6 ms·

As Digital Nomads Flock to Lisbon, Portugal's Youth Are Leaving in Droves

58 points by pg_1234 3y ago

pg_1234 3y ago
https://archive.ph/9BKBp https://archive.ph/9BKBp
somewhereoutth 3y ago
In summary, salaries need to rise (and they are), and the tax system needs to raise its thresholds accordingly (and it hasn't yet?). Note that the increase in housing costs has been largely driven by AirBnB etc, like much of the more desirable to tourists parts of Europe. Digital nomads (working remotely, almost by definition, and not getting paid that much in the grand scheme of things, again almost by definition) are somewhat incidental to all this, except as far as they might encourage local high skill job creation by some form of osmosis (e.g. bringing opportunities for locals to also work remotely though recommendation, and piquing the interest of outside companies in Portugal as a place to hire / do business).
- lm28469 3y ago
  > Digital nomads (working remotely, almost by definition, and not getting paid that much in the grand scheme of things, again almost by definition) a I don't think you know what you're talking about. Living in Portugal while remotely working for any semi decent tech company puts you in the top 10% earners easily
  - quonn 3y ago
    Certainly. However the rest of the post is about right. Salaries in Portugal are exceptionally low and taxes are high and both make the country not competitive - were it not for the sunshine and beaches.
  - seydor 3y ago
    "digital nomads" are normally looking for location arbitrage, so they are not high earners, normally cheap-skates. Remote workers might be more likely to create inequality, but seriously how many are they? If they create price pressure then it means there s very little housing stock in the first place.
    - quonn 3y ago
      My back of the envelope estimate is that the nomads make up around 1-4% of the Lisbon population. That‘s certainly not insignificant. On the other hand, the young Portuguese have been leaving the country since 2009. Millions of them earn salaries in central and northern Europe. They left without any nomads coming to Portugal. Shouldn‘t these millions benefiting from european freedom of movement justify a mere 20k nomads in Lisbon? edit: Maybe it‘s not millions but only half a million.
      - seydor 3y ago
        > Shouldn‘t these millions benefiting from european freedom of movement justify a mere 20k nomads in Lisbon? Portugal is making very little money from its emigrants anyway. I doubt they have more than 100k nomads, i suppose most of them would live in the biggest cities, and while they make the housing problem worse, most likely the problem would exist without them because portugal has the same structural problems with other southern eu countries. (Plus nomads by definition move elsewhere over a short time)
    - Podgajski 3y ago
      Have you ever met a truly wealthy person that wasn’t a cheapskate? How do you think they got rich in the first place?
      - JALTU 3y ago
        Read, “The Millionaire Next Door”. And seriously, profligate spenders generally seem to have income sources that quickly replenish their coffers. Or they are owners and have those kinds of tax advantages. Or, they inherit. There is a generational shift in wealth going on.
  - JetSpiegel 3y ago
    https://www.pordata.pt/db/portugal/ambiente+de+consulta/tabela/5836926 https://www.pordata.pt/db/portugal/ambiente+de+consulta/tabe... Actually, for 2021, earning 40k€ per year puts you in the top 10%. 4 in 5 families earn less than 27k€. Less than 5000 families earn more than 250k€. Top 1% is 100k€. This is for a population of about 10 million.
- therealmarv 3y ago
  Portugal is broke, there is no easy solution, they need their taxes (actually even more than now).
  - rafaelmn 3y ago
    Shift burden from income tax -> property tax. My country (Croatia) has a similar issue and the finance minister even said he thinks this is the correct move but there's no "political will" to do this.
    - quonn 3y ago
      In Portugal far more people own houses than in other countries and these people have no interest in voting for such a policy.
      - rafaelmn 3y ago
        Same thing as Croatia (realeatate investment is viewed as only safe investment and basically people's retirement savings). Economic situation (and mentality) is very similar - Portugals problem seems to be more extreme though since it's located in a more interesting area (closer to developed Europe).
        quonn 3y ago
        I heard some people are just starting to consider Croatia, EU integration is still happening, the Euro just arrived. Give it 10 years …
        rafaelmn 3y ago
