6 ms·

I live in Portugal and here the situation is outright ridiculous. 1. There are a ridiculous amount of abandoned properties, when I walk the streets of major ci

I live in Portugal and here the situation is outright ridiculous. 1. There are a ridiculous amount of abandoned properties, when I walk the streets of major cities, sometimes more than half of the buildings even in expensive areas are boarded-up. 2. Meanwhile I am afraid of being homeless soon, I lost my job recently, and the unemployment benefit I can receive is literally half of my rent. Thing is, there is no "worse but cheaper" place to move to. I already live in a "0" apartment, with the "0" referring to the number of rooms. The apartment is literally just an empty square with kitchen sink and bathroom stuff. I don't even have my workstation anymore because literally there is no physical place for it inside the apartment. People are like: "Build more homes". Yet the amount of abandoned properties (by the way, this also include abandoned farmland! Government is upset that there are tons of that, and the result is land with zero management, with wildfires, poachers, drug traffickers...) is greater than the number of families needing.

Zealotux 2y ago
I would expect that kind of situation to lead to a lot of squatting, how common is that in Portugal?
- speeder 2y ago
  Instead of squatting people been sharing rent. In one infamous case a house that was shared between 20+ people burned down and killed 2 and sent 14 to hospital.
orwin 2y ago
I'm sorry to recommend you that, but i have experience with homelessness. You have two temporary solutions: - join a group of squatters (hopefully you already know someone) until you get your bearings. The less ideological ones often squat old industrial properties, or long-abandoned houses (its rough in winter, but in Portugal you should be fine). You might meet some Urbex guys, they're nice and always fine with finding squatters. - Live in a "big enough" car. You absolutely need to rest on a completely flat surface. I knew someone who got the back seats down and put a wooden plank on it. If you're less than 1.80 and don't move on your sleep, you have a lot of choice (the diagonal is nice), else it might be a bit more expensive. A very short-term solution is squatting with a close friend, but you shouldn't abuse it too much, it strains relationships.
- ProllyInfamous 2y ago
  I recently kayaked a stretch of the Tennessee River, between state parks, and within an hour of paddling I passed both a homeless riverside "tent city" [technically "public camping" on TWRA/state land] and then the most-expensive house for sale in our entire metro area (just around the same peninsula). These inholdings, both impoverished and not, were each having their respective parties (cheap beer in common) along the lakeside. Titties abounded - "howdy neighbor" - the no-betterness of being "commoners, enjoying this day upon the lake." Interestingly, the poverty beach camp seemed to be having more fun; but obviously the multi-million $$$ homeowners are in much easier/better situations (likely).
  - crtified 2y ago
    It's one of the interesting paradoxes of human life, I think - that the poorer have more incentive to have fun.
    - charlie0 2y ago
      The poor have much less to lose and have probably accepted their fate. The rich are always thinking of how to get richer without loosing it all.
      - ProllyInfamous 2y ago
        >The poor have ... accepted their fate. "What am I gonna do about it!??" is a common way I've heard this sentiment expressed.
  - orwin 2y ago
    I've lived on and off a semi-rural "squatter" community by ideological choice for around a year [0] (that experience helped _a lot_ later when i was homeless by lack of resources, while i finished my engineering degree), i've probably never had as much fun as i did at the time. Learned juggling, guitar and basic human interactions i had trouble with at the time. We shared alcohol, games and stories with everyone who went to say hello, even cops at the time (it was after César but before 2016) [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZAD_de_Notre-Dame-des-Landes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZAD_de_Notre-Dame-des-Landes
oooyay 2y ago
I live on a sleepy street that's half dense housing and half single family homes. Density will likely take over more than half of the street some day because the city has been relegating more dense housing to the working class areas of the city, which is where I happen to live. [1] Of those single family homes there is one that was owner-occupied for a year when we moved in. Since, it's been locked up and has had no renters. The couple that own it own several properties across my city, which I came to know as I got to know one of the owners while they lived here. It perplexes me, and the rest of our neighborhood, how someone can float a mortgage, much less an investment mortgage, without a renter. My owner-occupied mortgage costs me somewhere around $2600/m, I can't fathom paying two with one at a higher interest rate. Apparently this situation is common around my city. On the other hand, and a bit non-sequitur, is two homes will likely become dense housing. They're foreclosures of properties that were inhabited by meth addicts. The whole property from the building to the soil will need to be removed for various reasons. At auction the properties were purchased for the average sale price of a home of that size that had no pre-existing issues. It won't be the kind of housing people need though, if I'm a betting man; my city has plenty of SROs (single room occupancy) but they're at the wrong price point. They're now called "lofts" and "studios" with a price tag to match. What will be lost is two 50+ year old homes, and likely the ability of our street to tolerate the traffic it was designed for as another issue is the city not investing in road-building and maintenance on our street. 1: https://prp.fm/biz503-portland-building-density/ https://prp.fm/biz503-portland-building-density/
