and, more specifically, the use of home ownership and immigrant-investor programs as a way to sidestep restrictive immigration systems) - Countries attempting to replicate the American suburban lifestyle, which is economically unsustainable as voters are incentivized to constrain supply in favor of "line go up" - The economic gravity of living in a large city. The econ 101 explanation of markets is that increasing price lowers demand, but this is determined by the "elasticity" of the supply and demand curves. The shapes of the curves determines what the market will do when supply or demand shifts. But if these curves are straight lines, or "inelastic"; then suppliers or buyers do not compromise on quantity and the market gouges people. Supply is inelastic: most cities are hostile to redevelopment and all the economically-viable land in the city has been used up. No matter how expensive housing gets, people will not be able to build more of it, so price goes up more. In fact, when housing gets more valuable, there is more political resistance to increasing supply, which makes prices go up more. Demand is inelastic: most housing buyers need to own a house. Homelessness is at best inconvenient and at worst illegal. Moving out of a city is expensive, and will require finding new employment, possibly at a lower hourly rate or salary. The end result is that the housing market works less like a market and more like NFTs pre-a-few-months-ago. It is politically engineered to ensure quick and profitable exits for the vast majority of homeowners. However, this process cannot go on forever; because eventually home costs will outstrip wages, which puts backpressure on the whole "line go up" thing. This is where the rich and powerful come in. They do not respond to pricing backpressure the same way you or me do. If a flat in Portugal is a million euros instead of half a million, who the hell cares? They can afford it anyway. They represent "greatest fools" - people who can resolve a speculative bubble by just buying the asset and not caring about it. It's also kind of a mistake to say that "the Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal". The population is not a monolith; it's more correct to say that today's middle class Portuguese cannot afford to live in their own country, but prior decades' middle classes absolutely could have, and the price inflation in the housing market is specifically to the benefit of those people.
  • klabb3 4y ago
    > - Countries attempting to replicate the American suburban lifestyle Really, where? I thought only fractions of the anglosphere replicated this (like parts of Canada). Extremely few Europeans would want that lifestyle, for instance. The trend seems to be moving aggressively in the opposite direction, with large and dense cities attracting the majority of new people.
• fbanon 4y ago
  Step 1: nearly bankrupt your country Step 2: sell out your country to wealthy foreigners to "stimulate the economy" Step 3: act surprised that you can't afford living in your country, that got sold out to wealthy foreigners
  • outworlder 4y ago
    In this case, the 'wealthy foreigners' are large corporations (and foreign governments). Not the occasional gringo that decides to bridge the language barrier and buy property there.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • immibis 4y ago
    Step 4: say "oops, we can't afford to pay you the stuff we promised, but you should have known that, because you are smart investors and you checked our balance sheet and houseflow first" and then default on the investments. I wonder why these places are so desperate not to do that.
    • throwayyy479087 4y ago
      Because the international class that sets policy - and is heavily represented on this site - would lose money if they did so. Better to focus on idpol like ingroup/outgroup blame.
• foogazi 4y ago
  Lots of contradictions in tfa Does Portugal have US style NIMBYs ? Why not build more housing Sounds like Golden visas worked at attracting foreigners, raising Portugal’s land value, and incentivized citizens to move to depopulated areas
  • outworlder 4y ago
    The rules have changed so you can no longer qualify if you buy property at large cities. Now, you have to buy property in smaller communities. There's a special incentive if you buy an old property with the intent to restore it.
• haunter 4y ago
  >It’s a case of saying that Portugal has been constantly for sale. If in the recent past, large public companies were sold off to Chinese managers who now do whatever they want — like Energias de Portugal (EDP), the main electricity company, which, after making an exorbitant profit in the first semester of the year, they’re now saying that energy prices are going to go up again — now are private assets which are being bought out What a fucking disaster. Selling off national assets to foreign investment groups. >China Three Gorges Corporation, a SOE, won in December 2011 the bidding for the Portuguese government's 21.35% interest in the company. The transaction is expected to be concluded by April 2012. As of February 2014, just under 45% of the ownership of EDP was controlled by five institutional shareholders. Amongst the others were the Qatar Investment Authority and BlackRock. Qatar, China, BlackRock. Can't find a better bunch.
  • andrepd 4y ago
    Blame neoliberal ghouls which, as the saying goes, "never let a good crisis go to waste". It was the perfect time to get public assets from the Portugese state, Greek state, Spanish state, etc, at a massive discount. A fire-sale of public goods, if you will. Also, by the way, a great time to push policies which made youth unemployment go to 30, 40, or even 50% (!), to get those sweet qualified youths to go work as nurses, doctors, engineers, in Germany, Netherlands, the UK, etc. Blame also the eagerly colaborationist Portuguese government from 2011–2015.
  • jonathanstrange 4y ago
    That explains why they are building one generic luxury apartment block after the other - and hostels, hostels, hostels. It's insane.
• outworlder 4y ago
  The article seems odd and is all over the place. > The government has taken desirable measures for foreigners, making it easier for them to get golden visas if someone invests a certain amount of money. My husband, who works in real estate, tells me countless stories of flats left uninhabited by some rich person who arrived at the building, bought two flats so that he could get a visa, and doesn’t even live there. There are a bunch of restrictions on where and what types of properties qualify. You can no longer buy property in large cities and get the 'golden visa'. I do not think that is the main driver in large cities. IF these price hikes are indeed driven by foreigners, it's probably other European Union residents. > Nowadays, flats are being rented in Lisbon for four thousand euros Yeap. Rented. So why did they bring up the visa thing? You can't qualify if you rent. Also, housing prices have been increasing all around the globe at the same time economies are screwed up and inflation is rampant everywhere. Blaming foreigners seem... xenophobic? I didn't know Portugal was like that. For starters, is there enough new construction to satisfy demand? If not, there's the answer. > (...) And if Brazilians, who must be the largest source of Portuguese immigration, move here Wait. I thought the problem was rich foreigners? There are rich people in Brazil sure, but I seriously doubt their numbers would even move the needle. The overwhelming majority of expats are _not_ millionaires. If you are that rich, you can have a pretty great quality of life and would only look to live in Portugal if you were really into Europe or something like that. Rich brazilians are more likely to want to have property in Miami. > The Portuguese are becoming, nothing more and nothing less, the servants of big foreign millionaires Back to the foreign millionaire thing. Way back in 2012 I had the opportunity to live and work in Europe. I considered Portugal, but while the country is amazing and the food is good, the salaries were utterly terrible compared to the neighboring countries. It seems that things have not changed.
  • speeder 4y ago
    Indeed there is some weirdness in this article. For example, it claims Brazillians are going to Portugal in large numbers because Bolsonaro... Except, Brazillians are going to Portugal in large numbers, because the Portuguese government invited them, out of necessity since the country is depopulated and has low birth rates. I am one of the Brazilians that intend to move to Portugal, and part of the reason is that I am not exactly Brazilian, yes I was born in Brazil, but my family is from Portugal, and I was raised with a Portuguese culture, I just don' t feel like Brazil is my home and want to try going back to my family hometown (Leiria) to see if it is a place that clicks with me. Lisbon and other metropolises indeed are bad, but because a incredible amount of people want to live there despite lack of enough land there.
• rr888 4y ago
  Its a global problem that interest rates have been too low for too long. Most Americans dont realize that in most countries, house prices continued to go up through the 08-10 recession, so haven't gone down since the early 90s. Property needs a big global crash.
  • commandlinefan 4y ago
    But if it's a global problem... where are all these rich people coming from? Even if the richest 10% of the global population were going around buying three houses a piece, that would still leave 70% of the housing market left over for us plebs.
    • rr888 4y ago
      Its not rich people its middle class people with 500k mortgages that no one would take if rates were 5%. US rates have come back up, Europe is slowly started too but full impact isn't yet felt. https://www.euribor-rates.eu/en/current-euribor-rates/4/euribor-rate-12-months/ https://www.euribor-rates.eu/en/current-euribor-rates/4/euri...