        Yeah it's already headed in that direction with realestate pricing. The only upside is that in Croatia you can pay <25% tax if you work as a contractor (up to 1M€ income per year) and there's a decent level of private healthcare available since medical tourism is a thing.
    - 3y ago
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  There is a limited supply of apartments. If a digital nomad lives in one, then a native portuguese can't live there. This is basic math.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    Yep! I was there recently for work and we decided to go on a walking tour given by a local who grew up there, arranged by a coworker who was from there. Our guide took us through one neighborhood and commented that this neighborhood used to be bustling all day and long into the night, but now it is 95% airbnb. During the winter, most of the houses are completely empty. It's effectively a dead neighborhood, but the architecture is neat. Just 15 years ago, you'd walk through the neighborhood and experience a thriving night market ... now it's just somewhere you walk through to get to the next place.
    - quonn 3y ago
      This has very little to do with nomads and everything with tourism. 15 years ago Lisbon was in terrible shape, mostly collapsing due to rent controls. And this is still the case to a degree. You have an enormous number of houses where the (older than, I think, 55) tenants pay 50 Euros per month that cannot be increased and the landlords pay more than that just in taxes and basic fees. So no renovation is done, everything is falling apart.
      - JetSpiegel 3y ago
        This is no longer true, the older rents were unfrozen by Assunção Cristas, about a decade ago. As a consequence, many older people were thrown out of their homes to make way for AirBnB, particularly in the touristy areas. The rent comtrols have been there for the better part of a century, but they were only a problem when tourism boomed, rent control cannot be a cause of shortages if it was in place before without problems.
    - Podgajski 3y ago
      Move fast and break culture.
- cultofmetatron 3y ago
  > Digital nomads (working remotely, almost by definition, and not getting paid that much in the grand scheme of things what are you talking about?? to be a digital nomad, you have to spend significantly more to sustain traveling and the added expenses of short term rentals. I could cut my costs in half if I just stayed in one spot for a few months. A typical apartment is going to cost half of an equivalent airbnb and the cost of equipping a kitchen will be offset very quickly from the savings of being able to shop at supermarkets and preparing your food at home.
  - seydor 3y ago
    > you have to spend significantly more to sustain traveling and the added expenses of short term rentals my understanding is that digital nomads pay LESS than they would in their home country by choosing cheap CoL countries
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - cultofmetatron 3y ago
      certain things are cheaper compared to what they were paying at home. but you're still going to be spending more than a local would for the same amenities. Case in point, I can spend $2400 for a basic 1 bedroom apartment in San Francisco or nyc or I can spend $1000 to live in a luxury villa in Bali or a nice furnished apartment in medellin colombia. so yes they are spending less. but they are hardly low income by any stretch.
      - cactusplant7374 3y ago
        I live in Ecuador so I can't really say too much about other countries. However, a luxury rental in Ecuador isn't really a luxury rental at all. There is no noise proofing, random holes in the walls, and the house isn't vented properly. The people that built it just had no idea what they were doing. I don't really think you can compare third world accommodations to first world. It's not comparable. The quality isn't there.
seydor 3y ago
The older a society is, the more boomers get their way, and that's where the root of the whole southern europe misery lies. Young people are trapped in the country and the best option objectively is to leave. (Or to somehow undemocratically lower taxes and make the country competitive) Are there really so many digital nomads in Portugal that they raise prices? Airbnb is certainly a factor (although a lot of airbnb inventory is not houses one would like to use as home), but i think the #1 factor is the golden visa. It pumps up the prices of mediocre homes because their owner are not feeling the pressure to sell and are waiting for the big fish.
- somewhereoutth 3y ago
  Golden visas will only push up the top end of the market. They won't affect the 100-200k valued properties that (reasonably well off) Portuguese people might be going for. And it is easy enough to build some concrete boxes with a nice view a long way from anywhere that a Portuguese person or family might want to actually live, and turn it over to a golden visa seeker for that cool half mil euro (or whatever it is). I can point them out to you the next time you come by!
