Since the Ari’s property route was already cut off, there is nothing to blame on Ari. If ari’s property was not cut off from the program, it would be the first culprit. Now I am interested in hearing and seeing other causes….one obvious reason for skyrockketing prices in Portugal is that there are at least 5-8 european countries with much higher GDP/capital: france, germant, netherland, sweden, belgium, norway….many of those richer europeans buy properties in Portugal. Specifically the french is the biggest buyer amongst foreign buyers in Portugal. But, it’s very strange that this issue is hardly discussed or raised in media.
Maybe, portuguese authority knows that there is no solution to solve it. And they need to find an easier target. Putting blames on europeans for buying houses in Portugal is impossible. So first they targetted ARI’s investors which is an easiest target (often do not live permanently in Portugal and richer than the rest). Now Ari’s property route is gone. Next target must be CPLP because there is nothing else to blame. It is 100% nonsense because most of CPLP are in in survival mode. They work to survive and do not have means to impact on property market in Portugal.
The darkliest funniest part is that this thread only started because other users couldn’t stomach what we posted on other parts of the forum. This was supposed to be the insanity thread; now here we are and every bit of it has come true!
I did not say that I “think IRN processing will become more efficient”. I did not say anything of the kind.
Imagine a bucket with a hole in it, half full of water. Water is draining out through the hole at a roughly constant rate. You are pouring water into the bucket faster than the water drains, so it is filling up. Then you stop pouring water into the bucket and the water level starts to drop. There is no assumption in this scenario that the hole is working more efficiently to drain the water after you stop pouring water in. The water level is dropping because water is leaving the bucket, at the same rate as before, while not being replenished.
As for your other assertions and assumptions, you have your opinions and I have mine.
Between 65 and 80% of migrants in Portugal are from CPLP countries and you think they have no impact on the housing market? Unless they are all living on the street, rent-free, they are also contributing (a lot) to aggregate demand for housing. If a CPLP family rents an inexpensive apartment (albeit one they can barely afford), that apartment is no longer available to other renters. Unbalanced and excessive demand puts upward pressure on rental prices. Even if you are only referring narrowly to buying and selling real estate as the “property market”, the resale value of rental properties is generally proportional to the net present value of future rental income streams, which is driven up by excess rental market demand.
I agree wealthier people from wealthier nations in the EU will have a big impact. Unless Portugal can get their average wages up to levels of France, Germany, etc it will keep hurting the people.
The elephant in the room is inflation and the money printer. Since Nixon took the world off the gold standard in 1971 inflation of assets has gone vertical. Warmer climates in Europe will have felt that pain badly because few own assets and they live in a desirable place for those that have money or can get credit.
Here’s an interesting video for you. He talks about America, but it is the same everywhere.
“Over the last 55 years you have doubled the amount of houses in America. But the money supply has gone up 30 times in the same period. The result is the average house price has gone up 15 times”
Yes, I am well aware of the principles of fluid mechanics! I am also well accustomed to see throttling valves at the bottom of holding tanks to control the outflow. That’s the easiest way to ensure that processing of citizenship applications will remain painfully slow to discourage potentially interested parties in the future.
As for the PIGS crisis, that’s what started ARI programmes in the first place and pumped in billions of Euros.
And as for the real-estate prices: indeed, ARI represent relatively little percentage of ownership. In fact, D7 applicants have far greater impact on real-estate purchases: they are not constrained to higher-priced properties (500K € or above) and can (and do!) complete with the locals for much cheaper lodgings. However, they are harder to identify as culprits and hence are not “showcased” by the governing coalition in need to preserve popular support.