- lr1970 2y ago
  > It perplexes me, and the rest of our neighborhood, how someone can float a mortgage, much less an investment mortgage, without a renter. In the USA it is happening all the time because, surprisingly, landlords have little skin in the the game. LLC is the name of the game. Each investment property is "owned" by its own LLC that bares 100% of risks and liabilities associated with the property and shields the landlord from the creditors. The property is financed entirely through commercial loans from the banks or other lenders. If the property does not generate enough profits for the landlord they quietly take all the liquid assets out of the LLC and stop paying their loan and property taxes. It takes long time (often years) for banks and local governments to start legal proceedings against the said LLC. During this period of time the property is sitting there boarded up. Finally the LLC files chapter 7 -- liquidation and all its assets, close to zero at that time, are given to the creditors. You may ask why the banks give loans to such high risk entities? First of all, if the property is bringing profits the loans are being paid of and it is the majority of the cases. Secondly, if the loan fails the banks do not have much skin in the game either. They slice and dice the loans and package them into "real estate investment vehicles". Then they sell the packages similarly to how they did it before the financial crisis of 2008. The terms and abbreviations are different now but the gist of it is still the same. EDIT: typos
phoehne 2y ago
I'm not sure if it's the case in your location, but sometimes foreign buyers come in and buy properties they don't expect to inhabit (unless something goes really bad in their country). Europe and the US have strong rule of law systems that prevent the state from just taking property. (The government charging you with a bogus criminal charge to justify taking their property in in their home country). It's also an asset that they can hold, even if it's not income generating, and even if it loses some value. (Because it's still better than most of the assets they have access to in their country). This is not always the case in every situation, but it's common. (Ed. as one person pointed out below, there is also a lot of money laundering that takes place. In that case, the property does not need to make any income).
- newsclues 2y ago
  It’s dirty money.
  - phoehne 2y ago
    The vast majority is likely money laundering.
- tcgv 2y ago
  Portugal had a golden visa program that granted citzenship if you bought real state of at least 500k EUR. That drove home prices up signficantly in Lisbon, specailly units in that price range. Under new law, the Portuguese Golden Visa no longer provides Residency status through Real Estate investments. [1] https://www.portugalhomes.com/golden-visa-portugal https://www.portugalhomes.com/golden-visa-portugal
  - cpursley 2y ago
    The golden visas were issued in relatively small numbers, I doubt they affect price much vs all the short term rentals like Airbnb combined with explosive popularity of Portugal.
    - 2y ago
Chris2048 2y ago
> when I walk the streets of major cities Portugal has started offering financial incentives for restoring properties, but I'm surprised this is a factor in Major cities, which ones do you see this? Is it also an issue in Lisbon?
Chris2048 2y ago
Is this also an issue in cities like Lisbon?
- speeder 2y ago
  Lisbon is where the issue is the worst of all. When I had a job, I had to choose the office where I would work. I deliberately avoided the Lisbon office because I knew there was no realistic chance I would find a place to live there with my family with Portuguese wages.
  - Chris2048 2y ago
    sorry, I meant "more than half of the buildings even in expensive areas are boarded-up"
    - fransje26 2y ago
      Not OP, and not living in Lisbon, but yes, it did strike me as odd to see so many buildings boarded-up when I was visiting there 2 years ago. Even in what looked like "prime" locations.
      - Chris2048 2y ago
        That's crazy then. There are incentives to investors who renovate vacant properties, but high demand areas, such as Lisbon, are excluded. Crazy that there would be so many unused buildings - I wonder if anyone is sitting on them waiting for the land-value to go up, or just setting a high sale-price and waiting for it to sell. I would think getting them vacated should be the most profitable, but alas.
        crubier 2y ago
        6-7 years ago there was A LOT of vacant or derelict properties (like, close to 50% maybe). Ever since real estate price started going up in Portugal, Lisbon has been full steam into renovating. At one point I could count 47 cranes just from my balcony in Lisbon center. It just takes at least 10 years to refurbish 50% of buildings in a city. The reason there were so many derelict properties was a law in Portugal that prevented landlords to increase rent unless tenants were moving. Some tenant who had been renting for decades paid less than $100/mo. No wonder why landlords had no incentive to fix this. This has now changed, I think?
anon291 2y ago
I don't understand. Does Portugal not allow squatting? How can there be vacant land that no one wants? Surely someone would just go squat and make money living off of it.
forinti 2y ago
I feel that empty houses and apartments should pay more taxes after a year or two of being empty. I also see a lot of empty properties for years on end in the middle of town.
alkonaut 2y ago
The empty properties are they owned or rented? If they are rented, are the tenants paying rent but just not using them? If they are owned, are the owners people who just used them for passive investment and don't rent them out? Otherwise I don't understand how rents can be so high? If there are places owned that aren't in use then the political solution seems pretty easy: tax property ownership massively when unused. Make unannounced visits to properties to see if the owners claim of having a property that's lived in is true.