- candiodari 3y ago
  This society is old because it does not provide reasonable opportunity for youths. It can't (and won't) pay for opportunities for young people, and it can't survive without young people. Even here, the situation is trivial: they need to pay more. As simple as that. This is a huge problem in essentially all of Southern Europe, not just Portugal. Frankly, it's "not that bad" in Portugal, compared to for example Northern Spain. Currently this situation is masking the same problem in North West Europe (.uk, .ie, parts of .fr, .be, .nl and parts of .de). There is a vast shortage of younger people which is temporarily somewhat covered by immigration of skilled labor from places where it's a lot worse. However, that immigration is drying up, and already cannot cover the "natural" outflow (ie. pensioners, and people outright dying). And there's also emigration, which makes the picture pretty bad. The problem is not just very visible in the financial situation, it is very visible in actual population statistics. Despite the complaints about it, even the inflows due to conflicts such as Afghanistan, Sudan, and the same will be true now with Israel, these conflicts cannot get Europe to breakeven anymore for even a month.
jmyeet 3y ago
Expats can be helpful to a country like Portugal but it has to be done correctly. And of course it hasn't. What Portugal needs to do is: 1. Ban Airbnb and other short-term housing other than renting out a room in your house; 2. Provide a huge stock of social housing, meaning housing at an affordable price only available to natives; and 3. Restrict foreign ownership of huge swathes of the country. This could be as simple as "new construction only". Capitalism simply does not work where there's inelastic demand. it creates a regime where money is extracted from the poorest and most vulnerable by withholding basic human needs in the interests of profit for a few. EDIT: qualified the AirBnB restriction to only what it should be for, meaning renting out a room in your house, not running an illegal hotel.
- lm28469 3y ago
  Expats and digital nomads aren't the same thing. I'm an expat but I work locally for a local company with local wages like most people around me The problem is working for foreign company which pays a salary that is way above what your peers live with, it creates insane inequalities. One month of a good tech salary is one year of min wage in Portugal
  - quonn 3y ago
    But this inequality exists everywhere, it‘s just not a year of salary but only half a year.
  - jmyeet 3y ago
    This is a distinction without a difference. Expats often come with money from having higher wages overseas even if they work at local rates. Retirees, people who sell homes in a developed country and so on. Other than that, the Portugese government should favor Portugese people over the interests of people who simply want to relocate without any means whatsoever. This is already the case: immigrating to Portugal requires you to show you have sufficient means in terms of assets or income. This is another reason why "expat vs digital nomad" doesn't matter at all.
    - 3y ago
IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
I believe Portugal was about to end the golden visa. Can someone expand on this topic? Also, is it true to say the golden visa is not attractive to US citizens? Finally, which foreign citize s benefit the most from the Portugal golden visa?
- reustle 3y ago
  > is it true to say the golden visa is not attractive to US citizens? It was still attractive because it gave you a pretty fast path to a second citizenship.
  - archagon 3y ago
    For certain definitions of the word “fast.” The period is officially 5 years, but I believe you could be waiting years on either end for the initial permit as well as final citizenship.
- quonn 3y ago
  Yes. It has ended the Golden Visa and also the NHR tax exemption scheme. It may take some time to become law, but some time next year everything will be gone.
  - ohashi 3y ago
    Not quite on the golden visa. Just the real estate option. https://www.portugal.com/news/portugal-officially-ending-golden-visa-by-real-estate-investment-on-october-7-2023/ https://www.portugal.com/news/portugal-officially-ending-gol...
    - lampington 3y ago
      Also worth noting that the real estate option has excluded property in Lisbon and the surroundings, Porto and Algarve for some time, and those were the places where most people from abroad would have wanted to move to.
mcntsh 3y ago