  • hnuser847 4y ago
    Thank you for mentioning interest rates. Any time housing comes up on HN, the main factors people bring up are short-term rentals, NIMBYism, and lack of new development. However, if these explanations had any merit, why have home values in Flint, MI increased by 67% since March of 2020? Flint's population has rapidly declined over the past 40 years and continues to decline (its population is less than half of what it was at its peak), so there's not a population boom driving up demand. Flint is not exactly known as a tourist destination either. And to top off, Flint is most well known for its contaminated drinking water that contains lead. So why on Earth would such a place be experiencing a housing shortage? The obvious answer is that governments around the world have brought interests rate down to zero, which forces investors to seek out riskier and riskier assets to invest in. Instead of investing in traditionally safe assets like treasuries and bonds, investors now have no choice but to invest in stuff like tech startups, cryptocurrencies, personal loans, mortgage-backed securities, and dilapidated houses in the Midwest.
• slaw 4y ago
  Inflation in Portugal is 9%, Euribor interest rate used to calculate mortgage is 1.483%. Housing is where you park money.
  • 4gotunameagain 4y ago
    what a smart and filled with empathy comment for an article about people being pushed out of their hometowns.
    • slaw 4y ago
      I am only stating facts not the one who is printing money and pushing people out of their hometowns.
• TremendousJudge 4y ago
  • rcarmo 4y ago
    Actually, that is something many middle-aged Portuguese are keenly aware of. Either because they lost relatives in that war or because they are still trying to figure out how to cope with the mistakes of that generation (most people who lived through that are gone - and so are their worldviews - so I don’t see any point in demonizing the dead).
  • zelphirkalt 4y ago
    And what does some historical injustice have to do with ordinary people being pushed out of their homes? Maybe you could try to not put them all in one caste and judge them all as a single entity? Really, it is not appropriate to wish them all suffering, because of some historical fact, which they most like did not have a hand in. A little empathy seems appropriate. Maybe with more empathy in the world, we would also see some more apologies for historical injustices.
  • Apocryphon 4y ago
    Ironically, many Portuguese have moved to Angola since the Great Recession.
  • outworlder 4y ago
    They did a mess in Brazil too. Extracted what they could, be it wood or gold and everything in between. Gold in particular was a pretty good shakedown. We learned about all the B.S. at school. I am Brazilian. I do not blame the current Portuguese people. Heck, I don't even blame the Portuguese back then, just their government. I want Portugal to prosper. Asking for an official apology is fine. Blaming ordinary people who are just trying to live their lives, is not fine.
    • hash07e 4y ago
      Portugal Created and give a Country to Brazilians. Before Portuguese came it was only forest and some indian tribes fighting each other. They literally gave a whole country for us Brazilians. Or you really think some (maybe 80) Portuguese that came desperate, with hunger and disease after months sailing would be able to "genocide" all natives? I know what "history" books says, but it is bulls*. The prince still live in Brazil. We own the Brazil to the Portuguese. They are our Older brothers
• somewhereoutth 4y ago
  5 years resident here (as a Brexit refugee). Central city locations in Lisbon and Porto have exploded in price, but this is due to AirBnB rather than rich expats. Portugal's tourism industry has boomed, which has put money in a lot of people's pockets, but has distorted local economies somewhat. Better management is required, for example cracking down on AirBnB and NOT building that new cruise liner terminal. Unfortunately the upper middle class idyll (alluded to in the article) of living a dilapidated (but in a cool way) apartment ten paces from your favourite coffee shop, while doing a socially respectable play job is now no more viable here than in SF, London or Berlin. Indeed, my own favourite 'coffee shop' got turned into a chain tequila bar. Outside the hot centres, things aren't as bad. Public transport (at least in the AML - Lisbon Metropolitan Area) is excellent by any standard, and decent apartments are available for sensible prices well within one hour public transport commute of the downtown. Compare with London, where people are fighting over each rental. > family factor weighs a lot here Yes, and this is a problem, given that Portugal only became democratic 48 years ago and has a large amount of cultural baggage from quite frankly medieval times. Also, the implication of this statement is that family doesn't count elsewhere - and in case you missed it it was spelled out a few lines later, which should give you an idea of the residual naivety and insularity of (old) Portuguese culture. Agency - the idea that you can do or think something independently, and then take responsibility for it - is somewhat lacking too. But! There is much that is very good about Portugal and the Portuguese people, I feel that here it is ok to be kind to each other. Furthermore, there are good changes, new opportunities are arising (perhaps in a very small part to some of the more productive visa holders), and I see a great future for Portugal - even if many Portuguese often don't.
  • andrepd 4y ago
    (Calling yourself a "refugee" as a rich immigrant is a bit off-puting, imho) Why do you say that the rise in housing prices has been due to AirBnB but not to rich immigrants? It seems a bit odd. Both can outbid the average native and just push prices high. Many rich immigrants also buy up loads of property for speculative/investment purposes, not just to live in. >has a large amount of cultural baggage from quite frankly medieval times I wonder what exactly you mean by this.
• prmoustache 4y ago
  First the linked article would do with a bit of proofreading, it is painful at this point. The market is mostly driven by portuguese government offering low taxes to people retiring in the country. This won't be sustainable in the long run as all those people retiring now likely got less kids than the previous gen and will gonna die soon. This is a bubble that will pop in the next 20years when the amount of people dying and properties being put on sale will be much greater than people willing to retire there. Also it is not like all these properties sold didn't benefit portuguese people.
  • jmyeet 4y ago
    Remember when people talked about the impending Florida real estate collapse, the so-called “Silver Tsunami”? Same (theorized) dynamic. Retired people dying. The notion seems almost quaint in light of current events.
  • rcarmo 4y ago
    Actually, the market is being driven by wealthy real estate owners who don’t want to do anything but sit back and rake in the profits. The government has been sponsoring visas to get investment in to diversify our industry and economics, but the people coming here to work are not really the ones buying luxury flats.
• jonathanstrange 4y ago
  Yes, the situation is dire. I live in Lisbon as a foreigner for more than 12 years now. We pay a rent for a small flat that used to be very expensive and now is on the cheap side in our quarter of the city. Luckily, we have an older contract that cannot be changed as easily as newer ones. I'm not thrilled by the possibility that our landlord might cancel it some day, however, e.g. for relatives to move in. Rents in the city have skyrocketed, we'd have a hard time finding anything, even though we both work full-time and have salaries above average. It's crazy because all new homes and apartments are "luxury apartments" with insanely high pricing both for buying and renting. They're mostly empty or are (often illegally) rented out as holiday apartments. It's incomprehensible to me how ordinary Portuguese families survive in Lisbon. I guess most of them have inherited property. Quite honestly, apart from the generally increasing gap between rich and the poor, one big problem in societies nowadays is that you can simply get richer and richer just from owning property. For example, if you own three ordinary apartments in Lisbon, you can live in one of them and easily make a good living by renting out the other two as holiday apartments. Because cleaning services, guys who do repairs, etc., are cheap in Portugal, this involves almost no work. Moreover, the net worth of your property will continually increase while you do (almost) nothing. I'm not saying I blame these people, I would do the same if I had the opportunity, but this is a huge structural problem in my opinion.
  • jseliger 4y ago
    We pay a rent for a small flat that used to be very expensive and now is on the cheap side in our quarter of the city Portugal should build more housing, which is a simple, effective solution if the rent is too damn high: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/the-rent-really-is-too-damn-high/254718/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/the-ren.... The nice thing about indoor space is that we can make pretty much as much of it as we'd like.
    • rcarmo 4y ago
      Nope. Zoning and licensing is in the hands of politicians and construction lobbies vying for the best places to build high-value housing, which is where they get the most return.
• dogman144 4y ago
  I don’t know what’s the correct approach with this. I’m a globe trotting engineer who understands globalism and what access tech is opening up to it. I don’t mean being a digital nomad. Rather, tech is collapsing or expanding concepts of borders, nationalism and so on in very meaningful ways. That’s a hugely compelling area to work in vs chasing an OKR for Google ads. I don’t think it’s reversible, and I find a lot of value personally and professionally from being in that space because this is the rare moment where the world is changing and I’m in a field directly involved with it. The other aspect is it’s locals selling to the foreigners, and a personally compelling reason to go there is urban areas of the USA have screwed themselves up with the cost of living. I want to participate in problems, not pay $5k/mo for a 2bdr in NYC or soon Austin or Nashville so I can go to bars with other techies. So if locals weren’t selling at hugely inflated prices, I’d be firmly in favor of that. So, look to the Portuguese neighbors selling apartments first. But, no excuses - I see $500k 2 bdr in Lisbon and think that’s a chance to live in a world that is way too expensive and commercialized in NYC. A local in Lisbon is getting hosed by that and my mobility, no way around it. In short - am I part of the problem, what responsibilities do I have vs the locals and govt policies about foreign purchases, do my motivations matter at all vs the outcomes. I don’t know yet, Hard to say, although it’s good to face hard facts via articles like this. Networked-globalism won’t reverse, and I think it’s more likely the quiet parts of the world (rural America, cheap Europe) are just going to go through some transformations that can’t be stopped and the symptoms look like this article.