Zealotux 2y ago

I would expect that kind of situation to lead to a lot of squatting, how common is that in Portugal?

speeder 2y ago
Instead of squatting people been sharing rent. In one infamous case a house that was shared between 20+ people burned down and killed 2 and sent 14 to hospital.

orwin 2y ago

I'm sorry to recommend you that, but i have experience with homelessness. You have two temporary solutions: - join a group of squatters (hopefully you already know someone) until you get your bearings. The less ideological ones often squat old industrial properties, or long-abandoned houses (its rough in winter, but in Portugal you should be fine). You might meet some Urbex guys, they're nice and always fine with finding squatters. - Live in a "big enough" car. You absolutely need to rest on a completely flat surface. I knew someone who got the back seats down and put a wooden plank on it. If you're less than 1.80 and don't move on your sleep, you have a lot of choice (the diagonal is nice), else it might be a bit more expensive. A very short-term solution is squatting with a close friend, but you shouldn't abuse it too much, it strains relationships.

ProllyInfamous 2y ago
I recently kayaked a stretch of the Tennessee River, between state parks, and within an hour of paddling I passed both a homeless riverside "tent city" [technically "public camping" on TWRA/state land] and then the most-expensive house for sale in our entire metro area (just around the same peninsula). These inholdings, both impoverished and not, were each having their respective parties (cheap beer in common) along the lakeside. Titties abounded - "howdy neighbor" - the no-betterness of being "commoners, enjoying this day upon the lake." Interestingly, the poverty beach camp seemed to be having more fun; but obviously the multi-million $$$ homeowners are in much easier/better situations (likely).
- crtified 2y ago
  It's one of the interesting paradoxes of human life, I think - that the poorer have more incentive to have fun.
  - charlie0 2y ago
    The poor have much less to lose and have probably accepted their fate. The rich are always thinking of how to get richer without loosing it all.
    - ProllyInfamous 2y ago
      >The poor have ... accepted their fate. "What am I gonna do about it!??" is a common way I've heard this sentiment expressed.
- orwin 2y ago
  I've lived on and off a semi-rural "squatter" community by ideological choice for around a year [0] (that experience helped _a lot_ later when i was homeless by lack of resources, while i finished my engineering degree), i've probably never had as much fun as i did at the time. Learned juggling, guitar and basic human interactions i had trouble with at the time. We shared alcohol, games and stories with everyone who went to say hello, even cops at the time (it was after César but before 2016) [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZAD_de_Notre-Dame-des-Landes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZAD_de_Notre-Dame-des-Landes

oooyay 2y ago

I live on a sleepy street that's half dense housing and half single family homes. Density will likely take over more than half of the street some day because the city has been relegating more dense housing to the working class areas of the city, which is where I happen to live. [1] Of those single family homes there is one that was owner-occupied for a year when we moved in. Since, it's been locked up and has had no renters. The couple that own it own several properties across my city, which I came to know as I got to know one of the owners while they lived here. It perplexes me, and the rest of our neighborhood, how someone can float a mortgage, much less an investment mortgage, without a renter. My owner-occupied mortgage costs me somewhere around $2600/m, I can't fathom paying two with one at a higher interest rate. Apparently this situation is common around my city. On the other hand, and a bit non-sequitur, is two homes will likely become dense housing. They're foreclosures of properties that were inhabited by meth addicts. The whole property from the building to the soil will need to be removed for various reasons. At auction the properties were purchased for the average sale price of a home of that size that had no pre-existing issues. It won't be the kind of housing people need though, if I'm a betting man; my city has plenty of SROs (single room occupancy) but they're at the wrong price point. They're now called "lofts" and "studios" with a price tag to match. What will be lost is two 50+ year old homes, and likely the ability of our street to tolerate the traffic it was designed for as another issue is the city not investing in road-building and maintenance on our street. 1: https://prp.fm/biz503-portland-building-density/ https://prp.fm/biz503-portland-building-density/