What a hilariously short-sighted policy from Portugal. Offer visas for rich remote workers and also exempt them from contributing to health system, and give them huge tax discounts. It's like the Portuguese government actually hates its citizens.
- quonn 3y ago
  As I wrote elsewhere, paying into the social security in Portugal with a salary of 80.000 Euros means paying 88% in taxes and social security. Do you think that is reasonable? Additionally everyone I know has their own insurance and pays for all of their health bills. And that‘s only for urgent things, planned surgeries are usually done in the home country anyway.
  - reaperman 3y ago
    88% being the marginal rate? I’m assuming if you’re paid €80,000 in a year you take home more than €9,600 The way you wrote this makes it sound like people only take home €9600 on €80000 and thats rather misleading.
    - quonn 3y ago
      It‘s not misleading. You take home 9600 in my opinion. What you call the marginal rate is applied to the full salary as far as I know. And the social security is also applied to the full amount unless the person is employed by a Portuguese company that would pay half. Even the most optimistic tax accountants say around 70% minimum is to be paid with various options applied. That would leave 24.000. Portugal has many loopholes of course, but the idea of the article or OP was that these loopholes are not needed or unfair. While I‘m saying they are needed or otherwise nobody would go there. Now let me add that many nomads also have to pay into various things from their home countries. While there are double taxation agreements the story on health insurance and retirement funds and social security is much more complicated. Unless you cut all ties to home you can come out with even less.
      - 3y ago
quonn 3y ago
It‘s interesting how polarizing this thread is. The fact is that the portuguese state does not have the resources to create enough housing in Lisbon without foreign investment. The Portuguese will realize this when they have removed all measures that made cash flow in in the first place.
- somewhereoutth 3y ago
  I currently live in the Lisbon suburbs. Quite frankly from a UK perspective they are a modern miracle - vast areas of medium density housing with shops, schools, cafes, metro, etc, etc within walking distance (actually stone throwing distance). They were built in the 80s/90s, I'm not sure of the funding, but I doubt it was foreign investment (perhaps the EU? Portugal government?). The reason why there is not enough housing in central Lisbon/Porto is because much of it was turned over to short term lets like AirBnB. This has resulted in much needed renovation (privately funded), but has also resulted in entire neighborhoods being eviscerated of local/long term residents.
moltar 3y ago
I spoke to a real estate agent about the housing problem. And it’s not an obvious one. And one very few ever talk about. The problem is that most builders need to borrow money from the bank for a project. But the government red tape can take from 1-3 years. Plus the building phase can be 1-2 years. So a total of 2-5 years. Builders cannot property plan project schedule, finance schedule and are feeling excessive risk. Most builders are simply not interested in taking this risk and thus not much is done. Another major issue the government of Portugal won’t tell you about is the fact that they own a ton of units downtown Lisbon in a completely decrepit state and aren’t doing anything about that. It’s easy to blame nomads though…
- somewhereoutth 3y ago
  Lisbon has been full of skycranes ever since I got here (some 7 years ago). Porto has even more! There has been a huge amount of renovation and development, but yes I dare say there could be more without red tape. Apparently one issue with Portugal is that inheritance is split between children, so properties end up with multiple owners who cannot agree on sale etc. Tourism has been a big driver of renovation (it is hard to argue with 100+euro/person/night yield), but of course that has necessitated evicting students and other 'itinerant' residents. Hence the recent protests.
- seydor 3y ago
  does portugal need more buildings since their population is going down? Is there not available inventory at all, or is it another case of many houses sitting empty? Also, hopefully the airbnBust will come to europe next year , i feel the airbnb meme is way overdone
  - quonn 3y ago
    It is not sustainable to have declining population numbers for many reasons (for example the social security system needs a large working population) so Portugal is working to have immigration, especially from Brasil, Angola and also from Europe. Additionally while the population is declining across the country but rising in the Lisbon area where the problem is and where the jobs are.