  • kipchak 4y ago
    I think the fundamental question is by what right does someone have "right" to something like land or the buildings on it, by the open market and wealth or by already living there? Neither is really fair or equitable. But I worry what will happen as more people start to feel (justifiably so) they're getting a raw deal on both fronts.
    • dougmwne 4y ago
      The answer to your question is sovereignty and it is quite settled by this point in global governance. Who has it and who they gave it up to. As a republic, the citizens of Portugal are sovereign and they have the right to decide who gets to live where and for how much. The citizens can also choose to give up their sovereignty to others (the EU, globalism) or not exercise it (don’t vote or don’t hold their officials accountable).
• Patrol8394 4y ago
  That's what happens when you incentivize wealthy people to move in and buy houses in masses. Price rises and locals struggle. Same happens when states competes to get the next big co HQ in town. It's a double edged sword.
• jmyeet 4y ago
  The answer, as always when it comes to housing issues in Portugal or anywhere else, is to treat this as a supply side problem. Portugal has an influx of foreign funds through Golden Visa and similar programs. It should take that money and build social housing that is, at least at first, only open to Portuguese citizens. Think Vienna. In areas where building is a problem, just use funds to buy properties and turn them into social housing. I don’t know what restrictions there are on foreign real estate purchases. Personally I have no issue with owner occupiers. But any “investors” (including AirBnBs) should be made illegal or simply taxed into oblivion.
• mariojv 4y ago
  Related article in the WSJ today about Americans buying European homes due to the favorable exchange rate: https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-the-u-s-dollar-surges-american-buyers-splurge-on-european-homes-11661975836 https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-the-u-s-dollar-surges-americ... I wonder how this will impact "golden visas." Personally, if moving to Europe, I would be a little concerned about short-term energy insecurity pretty much anywhere except perhaps the Iberian peninsula. I think they'll find a solution, but it'd be hard to make such a big bet on without certainty.
  • petre 4y ago
    The Iberian peninsula imports gas from Algeria. The instant they accept Moroccan control over Western Sahara is the instant the gas stops flowing from Algeria to Spain and Portugal.
    • mariojv 4y ago
      Do you think this is likely to happen? I don't know enough about the politics of the region to know if this is something they would do.
      • petre 4y ago
        Yes, it's quite possible. After Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigned, the current Algerian government started working against France and the EU. Lots of French investment in Algeria, so they're basically also working against themselves, betting most if not all of their economy on oil and gas. Apart from ocasional territorial disputes, Spain and Morrocco are on okay terms and the current Spanish goverment is supporting the Moroccan plan for the autonomy of Western Sahara, which is close to their holiday islands, the Canarias. This move drew hash criticism and threats from Algeria who's establishment unconditionally supports the Polisario front. They're a nationalist movement working against Spanish colonialism and Moroccan and Mauritanian irredentism. Spain is walking on quite a thin line in Africa. I need not remind you that virtually all of their gas comes from Hassi R'Mel, Algeria.
        • 4y ago
• Proven 4y ago
• squarefoot 4y ago
  > flats with just two bedrooms going for more than half a million euros in the centers of Lisbon or Oporto. How is that different from other places? Houses in the center of big cities are always a lot more expensive than others far away from it. Want a small one in the center of Rome? Here you are: 27mq, 2nd floor and no elevator, no heating, no air conditioning, abysmal energy efficiency, no kitchen, renovation needed, only €600,000. What a bargain! https://www-tecnocasa-it.translate.goog/vendita/appartamenti/roma/roma/60616621.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-tecnocasa-it.translate.goog/vendita/appartamenti... No thanks, I'll rather spend less than one third for the 7 times bigger house I'll be soon relocating to. I lived most of my life near the center of Rome; if you come as a tourist I concur it can be a wonderful experience, but after decades of traffic, noise and pollution, leaving for a much quieter and cleaner place with plenty of space for my hobbies is the best thing I could do. And it's also much cheaper. YMMV of course.
  • immibis 4y ago
    It's not different. Nobody can afford to live anywhere. Which (when homelessness is illegal) means nobody can afford to live. Market-enforced eugenics, if you will, selecting for generational wealth rather than specific genetic markers.
  • epolanski 4y ago
    I'm from Rome and your example is cherrypicked bs. Yes, very central touristic areas are expensive but half a million can get you 3 room apartments you can go to center by feet, even less would be enough. That's the price you would pay, e.g. in Ostiense.
    • I_AM_A_SMURF 4y ago
      lol you can see the freaking Pantheon from the window, come on.
• wtcactus 4y ago
  Portuguese here. I think this title is a bit sensationalist. It's true that a middle class Portuguese, with the extremely heavy income/property taxes we have to pay, will find it very difficult to live in Lisbon's or Porto's city center in a medium-upper apartment. Lisbon (and even more Porto) do have an extensive metro line though, and you can rent/buy an apartment on the outskirts (although still served by metro line), even with the low liquid wages. But more than that, vast areas of the country are extremely deserted and housing is extremely cheap there (a similar house in the interior goes for about 20% of one in Lisbon/Porto). Also, there's the problem of the government having destroyed most of the middle class to embezzle the metric of the "minimum wage". Constant mandates to increase the minimum wage (and very heavy taxes on anyone that earns more than that), make so that companies can't discriminate between good and bad workers. Most workers get paid almost the same, and as such, there's no point in trying to be a better worker. I'm one of the "lucky ones" because I bring home about €2000/month. My company has a total cost with my salary after taxes and other state contributions of €3880/month. Now, I know that you can have the argument that we get a lot of "free" services in return, but, sadly, no, we don't. Decades old mismanagement (governments use these "free" services to cater to their party members and get them nice administration positions for which they don't have any experience) and some outright corruption, destroyed the quality of most of these "free" services. The SNS is in absolute shambles. Our mortality rate is the highest since 1913 (ok, you can attribute that COVID). Our infant mortality rate, the highest since 1982 (sorry, but you can't say this one is due to COVID). Now, what happened to cause this? 7 years ago, we got a center-left government into power, one of their first measures was to destroy a system where the hospitals were public, but the management was done by a private company - these hospitals had much better metrics for both costs and quality of service. They abolished that, and replaced the hospitals' administration by party members. This is the result. Like it happened with the SNS, similar stuff happened in a lot of other areas. In the end, the government's answer is always the same: increase taxes - which strangulates the economy and destroys the middle class, and, funnily enough, transforms us all into people dependent on "government's money" and their subsidies - that ensures that they keep in power because nobody can imagine living without those "free" services with the low liquid wages we have.
  • klabb3 4y ago
• bieh 4y ago
  I moved to Lisbon in 2020, and I've become increasingly aware of the impact that high-income remote-worker immigrants like me are having on the city, and other similar places. I've been thinking of building something to try and help: https://www.reddit.com/r/PortugalExpats/comments/vy0i5r/critique_my_idea_an_app_that_helps/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PortugalExpats/comments/vy0i5r/crit... It's proved... controversial! I'd be interested to get HNs take.
  • spaniard89277 4y ago
    You can't solve the issue unless you build (much) more housing. An app to donating to charity is like nothing. You have good intentions but it is what it is. And even if you build housing, you somehow need to reduce the induced demand.
    • bieh 4y ago
      Yeah, for sure. But I can't build houses (to the scale required), I can only build tech :) Obviously this would 100% be a problem better solved by government. But I don't see any evidence that they're planning to do that, so ...