lr1970 2y ago
> It perplexes me, and the rest of our neighborhood, how someone can float a mortgage, much less an investment mortgage, without a renter. In the USA it is happening all the time because, surprisingly, landlords have little skin in the the game. LLC is the name of the game. Each investment property is "owned" by its own LLC that bares 100% of risks and liabilities associated with the property and shields the landlord from the creditors. The property is financed entirely through commercial loans from the banks or other lenders. If the property does not generate enough profits for the landlord they quietly take all the liquid assets out of the LLC and stop paying their loan and property taxes. It takes long time (often years) for banks and local governments to start legal proceedings against the said LLC. During this period of time the property is sitting there boarded up. Finally the LLC files chapter 7 -- liquidation and all its assets, close to zero at that time, are given to the creditors. You may ask why the banks give loans to such high risk entities? First of all, if the property is bringing profits the loans are being paid of and it is the majority of the cases. Secondly, if the loan fails the banks do not have much skin in the game either. They slice and dice the loans and package them into "real estate investment vehicles". Then they sell the packages similarly to how they did it before the financial crisis of 2008. The terms and abbreviations are different now but the gist of it is still the same. EDIT: typos

phoehne 2y ago

I'm not sure if it's the case in your location, but sometimes foreign buyers come in and buy properties they don't expect to inhabit (unless something goes really bad in their country). Europe and the US have strong rule of law systems that prevent the state from just taking property. (The government charging you with a bogus criminal charge to justify taking their property in in their home country). It's also an asset that they can hold, even if it's not income generating, and even if it loses some value. (Because it's still better than most of the assets they have access to in their country). This is not always the case in every situation, but it's common. (Ed. as one person pointed out below, there is also a lot of money laundering that takes place. In that case, the property does not need to make any income).

newsclues 2y ago
It’s dirty money.
- phoehne 2y ago
  The vast majority is likely money laundering.
tcgv 2y ago
Portugal had a golden visa program that granted citzenship if you bought real state of at least 500k EUR. That drove home prices up signficantly in Lisbon, specailly units in that price range. Under new law, the Portuguese Golden Visa no longer provides Residency status through Real Estate investments. [1] https://www.portugalhomes.com/golden-visa-portugal https://www.portugalhomes.com/golden-visa-portugal
- cpursley 2y ago
  The golden visas were issued in relatively small numbers, I doubt they affect price much vs all the short term rentals like Airbnb combined with explosive popularity of Portugal.
  - 2y ago

Chris2048 2y ago

> when I walk the streets of major cities Portugal has started offering financial incentives for restoring properties, but I'm surprised this is a factor in Major cities, which ones do you see this? Is it also an issue in Lisbon?

Chris2048 2y ago

Is this also an issue in cities like Lisbon?

speeder 2y ago
Lisbon is where the issue is the worst of all. When I had a job, I had to choose the office where I would work. I deliberately avoided the Lisbon office because I knew there was no realistic chance I would find a place to live there with my family with Portuguese wages.
- Chris2048 2y ago
  sorry, I meant "more than half of the buildings even in expensive areas are boarded-up"
  - fransje26 2y ago
    Not OP, and not living in Lisbon, but yes, it did strike me as odd to see so many buildings boarded-up when I was visiting there 2 years ago. Even in what looked like "prime" locations.
    - Chris2048 2y ago
      That's crazy then. There are incentives to investors who renovate vacant properties, but high demand areas, such as Lisbon, are excluded. Crazy that there would be so many unused buildings - I wonder if anyone is sitting on them waiting for the land-value to go up, or just setting a high sale-price and waiting for it to sell. I would think getting them vacated should be the most profitable, but alas.
      - crubier 2y ago
        6-7 years ago there was A LOT of vacant or derelict properties (like, close to 50% maybe). Ever since real estate price started going up in Portugal, Lisbon has been full steam into renovating. At one point I could count 47 cranes just from my balcony in Lisbon center. It just takes at least 10 years to refurbish 50% of buildings in a city. The reason there were so many derelict properties was a law in Portugal that prevented landlords to increase rent unless tenants were moving. Some tenant who had been renting for decades paid less than $100/mo. No wonder why landlords had no incentive to fix this. This has now changed, I think?

anon291 2y ago

I don't understand. Does Portugal not allow squatting? How can there be vacant land that no one wants? Surely someone would just go squat and make money living off of it.

forinti 2y ago

I feel that empty houses and apartments should pay more taxes after a year or two of being empty. I also see a lot of empty properties for years on end in the middle of town.

alkonaut 2y ago

The empty properties are they owned or rented? If they are rented, are the tenants paying rent but just not using them? If they are owned, are the owners people who just used them for passive investment and don't rent them out? Otherwise I don't understand how rents can be so high? If there are places owned that aren't in use then the political solution seems pretty easy: tax property ownership massively when unused. Make unannounced visits to properties to see if the owners claim of having a property that's lived in is true.