58 points by pg_1234 3y ago

https://archive.ph/9BKBp https://archive.ph/9BKBp

In summary, salaries need to rise (and they are), and the tax system needs to raise its thresholds accordingly (and it hasn't yet?). Note that the increase in housing costs has been largely driven by AirBnB etc, like much of the more desirable to tourists parts of Europe. Digital nomads (working remotely, almost by definition, and not getting paid that much in the grand scheme of things, again almost by definition) are somewhat incidental to all this, except as far as they might encourage local high skill job creation by some form of osmosis (e.g. bringing opportunities for locals to also work remotely though recommendation, and piquing the interest of outside companies in Portugal as a place to hire / do business).

lm28469 3y ago
> Digital nomads (working remotely, almost by definition, and not getting paid that much in the grand scheme of things, again almost by definition) a I don't think you know what you're talking about. Living in Portugal while remotely working for any semi decent tech company puts you in the top 10% earners easily
- quonn 3y ago
  Certainly. However the rest of the post is about right. Salaries in Portugal are exceptionally low and taxes are high and both make the country not competitive - were it not for the sunshine and beaches.
- seydor 3y ago
  "digital nomads" are normally looking for location arbitrage, so they are not high earners, normally cheap-skates. Remote workers might be more likely to create inequality, but seriously how many are they? If they create price pressure then it means there s very little housing stock in the first place.
  - quonn 3y ago
    My back of the envelope estimate is that the nomads make up around 1-4% of the Lisbon population. That‘s certainly not insignificant. On the other hand, the young Portuguese have been leaving the country since 2009. Millions of them earn salaries in central and northern Europe. They left without any nomads coming to Portugal. Shouldn‘t these millions benefiting from european freedom of movement justify a mere 20k nomads in Lisbon? edit: Maybe it‘s not millions but only half a million.
    - seydor 3y ago
      > Shouldn‘t these millions benefiting from european freedom of movement justify a mere 20k nomads in Lisbon? Portugal is making very little money from its emigrants anyway. I doubt they have more than 100k nomads, i suppose most of them would live in the biggest cities, and while they make the housing problem worse, most likely the problem would exist without them because portugal has the same structural problems with other southern eu countries. (Plus nomads by definition move elsewhere over a short time)
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    Have you ever met a truly wealthy person that wasn’t a cheapskate? How do you think they got rich in the first place?
    - JALTU 3y ago
      Read, “The Millionaire Next Door”. And seriously, profligate spenders generally seem to have income sources that quickly replenish their coffers. Or they are owners and have those kinds of tax advantages. Or, they inherit. There is a generational shift in wealth going on.
- JetSpiegel 3y ago
  https://www.pordata.pt/db/portugal/ambiente+de+consulta/tabela/5836926 https://www.pordata.pt/db/portugal/ambiente+de+consulta/tabe... Actually, for 2021, earning 40k€ per year puts you in the top 10%. 4 in 5 families earn less than 27k€. Less than 5000 families earn more than 250k€. Top 1% is 100k€. This is for a population of about 10 million.
therealmarv 3y ago
Portugal is broke, there is no easy solution, they need their taxes (actually even more than now).
- rafaelmn 3y ago
  Shift burden from income tax -> property tax. My country (Croatia) has a similar issue and the finance minister even said he thinks this is the correct move but there's no "political will" to do this.
  - quonn 3y ago
    In Portugal far more people own houses than in other countries and these people have no interest in voting for such a policy.
    - rafaelmn 3y ago
      Same thing as Croatia (realeatate investment is viewed as only safe investment and basically people's retirement savings). Economic situation (and mentality) is very similar - Portugals problem seems to be more extreme though since it's located in a more interesting area (closer to developed Europe).
      - quonn 3y ago
        I heard some people are just starting to consider Croatia, EU integration is still happening, the Euro just arrived. Give it 10 years …
        rafaelmn 3y ago