  • ahepp 4y ago
    I think it puts a pretty negative framing on immigration, that it's something you have to buy an indulgence for. Maybe that's true. Being a well paid tech worker who might try the expat lifestyle someday, I'm pretty biased. But I also wonder what it might look like to frame things in a more positive light. Maybe that could be connecting immigrants to jobs making a productive impact in the local economy, or showcasing local investment opportunities. Just from a pragmatic perspective, I feel like this kind of positive framing is more likely to get engagement. People get very defensive, very fast, if you make them feel as if they've done something wrong (even if they have).
    • bieh 4y ago
      Hey, thanks for the reply! Yeah, absolutely -- with hindsight, the phrasing that I used was far too negative. I suspect I need to go with something very carefully phrased around "helping give back", rather than "you're a terrible person, make recompense for your crimes!", haha.
• rcarmo 4y ago
  As a Portuguese living in Lisbon, I find this article to be all over the place. Sometimes it’s realistic, often it’s just sensationalist. Yes, real estate prices are nuts right now. I have no clue how my kids are going to find places to live when they want to move out, but I can tell you that a lot of that is just plain and simple greed from builders and homeowners who often refuse to maintain (let alone re-paint or improve) existing buildings. There are also political aspects to how zoning and development takes place, but those vary so much depending on region and party lines that I’ll just call it lack of political responsibility (also, most people outside the extreme left or right don’t want to get involved in politics, lobbying or economic discussions). There was a very big emphasis some 40-50 years ago on building thoroughfares, regional transportation, and nationalizing what passed for core industries, but all roads led to district capitals at the expense of doing actual regional development. Efforts to foster or sustain most industries largely failed (although there are echoes of those in current startup support programs, and some regional programs of note), so young people gravitated towards the shoreline (and towns, and the services industry) and the countryside just aged away. I have been thinking of moving out of Lisbon to a smaller town (property prices are tempting), but health, shopping, etc., are just not there, because everything of interest (brand and specialists stores, entertainment, etc.) is mostly only available in district capitals, and most large companies only have offices in Lisbon or the mongrel outskirts of it, in business centres that are only reachable by car and lack decent public transportation. So that makes it hard to get a decent paycheck outside Lisbon and Oporto, unless you’re willing to become a chattel to some lobbies who are sponsoring local colleges hoping to get cheap tech labor out of new graduates, paying them just enough to stick around. A good summary of all the above is what happened in a district near Lisbon —- a previous mayor (who went to jail for corruption and actually got reelected afterwards) supported the creation of malls, business centers, etc., but punted on public transportation (leaving a local university center effectively stranded) and futzed about with zoning to allow premium villas to be built. I have been expecting the Lisbon real estate market to crash _hard_ for a while now, but people with college degrees are somehow managing to pay rent or mortgaging other family assets to buy flats in the city. The rest struggle, of course, and are pushed out to the suburbs. I wonder for how much longer things will stay this way. Portuguese are becoming more technically literate on average, so that gives me some hope, but I just don’t see the overall economy evolving beyond the primary industry/services and tourism dichotomy, no matter how many tech unicorns spring up and bring expats here. (On that note, Portuguese wages, even in FAANG companies, are merely a fraction of our US, UK, German and Swiss counterparts, and that can’t be explained solely through cost of living comparisons… but that’s a completely different discussion)
• humanwhosits 4y ago
  Why does anyone let non-resident people buy residential housing?
  • kblev 4y ago
    Banning international sales is a politically damaging move because it would crash the market value of existing housing, affecting those residents who own one (or more), particularly if they're on a mortgage. It also reduces the tax income from properties and propert sales. Banks probably wouldn't be too happy either that the security on the loans no longer cover the outstanding balance. Things will probably shift when the proportion of renters significantly outnumber the home owners.
  • ejb999 4y ago
    not every country does allow it, but you don't have to buy to cause a problem for locals - just be willing to pay more rent than a local can afford is enough of a problem to price others(locals) out.
  • closedloop129 4y ago
    That's the wrong question. If you sell housing to non-resident people, you receive money to build more housing. The question should be: Why does anybody limit supply of housing to the point that prices rise? The French did a bad job at building satellite cities, but done right, you could connect new housing to the city center like the original Los Angeles street cars. If jobs don't pay much then you also don't pay much to the builders of new houses which makes them affordable.
    • immibis 4y ago
      You're conflating different values of "you". If I sell my house to a non-resident person and receive money, why should I use that money to build more housing, rather than a Ferrari? Meanwhile, the people who actually build the houses aren't the ones selling all the existing stock in the most desirable locations. They are stuck building suburban sprawl because that's where the empty space is.
• tejohnso 4y ago
  As long as governments continue to allow housing to be treated primarily as an asset, then housing is going to be subject to asset inflation. The investor class inflates the value of the assets, meanwhile the working class are just struggling for a place to live.
• tumetab1 4y ago
  To bring some facts regarding the housing market: The evolution of new housing construction over the last years https://www.pordata.pt/en/Portugal/Completed+dwellings+in+new+constructions+for+family+housing+total+and+by+dwelling+typology-189 https://www.pordata.pt/en/Portugal/Completed+dwellings+in+ne... The number of conventional family houses in Portugal https://www.pordata.pt/en/Portugal/Conventional+family+housing+buildings-92 https://www.pordata.pt/en/Portugal/Conventional+family+housi... My opinions: The housing market has been stagnant since 2010 while at the same time interest rates have been low. The population might not have risen a lot since 2010 but the usual trends of moving to city centers, people leaving their parents house (which keep the same house), people wanting new/bigger houses than their parents are still pressures present. This means there's a big pressure in demand for housing which is not being met by supply which increases the prices. My speculation is that foreign investment has a very low impact in the housing prices, but it's just my speculation. Even if it's a considerable impact, the fix is always to increase supply of houses so that prices drop and we also get foreign investment.
  • dougmwne 4y ago
    Oh yeah, there’s the problem right there. They stopped building houses in 2010!
• al_mandi 4y ago
  This is the natural outcome of bad economic policies. The world today runs on interest and usury, things that prohibited in the three major religions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Yet, people refuse to learn.
• subsubzero 4y ago
  This sounds like what happened in the SFbay area(south bay/pennisula), I grew up there and it used to be a great place to live, center left politics, lots of families and a diverse set of industries with many middle class opportunities. right around 10-15 years ago things started to change dramatically for the worse, housing and costs everywhere skyrocketed, homeless population exploded, politics veered hard left. Most of my friends from high school(90%) were forced to leave due to rents going from $1k a month to $3k a month for a 1-2 bdrm apts. Those that owned houses also moved as they were fed up with crime and could get a way better house somewhere else. Middle class jobs all disappeared from the area, families also left, the neighborhoods I lived in San Jose (rose garden/willow glen) had barely any kids for my daughter to play with as there were no families anymore, the rose garden neighborhood had 0 kids on the street, the willow glen neighborhood had 1 family w/ kids who moved away during the pandemic. I was lucky and making really good money in tech but was devastated by how the area I grew up in had turned into a nightmare and everyone I know (even family) leaving the area. I too ended leaving as the cost vs. quality of life didn't make any sense and I couldn't see my family living in a place I didn't even recognize anymore. Most people don't talk about it but there is a huge diaspora of bay area residents due to the stuff mentioned above and it breaks my heart to think we will most likely never return and familiy/friends I expected to spend the rest of my life with all leaving.
  • standyro 4y ago
    I'm curious, where did you leave to, if I can ask?
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • swearwolf 4y ago
    As a resident, what do you think was the catalyst for these changes?
    • pkaye 4y ago
      A lot of people moved into the bay area for the good jobs, nice weather and nature. Once housing demand pushed above supply, prices started shooting up. Those locals whose incomes didn't grow were pushed out of their homes. The bay area is boxed in by the hills so hard to expand out. Also a lot of the land was already build up with single family homes and other low density housing a long time ago so upgrading the density is harder. The public transportation is also limited. BART didn't expand to south bay until a few years ago. And the stations are far apart. Undoing all this mess will be much more expensive now.