        Yeah it's already headed in that direction with realestate pricing. The only upside is that in Croatia you can pay <25% tax if you work as a contractor (up to 1M€ income per year) and there's a decent level of private healthcare available since medical tourism is a thing.
  - 3y ago
amadeuspagel 3y ago
There is a limited supply of apartments. If a digital nomad lives in one, then a native portuguese can't live there. This is basic math.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  Yep! I was there recently for work and we decided to go on a walking tour given by a local who grew up there, arranged by a coworker who was from there. Our guide took us through one neighborhood and commented that this neighborhood used to be bustling all day and long into the night, but now it is 95% airbnb. During the winter, most of the houses are completely empty. It's effectively a dead neighborhood, but the architecture is neat. Just 15 years ago, you'd walk through the neighborhood and experience a thriving night market ... now it's just somewhere you walk through to get to the next place.
  - quonn 3y ago
    This has very little to do with nomads and everything with tourism. 15 years ago Lisbon was in terrible shape, mostly collapsing due to rent controls. And this is still the case to a degree. You have an enormous number of houses where the (older than, I think, 55) tenants pay 50 Euros per month that cannot be increased and the landlords pay more than that just in taxes and basic fees. So no renovation is done, everything is falling apart.
    - JetSpiegel 3y ago
      This is no longer true, the older rents were unfrozen by Assunção Cristas, about a decade ago. As a consequence, many older people were thrown out of their homes to make way for AirBnB, particularly in the touristy areas. The rent comtrols have been there for the better part of a century, but they were only a problem when tourism boomed, rent control cannot be a cause of shortages if it was in place before without problems.
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    Move fast and break culture.
cultofmetatron 3y ago
> Digital nomads (working remotely, almost by definition, and not getting paid that much in the grand scheme of things what are you talking about?? to be a digital nomad, you have to spend significantly more to sustain traveling and the added expenses of short term rentals. I could cut my costs in half if I just stayed in one spot for a few months. A typical apartment is going to cost half of an equivalent airbnb and the cost of equipping a kitchen will be offset very quickly from the savings of being able to shop at supermarkets and preparing your food at home.
- seydor 3y ago
  > you have to spend significantly more to sustain traveling and the added expenses of short term rentals my understanding is that digital nomads pay LESS than they would in their home country by choosing cheap CoL countries
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - cultofmetatron 3y ago
    certain things are cheaper compared to what they were paying at home. but you're still going to be spending more than a local would for the same amenities. Case in point, I can spend $2400 for a basic 1 bedroom apartment in San Francisco or nyc or I can spend $1000 to live in a luxury villa in Bali or a nice furnished apartment in medellin colombia. so yes they are spending less. but they are hardly low income by any stretch.
    - cactusplant7374 3y ago
      I live in Ecuador so I can't really say too much about other countries. However, a luxury rental in Ecuador isn't really a luxury rental at all. There is no noise proofing, random holes in the walls, and the house isn't vented properly. The people that built it just had no idea what they were doing. I don't really think you can compare third world accommodations to first world. It's not comparable. The quality isn't there.

seydor 3y ago

The older a society is, the more boomers get their way, and that's where the root of the whole southern europe misery lies. Young people are trapped in the country and the best option objectively is to leave. (Or to somehow undemocratically lower taxes and make the country competitive) Are there really so many digital nomads in Portugal that they raise prices? Airbnb is certainly a factor (although a lot of airbnb inventory is not houses one would like to use as home), but i think the #1 factor is the golden visa. It pumps up the prices of mediocre homes because their owner are not feeling the pressure to sell and are waiting for the big fish.

somewhereoutth 3y ago
Golden visas will only push up the top end of the market. They won't affect the 100-200k valued properties that (reasonably well off) Portuguese people might be going for. And it is easy enough to build some concrete boxes with a nice view a long way from anywhere that a Portuguese person or family might want to actually live, and turn it over to a golden visa seeker for that cool half mil euro (or whatever it is). I can point them out to you the next time you come by!
candiodari 3y ago
This society is old because it does not provide reasonable opportunity for youths. It can't (and won't) pay for opportunities for young people, and it can't survive without young people. Even here, the situation is trivial: they need to pay more. As simple as that. This is a huge problem in essentially all of Southern Europe, not just Portugal. Frankly, it's "not that bad" in Portugal, compared to for example Northern Spain. Currently this situation is masking the same problem in North West Europe (.uk, .ie, parts of .fr, .be, .nl and parts of .de). There is a vast shortage of younger people which is temporarily somewhat covered by immigration of skilled labor from places where it's a lot worse. However, that immigration is drying up, and already cannot cover the "natural" outflow (ie. pensioners, and people outright dying). And there's also emigration, which makes the picture pretty bad. The problem is not just very visible in the financial situation, it is very visible in actual population statistics. Despite the complaints about it, even the inflows due to conflicts such as Afghanistan, Sudan, and the same will be true now with Israel, these conflicts cannot get Europe to breakeven anymore for even a month.

jmyeet 3y ago

Expats can be helpful to a country like Portugal but it has to be done correctly. And of course it hasn't. What Portugal needs to do is: 1. Ban Airbnb and other short-term housing other than renting out a room in your house; 2. Provide a huge stock of social housing, meaning housing at an affordable price only available to natives; and 3. Restrict foreign ownership of huge swathes of the country. This could be as simple as "new construction only". Capitalism simply does not work where there's inelastic demand. it creates a regime where money is extracted from the poorest and most vulnerable by withholding basic human needs in the interests of profit for a few. EDIT: qualified the AirBnB restriction to only what it should be for, meaning renting out a room in your house, not running an illegal hotel.

lm28469 3y ago
Expats and digital nomads aren't the same thing. I'm an expat but I work locally for a local company with local wages like most people around me The problem is working for foreign company which pays a salary that is way above what your peers live with, it creates insane inequalities. One month of a good tech salary is one year of min wage in Portugal
- quonn 3y ago
  But this inequality exists everywhere, it‘s just not a year of salary but only half a year.
- jmyeet 3y ago
  This is a distinction without a difference. Expats often come with money from having higher wages overseas even if they work at local rates. Retirees, people who sell homes in a developed country and so on. Other than that, the Portugese government should favor Portugese people over the interests of people who simply want to relocate without any means whatsoever. This is already the case: immigrating to Portugal requires you to show you have sufficient means in terms of assets or income. This is another reason why "expat vs digital nomad" doesn't matter at all.
  - 3y ago

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago

I believe Portugal was about to end the golden visa. Can someone expand on this topic? Also, is it true to say the golden visa is not attractive to US citizens? Finally, which foreign citize s benefit the most from the Portugal golden visa?

reustle 3y ago
> is it true to say the golden visa is not attractive to US citizens? It was still attractive because it gave you a pretty fast path to a second citizenship.
- archagon 3y ago
  For certain definitions of the word “fast.” The period is officially 5 years, but I believe you could be waiting years on either end for the initial permit as well as final citizenship.
quonn 3y ago
Yes. It has ended the Golden Visa and also the NHR tax exemption scheme. It may take some time to become law, but some time next year everything will be gone.
- ohashi 3y ago
  Not quite on the golden visa. Just the real estate option. https://www.portugal.com/news/portugal-officially-ending-golden-visa-by-real-estate-investment-on-october-7-2023/ https://www.portugal.com/news/portugal-officially-ending-gol...
  - lampington 3y ago
    Also worth noting that the real estate option has excluded property in Lisbon and the surroundings, Porto and Algarve for some time, and those were the places where most people from abroad would have wanted to move to.