• iostream25 4y ago
  You could say the same about <countryname> where <countryname> is a popular tourist destination that has over 15% of it's economy based in tourism. Czechs were the minority property owners in Prague some 20 years ago, already. Inflation is occurring at higher rates in some countries than others (cough Estonia, Turkey for example) and Portugal is not exceptional in this respect. The starting salaries for doctors in the Portuguese SNS are terrible, at around 1800 euro for doctors and 1200 euro for nurses. This is insufficient for living in Lisbon or Porto, as the author would agree. Source: I am Portuguese. I live in central Portugal. I do not like the authors apparent intentions in trying to incite anti-foreigner sentiments. Portugal has chosen it's own course here, from the Golden Visas to the over-reliance on tourism. Lisbon has it's own management problems that I won't dig into, but suffice it to say that certain places like Lisbon or Porto have become rather expensive, while the majority of the interior of the country continues to be less-inhabited. Our train services were gutted when the public system was privatized and the concession given to a single company. Monopolies run rampant in Portugal. Uniquely complaining about PORTUGAL being unaffordable for the PORTUGUESE is such a Portuguese mentality, I can't even. The author needs to live abroad in some other countries for awhile and see how much this is a general issue relating to so-called NICE CITIES becoming horribly expensive. No doubt, we will stop being fashionable at some point, when the "next" cool place becomes king, so the real question is whether we will begin manufacturing and developing other sectors of our economy beyond raw-materials export (low in the capitalist pyramid) and tourism. Make furniture to sell, rather than exporting the timber, so to speak.
  • parminya 4y ago
    > Uniquely complaining about PORTUGAL being unaffordable for the PORTUGUESE is such a Portuguese mentality, I can't even. I love this complaint. It's so perfectly a demonstrations of itself. It's somehow as if, suffering a problem that someone else suffers from, means you're not allowed to even discuss it. It's also hardly unique to Portugal. Most countries discuss domestic politics in terms of the country, because they have say over the policy of non-domestic territories. (Usually - colonial empires excepted.)
• _vbnz 4y ago
  Europe is facing complete economic collapse in the face of hyper-inflation, energy shortages, the Euro collapsing in value and rising interest rates. It's a shame that the continent that was once the birthplace of democracy, the scientific method, the industrial revolution and socialism has been reduced to nothing more than an open-air museum for wealthy Americans and a refugee centre for the victims of their wars. We need strong leaders who will put Europe first.
  • immibis 4y ago
    Last time Europe had "strong leaders who will put <country> first" it did NOT end well.
    • elforce002 4y ago
      So, they can't learn from their mistakes?
    • postsantum 4y ago
      [flagged]
    • llanowarelves 4y ago
      Works well for Japan, China, and Israel.
    • lelanthran 4y ago
      > Last time Europe had "strong leaders who will put <country> first" it did NOT end well. If the leaders of a country won't put their own citizens first, who should they put first? I mean, for a country, which group of people are more important to that country than the citizens?
      • llanowarelves 4y ago
        Israel
  • TheGigaChad 4y ago
• DrNosferatu 4y ago
  Very difficult to change because, in the "Pax Neoliberalia" world we live in, profits are Sacrosanct - and the higher the capital concentration, the holier so. But some straightforward fixes: 1. Flood the market with affordable state housing, Austria-style - with the bonus of building new, boosting the national economy. 2. Create very progressive (rapidly rising) taxes based on property value - making untenable the current practice of parking money and profit by simply buying & holding empty flats and the like. 3. Raise salaries - currently portuguese salaries, and their weight on GDP, rank the lowest in the EU. (and no, it won't create an inflation spiral: the current inflation spike is, first and foremost, the result of a supply shock, price-gouging and speculative/cartel practices - corporate profits being at a record high is proof of that) Unfortunately, incentives are heavily stacked on leaving things as they are, as the ruling class is mostly made up of the landlord class, and, is not sensitive to (sometimes even not aware of) the struggles of assetless commoners that only earn income from their (low) salaried labor. Or, even worse, stands to lose their current large gains on capital/assets if this is fixed - and most portuguese media outlets trumpet their - private - master's voice and interests. Additionally, just leaving things as they are, also scores brownie points with the EU by making the Government (even if "center-left") appear "frugal". And PM Costa has personal ambitions for future EU high office. (...who will be the next head of the European Commission or the European Council?)
  • jollybean 4y ago
    Well #1 is not 'straightfoward' fixes at all. Massive Real Estate buildouts are 'gigantic' industrial projects. A 'straight forward fix' is to ban foreign ownership of homes and AirBnB. Poof. Now, I wouldn't support that, but it would be 'straight forward'. #2 is reasonable. #3 is a big glib tough. "Hey, everyone should just get a raise!", if it were only that easy!
    • DrNosferatu 4y ago
      1. "banning foreign ownership" would result in Portugalexit at best, perhaps a Zairization of Portugal, or even worse - no thanks. What's wrong with large industrial projects? It's exactly what we need at this moment - in fact, both Portugal and EU-scale. This would cost a small fraction of the Quantitative Easing program from the European Central Bank. (and these Massive Real Estate buildouts must include the lessons in Urbanism learned from past such projects) 2. (y) 3. State sector raises salaries, private sector is forced to follow. Just raising minimum wage is positive, but not enough. This tends to compress people to the bottom salary tier and promote even more brain drain.
• tpmx 4y ago
  What's that "hostile climate" in the sub-headline about?
• asdff 4y ago
  Why is the situation always "lets attempt to tax investors who are notorious for skirting around their full tax burden" instead of directly attacking the conditions that lead to this area being a favorable area to park money in the first place? Namely, you have too many jobs and not enough housing. Sometime in the last 100 years, leaders around the western world realized the massive real estate opportunity of strangling natural urban growth and price gouging on the limited supply they artificially created through euclidean zoning and countless layers of regulatory process meant to disincentivize investment in development. Just build more housing, and a lot of the economic ills of the 2020s around the world will evaporate.
  • immibis 4y ago
    Nobody wins elections by promising to destroy jobs.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • bruce343434 4y ago
      So build houses
• aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
  • betaby 4y ago
    AiBnbns are about 0.01% of the housing stock in Toronto. Won't change anything at all. There is simply not enough housing mostly everywhere, despite the doom and gloom predictions population is growing everywhere, being that natural or immigration doesn't really matter.
• jollybean 4y ago
  It's the same everywhere. Vancouver, Toronto. Surpluses are being gathered by the global elite and they are coming back to buy property the locals cannot afford and leave the spaces underutilized and empty. How on god's green earth we allow our 'land' in urban areas - a very valuable resource to be 'exported' while owners pay nary any taxes ... is completely insane. We should basically ban foreign ownership, or, tax it heavily and especially require domiciles to be either occupied or to have a tax so that it 'gets occupied' at some rate.
• moltar 4y ago
  I can’t think of any major and attractive city in the world where majority of locals could afford to buy. I think Portugal was just late to the game, but the playbook is the same. All major cities in Canada, NYC, London, Hanoi, Bangkok, Naypyidaw, and so on and on. Every nice city is extremely overvalued.
• coding123 4y ago
  The liberal enclaves of high paying jobs has been broken. These people decided to move to exotic or rural or destination places because we paid them like kings. Now we have a lot of entitled kings running around ruining everything yesteryear.
• z9znz 4y ago
  I sit reading this in a village in central Portugal, and I have a very different perspective than the OP. What I see are vast numbers of uninhabited, decaying or wholly uninhabitable structures. I see 50+ age men loitering around the town, drinking beer at 10am, and playing scratch-offs. On the roads I see absolutely bonkers drivers who have old cars which obviously have binary gas pedals. They go super slow for no reason, but at some point they flip the switch and drive like maniacs, blind curves be damned. These cars, by the way, are 80s and 90s soot-spewing diesels. They start fires more often than mother nature does. Sometimes it's because they are crazy, but usually it's because they want to clear a natural forest so they can grow fast timber like eucalyptus (which greatly exacerbates the fire risk since they are so grow fast and are highly flammable). VAT here is 23%. This thing about foreigners not paying tax is bs. Locals widely use a tax scheme whereby they can make tax claims on their purchases, getting some of it back. Without that tax number, you pay the full 23%. And if you want to use a visa to live and work here, you will pay an incredible tax rate that's even higher than Netherlands (which is already 20-50% higher than the US). Many of the "rich" foreigners coming in and buying property are Brazilians, some of whom got their riches through corruption or outright criminal activities. There is also still good old fashioned corruption here. The laws regarding many topics such as land habitation permits vary by jurisdiction, and the common way to deal with them is to get cozy with the mayor or other important figures. Take them to dinner, buy them some gifts, play nice. You can be completely legal, but if you don't play the game right you can be denied a permit. This is all pretty bad news, but that's not to say that Portugal is bad or Portuguese are bad. There's a lot to like here. There's a lot of charm, a lot of history, some great beaches and villages and mountainous areas. The climate can be nice, but imo it's not great and rapidly getting worse (many days this summer over 40C, and so, so many fires). My takeaway is, to put it very bluntly, that the average Portuguese person is quite ignorant. They either don't know a lot of important things, or they know a bit but don't care (because they don't know why it's important). It feels like time stopped here in the mid 1900s. Porgugal was once the king of the world. Then it had a several hundred year decline, reaching bottom in the latter 1900s. The younger generation learned it was better to move elsewhere to earn money, so progress ceased locally. But 10 years or so ago, the younger people who are now middle age began coming back, starting businesses, and revitalizing the country. It's going to take a few more decades before Portugal reaches the point where it is not a poor shadow of its former self. I'm not sure it will ever make it though.
• hepinhei 4y ago
  What this article does not say is that the prime Minister has 6 houses... So he is benefiting from this (https://www.cmjornal.pt/politica/detalhe/antonio-costa-tem-cinco-casas-e-vai-comprar-outra https://www.cmjornal.pt/politica/detalhe/antonio-costa-tem-c...) We are living more and more in a world where people work but are not able to live with dignity
  • amelius 4y ago
    And also in a world where bricks make more money than honest hard work.
  • alexandre-bl 4y ago
    I don't doubt it. However, the source you've chosen (Correio da Manhã) is famously untrustworthy. It's the butt of many jokes here in Portugal, being regarded as everything a news organization shouldn't be.
    • odshoifsdhfs 4y ago
      It was declared on his 'declaration of interests' or whatever it is called. Was also published in Eco and Publico (at least saw in these two). And from what I remember, a lot of the politicians in the Parliament also have multiple properties, and lets not even remember the 'Rubles' case.
  • keepquestioning 4y ago
    We need a cap on property ownership for those in the political class. That's the key to fairer policies.
    • borski 4y ago
      Is it fair to prevent wealthy people from going into politics? Does a politician have to be poor or middle class, or not own homes? At what point do the restrictions begin to become 'unfair'? Some people are born with wealth, which under this system would put them at a disadvantage in politics...fair? Fair always has two sides, and it's "impossible" to come up with a perfectly fair system.
• WheatM 4y ago
• googlryas 4y ago
  Isn't it more accurate to say the Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Lisbon(or Porto, or some other desirable city)? If you have a city with X housing units, but 5X people from within the city + all over the country/world want to live there, and for whatever reason no one wants to/can build 4X more housing units, how do you fairly determine who gets to live there and who doesn't? * Is it fair if you were born in Lisbon you get to keep living in Lisbon? * Is it fair if people early in their career get to live in Lisbon because it will advance their career much more than if they lived in the countryside? * Is it fair if a rich person gets to live there because they can pay a lot of money to do so? Whatever policy is in place, it will be deciding the winners and the losers, or the people who get to live in Lisbon and those who don't.
  • kaashif 4y ago
    Using a word as subjective as "fair" allows for people to propose solutions you don't agree with, but that they think are fair. The author of the article says: > Digital nomads, retired foreigners, and millionaires searching for Gold visas are pushing the Portuguese to another place. > Is this really that fair? We are obviously supposed to say "no", but I think the answer is yes. I really hate this form of argument by rhetorical question that only works if you _already_ agree with the author, if my answers are different the whole article just doesn't work.
    • tarakat 4y ago
      It's hard to empathize with a belief system that thinks pricing a native population out of their own country is fair. I suppose if you hold that everything should be subordinate to economics, including community and nationhood?
      • MikeTheRocker 4y ago
        Fair is generally defined to mean in accordance with established rules and without bias. Offering preferential renting rights or pricing to certain cohorts such as people of a given age, nationality, etc. would clearly not be fair under this definition.
• tluyben2 4y ago
  I bought a large house for peanuts this year in PT, just not in Lisbon. Really about the cheapest m2 with land I could get in Europe. Not everyone wants or needs to live in a city.
  • srrge 4y ago
    Where did you buy, how was your overall experience?
    • tluyben2 4y ago
      Close to Castelo branco and the experience is great. Everyone speaks english although I understand and speak some Portugese (and Spanish), the young people don’t even want to say speak Pt as they want to learn better english. People are hardworking and friendly, there is a lot of entrepreneurial spirit among the young, even though they are not in lisboa. The house we got is so cheap I didn’t even know you could get actual liveable places for that in the the west of the eu still. It’s close enough to lisboa and Porto to just have a weekend there regularly.
• tluyben2 4y ago
  What a nonsense article ; this applies to every country in the most popular cities.
  • drooopy 4y ago
    Yeah, the article leans towards the nonsensical side. This is not a Portuguese-exclusive problem as it's happening in almost every developed country in the world right now. And in the interior of the country, not even that far away from Lisbon and Porto there's tons of affordable housing that's in line with the Portuguese economy. And let's do something about the tens of thousands of empty houses and apartments in the big cities that are being used by rich russians and chinese and hedge funds as a means to park their blood money and the out of control airbnbs before we start blaming the immigrants, shall we?
• indiantinker 4y ago
  Even us madrileños (Madrid people) cannot. Our salaries and taxation cannot match the “invisible” renters driving up the housing market. Saying this as I pack my stuff to move outside the city.
• tuatoru 4y ago
  In the long run the problem is self-correcting. If workers can't afford to live in what were the important cities, they live elsewhere. Eventually employers move to where the workers are. The formerly important cities become tourist meccas like Venice or Granada, or ghost towns. This is happening to London and Lisbon, and to a lesser extent to Amsterdam, Paris, New York and San Francisco, and other cities. It's a pity, because the famous cities got big early because they're in good places for trade. Their replacements are second best in this regard.
  • ekkeke 4y ago
    Don't agree with this analysis, it will end just not like that. The workers will have worse and worse living conditions until they're reduced to effective serfdom. Eventually they may rise up and force change through voting or riots, but that's quite unlikely for some time as the generations that benefitted from this still outnumber those suffering. The sad thing is that this has been done by one generation to the following one, parents impoverishing their own children. Not intentionally perhaps, but they have created the artificial supply side restrictions through planning laws and nimbyism that have resulted in their childrens impoverishment. One of my friends is paying half his salary in rent with his own house impossibly out of sight, while his parents own multiple properties and rent them out.
    • zozbot234 4y ago
      > ... The workers will have worse and worse living conditions until they're reduced to effective serfdom. Both outcomes are possible; it basically depends om whether the high productivity of the most expensive cities is truly exceptional - in which case it won't benefit most workers - or something that can be readily replicated in the rest of the country. We've mostly seen examples of the former in places like the Bay Area: there's only a limited number of Big Tech unicorns around at any given time, after all. But the latter is a theoretical possibility, perhaps driven by more ubiquitous sorts of sustained technological change and innovation.
• s09dfhks 4y ago
  Seems fitting that this post and this other one, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32682862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32682862, are right next to one another on my feed
• kaashif 4y ago
  This article makes me realise how fortunate I am to be the children of immigrants. My parents are very family oriented and were somewhat upset when I left my home country (which isn't my parents' original home country) for greener pastures, but if there's one thing immigrants understand, it's that if things are hard, you should move to where things aren't hard! I'm sure the author has their reasons or whatever, but when they make statements like this: > It’s not easy for anyone to emigrate, to have to deal with and to submited themselves to another culturee. It’s all hard, but to live away from those we love the most its the hardest. It's just incredible to me that someone would act against their own economic interests so blatantly. The greatest innovation of the EU is free movement, and this person is unwilling to take advantage of it to escape economic hardship. Obviously my mindset and the author's mindset have irreconcilable differences. I think how the author keeps using "foreign" as an insult reveals something about their thought process: > policies that benefit foreigners more than their residents. > the majority are foreigners who are not there for a visit, but who live there. > large public companies were sold off to Chinese managers who now do whatever they want > The Portuguese are becoming, nothing more and nothing less, the servants of big foreign millionaires
  • mr90210 4y ago
    I am not sure why you got downvoted, but you couldn’t be more right. Many young Portugueses fail to benefit from being part of the EU.