mcntsh 3y ago

What a hilariously short-sighted policy from Portugal. Offer visas for rich remote workers and also exempt them from contributing to health system, and give them huge tax discounts. It's like the Portuguese government actually hates its citizens.

quonn 3y ago
As I wrote elsewhere, paying into the social security in Portugal with a salary of 80.000 Euros means paying 88% in taxes and social security. Do you think that is reasonable? Additionally everyone I know has their own insurance and pays for all of their health bills. And that‘s only for urgent things, planned surgeries are usually done in the home country anyway.
- reaperman 3y ago
  88% being the marginal rate? I’m assuming if you’re paid €80,000 in a year you take home more than €9,600 The way you wrote this makes it sound like people only take home €9600 on €80000 and thats rather misleading.
  - quonn 3y ago
    It‘s not misleading. You take home 9600 in my opinion. What you call the marginal rate is applied to the full salary as far as I know. And the social security is also applied to the full amount unless the person is employed by a Portuguese company that would pay half. Even the most optimistic tax accountants say around 70% minimum is to be paid with various options applied. That would leave 24.000. Portugal has many loopholes of course, but the idea of the article or OP was that these loopholes are not needed or unfair. While I‘m saying they are needed or otherwise nobody would go there. Now let me add that many nomads also have to pay into various things from their home countries. While there are double taxation agreements the story on health insurance and retirement funds and social security is much more complicated. Unless you cut all ties to home you can come out with even less.
    - 3y ago

quonn 3y ago

It‘s interesting how polarizing this thread is. The fact is that the portuguese state does not have the resources to create enough housing in Lisbon without foreign investment. The Portuguese will realize this when they have removed all measures that made cash flow in in the first place.

somewhereoutth 3y ago
I currently live in the Lisbon suburbs. Quite frankly from a UK perspective they are a modern miracle - vast areas of medium density housing with shops, schools, cafes, metro, etc, etc within walking distance (actually stone throwing distance). They were built in the 80s/90s, I'm not sure of the funding, but I doubt it was foreign investment (perhaps the EU? Portugal government?). The reason why there is not enough housing in central Lisbon/Porto is because much of it was turned over to short term lets like AirBnB. This has resulted in much needed renovation (privately funded), but has also resulted in entire neighborhoods being eviscerated of local/long term residents.

moltar 3y ago

I spoke to a real estate agent about the housing problem. And it’s not an obvious one. And one very few ever talk about. The problem is that most builders need to borrow money from the bank for a project. But the government red tape can take from 1-3 years. Plus the building phase can be 1-2 years. So a total of 2-5 years. Builders cannot property plan project schedule, finance schedule and are feeling excessive risk. Most builders are simply not interested in taking this risk and thus not much is done. Another major issue the government of Portugal won’t tell you about is the fact that they own a ton of units downtown Lisbon in a completely decrepit state and aren’t doing anything about that. It’s easy to blame nomads though…

somewhereoutth 3y ago
Lisbon has been full of skycranes ever since I got here (some 7 years ago). Porto has even more! There has been a huge amount of renovation and development, but yes I dare say there could be more without red tape. Apparently one issue with Portugal is that inheritance is split between children, so properties end up with multiple owners who cannot agree on sale etc. Tourism has been a big driver of renovation (it is hard to argue with 100+euro/person/night yield), but of course that has necessitated evicting students and other 'itinerant' residents. Hence the recent protests.
seydor 3y ago
does portugal need more buildings since their population is going down? Is there not available inventory at all, or is it another case of many houses sitting empty? Also, hopefully the airbnBust will come to europe next year , i feel the airbnb meme is way overdone
- quonn 3y ago
  It is not sustainable to have declining population numbers for many reasons (for example the social security system needs a large working population) so Portugal is working to have immigration, especially from Brasil, Angola and also from Europe. Additionally while the population is declining across the country but rising in the Lisbon area where the problem is and where the jobs are.