    • DoingIsLearning 4y ago
      With all do respect this is bullshit. Portugal has the 4th highest rate of emmigrated working age population in the EU27, only surpassed by Romania, Lithuania, Croatia. Portugal had one of the single biggest brain drains in history post 2008 crisis. People have absolutely voted with their feet. Those who stayed behind, either stayed because they benefit from the cronyism or are held back by family or lack of marketable skills.
      • rlf_dev 4y ago
        "Those who stayed behind, either stayed because they benefit from the cronyism or are held back by family or lack of marketable skills." Or maybe none of those, there are plenty of people with good jobs here and no reason to leave, not all of us make minimum wage or live in Lisbon.
• hahaxdxd123 4y ago
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Everybody_works_but_the_vacant_lot_%28cropped%29.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Everybod... If you live in any society where land values are private profit, expect nothing less. We're seeing this in America too, but hopefully with any luck, we still have enough entrepreneurial inertia that salaries (mine especially) remain high enough for a little while longer to make this palatable.
• stuaxo 4y ago
  So, elites in the UK and elsewhere price locals out, some of them in turn go to countries like Portugal and price the locals out.
  • mr90210 4y ago
    This for sure happens here (Lisbon)
• fsckboy 4y ago
  "Misery distributes itself throughout a system." High rents mean that a lot of people like a place enough that they'll fight (economically) to live there. The fact that you've lived in a place since before other people might feel like that should entitle you to low rent, but it doesn't, that's not how markets set prices. High rents are just once aspect of "unpleasantness", and people will move around till the misery is equally distributed. Economies ebb and flow and shift from place to place, so it the process never ends, but don't be fooled, there is nothing broken about systems of market real estate prices, in a sense they're the final leveling of a system, the equalizer of all other desires. It's like currency exchange rates, whichever way they go, there's good an bad, can afford more foreign goods but nobody wants to buy your goods, or can't afford foreign goods but can sell exports. But there's nothing to "do" about exchange rates, accept them as given and plan accordingly. Bad transportation problem in your city? Think the new public works project is going to fix it? Think again, better transportation makes for more efficient redistribution of misery. Now, I don't mean to sound negative: the redistribution of misery is a leveling, like stock prices going up and down with every trade, there is still a buyer who wants in and a seller who wants out. The redistribution of misery always entails some people getting less miserable.
  • epolanski 4y ago
    All your comment reminds me how disgusted I am at capitalism and free market economy.
• sriram_sun 4y ago
  Tokyo seems to have solved this by building houses and transportation right? What's preventing other governments from duplicating this? Politics? If so what was unique about Tokyo?
  • bobthepanda 4y ago
    * transportation: the outlays of programs like Five Commuting directions in Tokyo was a direct contributor to the collapse of JNR, which led to the government assuming all JNR debt and privatizing the railways as JR Group * housing production in Tokyo is great, but to put this in context today's Japanese housing market essentially happened after the bubble pop in the '90s. Prices from 1991 to 2004 had declined by 64% due to the pop. In that context, deregulation was palatable because people were already underwater and didn't bother as much to fight things that would lower property values. (In fact, it could've raised them.)
  • kranke155 4y ago
    Tokyo also bans Airbnb, period. Something most people here don’t understand.
    • capableweb 4y ago
      So Airbnb is facilitating illegal renting of properties? https://www.airbnb.com/s/Tokyo--Japan/homes?adults=2&refinement_paths%5B%5D=%2Fhomes&checkin=2022-10-01&checkout=2022-10-08&tab_id=home_tab&query=Tokyo%2C%20Japan&flexible_trip_lengths%5B%5D=one_week&price_filter_num_nights=30&search_type=autocomplete_click&place_id=ChIJ51cu8IcbXWARiRtXIothAS4&date_picker_type=calendar&source=structured_search_input_header https://www.airbnb.com/s/Tokyo--Japan/homes?adults=2&refinem... Why wouldn't the government crack down on this?
      • kranke155 4y ago
        Sorry as the poster above has said they’ve been legal since 2018. I had inaccurate out of date information.
    • 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• xbiitx 4y ago
  this is happening in every city in the world
• seydor 4y ago
  That is not true, the most unaffordable housing is , by far, in greece https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20220616-1 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d...
  • fithisux 4y ago
    Yup! Being alive in Greece is like carrying a target with you (financially)
• mercy_dude 4y ago
  This isn’t unique to Portugal. In Toronto, where I used to live asa kid, home prices have gone at least 300% depending on areas. Vancouver has experienced the same type of price increase. At this point, a lot of Canadians I know unless you are someone with a spouse making over 100k, you can’t afford a house in Canada. I know parts of UK has also experienced the same thing from my relatives there. And speaking of Government, we have a similar left wing government which is only left wing by name, and its policies has exacerbated the housing crises. Everyone said our housing market is in bubble for last 5yrs. But bubble has never popped. So I guess it’s something else. In Toronto and Vancouver there were ample evidences of Chinese snow washing money and buying up real estates under shell companies. Madness.
• Aeolun 4y ago
  Who are these foreigners? I don’t know anyone that’d want to pay (or could afford) €500k for a two room apartment in the center of Lisbon.
  • mr90210 4y ago
    Oh there are some out here.
• yieldcrv 4y ago
  Portugal is still cheap if anyone wants in. The level of "rich" necessary is quite low. but if you want to help the cause, you can also achieve a golden visa by employing Portuguese people, instead of buying a flat.
• upsidesinclude 4y ago
  Haha, Americans can no longer afford to live in America! Manhattan and San Francisco apartments cost over a million dollars! This is a total waste of time, I wish I didn't read it.
• megablast 4y ago
  Re we going to keep pretending that too many people isn’t the problem??
• anderber 4y ago
  In Minnesota they have a tax for homes that are not lived in full time for 6+ months of the year. I wonder if something like that would help curb the Airbnbs and investment purchases that happen so often in places like Lisbon. Building more homes would help, of course, but all the expats want to live in the historic area (it seems), so those prices will still be driven up. From my visit there, a lot of the older folks were the ones still living in the old downtown area, waiting to be priced out of their homes.
• insaider 4y ago
  Surely there's a global housing market crash coming in the near future? These prices are simply unsustainable combined with a decreasing population in the rich world and thus a massively decreased demand for housing. Obviously there's local factors like Lisbon's desirability to foreigners, but from a global perspective, in the developed world...? What am I missing?
• DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  The main problem in Portugal is a lack of wealth generation more than Housing. It doesn't matter if rents are curbed under 1k a month. The median under 25 earns less than 700 euros a month. I talk to people in Portugal and I hear more or less the same salary discussions and ranges for more than 20 years. It is a stagnant labour market for literally +20 years! When adjusted to inflation it becomes even more ludicrous. The iron curtain countries in the Baltic as well as Slovenia and Czechia, have all surpassed Portugal in wage growth. That should give anyone reason to pause. Portugal has a few succesful SMEs, a wine industry, a cork industry, some textiles and not much more to show. The Portuguese economy is mostly services which are circular not actualy exported and the obvious exported component which is Tourism. The majority of Portugal's EU Cohesion Funds were sunk on motorways. The country has suffered from lack of strategy in both Government and Industry since the 80's. There is only so much we can keep blaming on the dictatorship regime of Salazar 50 years ago. At some point politicians and business owners/investors need to take ownership of their fuck ups.
  • nik736 4y ago
    Well I think the strategy is to attract tech talent to have a tech hub which serves as the foundation for their future?
  • ngcazz 4y ago
    Absolutely, and low wage growth is endemic in Portugal due to cultural factors - business owners are famously greedy, small-minded, and given to mistreat workers, including by paying them miserably. Tech businesses thankfully have been leading the way, aware that intrinsically remoteable work means they're competing with foreign capital for workers, but the situation is nowhere near where it needs to be (higher wages across ~more~ all trades and industries).
• davnn 4y ago
  I can invite everyone interested to get an overview of the EU housing market to read the Deloitte Property Index [1]. It‘s a quite difficult time to buy property all around the EU. Does anyone know other good reads to get a better understanding? [1] https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/at/Documents/presse/at-property-index-2022-final.pdf https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/at/Documents/...
• franciscop 4y ago
  > with flats with just two bedrooms going for more than half a million euros in the centers of Lisbon or Oporto. A figure that no Portuguese middle-class would ever be able to afford in this life. Not to retract from the article, but the city center on the capital are never supposed to be affordable for the middle-class anywhere in the world. This is the most premium space of the whole country where everyone wants to live, and housing is limited, so only those able and willing to spend top money (e.g. the wealthy, not the middle class) are usually able to live there.
  • seydor 4y ago
    in many cities the 'old center' or historic center is crammed and decrepit and often has problems with homelessness/drug addicts . Most people want to live in suburbs or nice apartment neighborhoods. The "Business district" is only relevant to new york and other big financial centers
• quonn 4y ago
  The average salary in Munich is about twice as high as in Lisbon, but house prices are almost three times as high. Additionally, Portugal is suffering from high taxes (because everyone tries to avoid paying them, it's a vicious circle), and low productivity (they are working a lot, but ineffectively and in the wrong industries). Almost 10% of the population have emigrated to the rest of Europe and they have every right to do so, just like all Europeans have the right to live in Lisbon. And for the Brazilians being picked on in the article - Portugal could never finance its completely unsustainable social security system were it not for the influx of foreigners working there. What's really needed is to address government corruption, fighting tax avoidance, lowering the taxes and increasing social housing projects. But this is very difficult to do.
• 3qz 4y ago
  The xenophobia in this thread is shocking. Foreigners have just as much of a right to live in Portugal as people who were born there. Nobody is entitled to live somewhere just because they want to and there are still lots of affordable countries if you don’t want to put in the work
  • glcheetham 4y ago
    No, foreigners don't have just as much right to live in Portugal. That's what this article is about. Foreigners need an investment visa, so they have to buy the right to live in Portugal. A literal condition is that you have to buy property over €450,000 and restore it. This selects for rich foreigners so the house value increases. If you are Portuguese you get the right to reside in Portugal for free. Everyone else (apart from EU citizens) must buy it.
    • jhugo 4y ago
      > Everyone else (apart from EU citizens) must buy it. That's a ~440-million-person "apart from".
      • glcheetham 4y ago
        Yes, but the article is about people who buy property in and emigrate to Portugal through the golden visa program or D7 visa / digital nomads
        • jhugo 4y ago
          I read the full article when it was posted, then skimmed it again just now. I don't agree that the article is "about" those people. It describes general issues and mentions the golden visa and D7 visa in passing as possible factors. The issues described can be caused by any inward migration of people with higher spending power. A large part of the EU has higher spending power than Portuguese locals.
  • lnsru 4y ago
    I am a foreigner in Germany. I am very xenophobic and with extreme right views. Because I know many other foreigners who have almost full time jobs milking Germany’s social system. I didn’t calculate very exact numbers, but 2/3 of my earnings go for various taxes and mandatory insurances (including insane expensive public health insurance). I would say it’s really shitty deal for me financing all the immigrants and taking care of my own retirement with already heavily taxed euros.
• josemanuel 4y ago
  Organize and demand change! The social order does not care about the majority at the base that’s suffering until they drop it all on the floor..
• sonicgear1 4y ago
  Unfortunately it is not much different in Serbia. Tech moguls and shady businessmen are quickly buying out cities and flipping real estate for a profit, leaving working people on the streets.
• qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  Citys todays are not for the living, they are the banks for dead capital.The living are just decoration, creating demand, thus keeping the value of the investment bubbles up.
• niemandhier 4y ago
  Getting a flat can be modelled using queuing theory. A queue operating at max capacity had infinite average waiting time, this is what we are experiencing right now. The rule of thumb is to never operate at more than 80%, or the waiting time of your jobs starts to increase dramatically.
• atemerev 4y ago
  The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Lisbon. The rest of Portugal is still quite cheap. Which has happened everywhere before. Americans can no longer afford to live in NYC and San Francisco. Canadians can no longer afford to live in Vancouver. The Spanish can no longer afford to live in Barcelona. The French can no longer afford to live in Paris. Professions become obsolete. Your entire career can be for nothing. The city you have live for all life can suddenly get an economic boom, but you do not work in a booming industry, so you won’t share the profits. (It happened even when capitalism has been taken out of the equation. Do you think the Soviets could afford to live in Moscow? It was a pipe dream for most of the population). This has happened many times before. Such is life.
• rgmerk 4y ago
  Portuguese can't afford to live in Lisbon for two reasons: 1) it's a nice city with nicer weather than most of the places within convenient travel range 2) the economy is remarkably unproductive, leaving Portguese people poorer than, say, Estonians, let alone Germans: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=PT-DE-SE-EE https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
  • killingtime74 4y ago
    What struck me was this "There isn’t an average Portuguese who, even if earning two thousand euros a month — I don’t know anyone who earns that much". Thats only 24k USD a year!
    • tiagod 4y ago
      I don't know where they got that number... most of my friends in Lisbon (outside tech) make some 900€ a month if they're lucky :( Qualified make more than 1k, but still less than 2k
• tibbydudeza 4y ago
  But not everybody lives in Lisbon ???. Is all the economic activity concentrated in this city or is it a case of Portuguese professionals working in the city being outpriced by investors for AirBnB ???. Outlying suburbs away from the CBD must be more affordable - why is this not an option ???.
  • odshoifsdhfs 4y ago
    Portugal government really likes centralisation, including closing better performant offices/institutes elsewhere and moving them to Lisbon (and to a smaller extent Porto). This brings whole industries after that require a close connection to these centers. There is a reason anyone outside Porto/Lisbon here complains that Portugal is only Lisbon/Porto, the rest is scenery. Which to be honest, if we look at the investments made throughout the country, it is quite accurate.
• hnbad 4y ago
  That's just market forces optimizing for supply and demand though, isn't it? Portuguese can't afford living in Portugal but other people can. It's more profitable to rent out apartments as BnB's for days than to tenants for years so that's where the market moves. Investors make more money refurbishing housing into luxury apartments so ordinary citizens get priced out of their homes. You can either have a housing market or you can make sure everybody has affordable housing. But that means making housing a public good rather than leaving it up to investors, but this requires the opposite of the austerity that was imposed on Portugal during its debt crisis. If you think that's utopian thinking, consider Red Vienna and its housing projects which continue to exist today and still provide affordable decent quality public housing in the city: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Vienna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Vienna
• fennecfoxy 4y ago
  Change the law to 1 home per person, disallow ownership of multiple properties, whether for investment or holiday home, it doesn't matter. Until the housing crisis is solved. I've said this before and been responded to with anger from Americans who love holiday homes; thanks for the FYIGM. The UK could desperately do with this, too.
• finikytou 4y ago
  tbh it is same in most of the small-sized major cities of Europe. Lisbon, Barcelona and to an extent paris. What we are seeing more globally in Europe is the disappearance of the middle class. For the last decade this middle class had to bear all the tax (so that poor people can be lifted out of poverty and protected by the system), no reduction, no possibility of evasion (like rich people have), increase of food prices (permanent), electricity (now) and the doubling even tripling of the cost of real estate while our salaries barely grew. Entry level salaries in France or UK or Germany are not that different from 10-15 years ago while everything else exploded in cost. Add to that the fact that your city attracts foreign rich people and investments and you done. Paris real estate is a joke and the city only ends up with rich people and very poor people (hosted in projects) the middle class has to move to suburbia with limited infrastructure , doctors, things to do (obviously a nice suburb will be paris prices if not more). In the USA you can still make a six digit salary doing blue-collar work (hard one) and many jobs pays high 5 digits for a middle-class worker. Not even talking about software that is really a class-climbing profession that we definitly don't have in europe (software doesn't pay here and its very rare to go six digits while in HCOL cities of USA its standard year 1 pay) at the end most of the 10year ago middle class became a class of white collar workers that live paycheck by paycheck and when the economy will tank in the coming months many will go back to poverty as soon as they loose their jobs.
• Jemm 4y ago
  Same deal in Canada
• brooklyndude 4y ago
  The Ex/Pat group on FB for Portugal is massive. All day long: we’re moving to Portugal from the USA! Tell us more! Yipes! :-)
• gytdev 4y ago
  prices of flats have doubled and rent tripled in Lithuania as well. I sense a recession coming.
• credit_guy 4y ago
  And New Yorkers can't afford to live in New York City anymore. Or people in San Francisco.