Well, in 30-50 years, the collapse of the atlantic current will dry out and freeze Europe, so I’m told. That’ll discourage immigration en masse. Housing crisis solved!
an economy with a standard of living low enough versus elsewhere such that it benefits richer people to move there
byzantine inheritance laws and permitting problems that make building housing impossible
glacial construction processes
(I watched our building complex being put up. Over 3 years. And it’s not huge. There’d be a handful of people at the job site on any day, kinda poking around… it’s nice and pretty high quality, but I’m still amazed it ever did get completed. We won’t talk about how long it’s taken to get a management company or to fix the main sign or the elevator whose door doesn’t close right…
Now, one of the things I like is that it’s right next to a navigation beacon, a trailer park run by the municipality, and a municipal parking lot that if anything were ever built on it it’d disturb other people’s sight lines as well as leave the tourists nowhere to park and sap the bombeiros’ revenue since they run it. Which means (a) low sight lines for me (b) less than zero chance there will ever be neighbors, because trailer parks are politically unassailable, no one’s gonna challenge the bombeiros, and navigation beacons may as well be monuments. (My wife explained the trailer park thing to me. It’s a cultural thing. Same in Italy.) Great for me, and part of why I bought the place, but in the grander scheme of things, terrible for growth. Welcome to Portugal.)
I really am surprised by this. They’re not that hard to distinguish. And many of them are here on pensions that don’t get taxed, and some come specifically for the free health care, of which they are higher consumers since they are older, but they have enough reliable money that they are direct challengers to the locals for mid-line real estate, unlike many ARI. (I do think some ARI do go for mid-rent pied-a-terres, it’s just a smaller number than the D7s.)
I think ARI does cause a certain level of problem because high end construction tends to be more resource intensive, and produces fewer accommodations per unit of work and materials and property input. Is that significant? Likely not, in the grander scheme of things.
I imagine a lot of people simply lump D7 and ARI together as “rich foreigners” since at some level even the D7s are for the most part pretty damn wealthy by comparison, but the ARI is simply labeled better.
And there seems to be some weird counter-currents going on concurrently… Never seen so much building activity happening in Lisbon & surrounds… Typically the older classical apartments are being totally renovated from just the shell but it seems to be a game for the whole family to play with smaller middle-class family “developers” & south Asian “partnerships” doing smaller properties. In talking with a couple of them, the plan is "build to rent - that being where the money is right now. Trouble is, I wonder if it portends a building () bubble - no CPLP can afford to rent these in the inner city, there’s only so much AirBnB potential (for various reasons) and do the Euros want to rent these places c/f buying them ?
When you distort the system (money) in favour of a control system (Fiat), then you have to choose who wins and who loses, which will always open a door for corruption.
Most mainstream economists haven’t done one lesson on the history of the different types of money humans have used and how they were all corrupted. They are told our fiat money is at natural as the tides. They haven’t learnt how to think, they have only been taught what to think.
Money didn’t originate from our governments, it was co-opted by our governments and those that pull the strings.
True, there are other issues like property rights.
But if the money is distorted which is the foundation everything is built on then everything on top of it looks weak.
If you look at house prices in gold they are very stable over many decades. Our money used to be gold and silver. Now we just have paper or digital debt.
God established what is money. Only gold and silver are real money. Everything else ever created that purports to be money, failed, and is merely an illusion of money.
Another part of the equation is making property / land only available for those that live in the country. Thailand has that law. Well it is more strict, you cannot own land unless you are Thai. You can only buy properties that are apartments or part of a site that you don’t own the land.
Fixing the money changes the incentives for people to buy properties for investment. If the money holds value better than the property, you hold the money not the property. This fix alone might be enough as properties fall to their utility value.
This is called deflation and is generally considered bad for the economy because then people would rather hoard money than invest it in productive assets like companies/stocks.
I think housing demand so outstrips supply that it doesn’t matter. If they can’t manage to rent them because people want to buy, they’ll sell them instead of renting them. Some number of people will be happy to upgrade to nicer construction, making room for others at lower levels. Others will split rent just to have somewhere to stay. And Europeans who want to move will rent instead of buy if that’s what’s available. Any number of people rather prefer to rent over buy anyway.
You have a point, and it’s not as if Portugal hasn’t had a construction bubble before - the wreckage of 2008 is still laying around the countryside and on balance sheets - but when housing stock is this short, any construction is better than no construction and will find a market. Anything would be progress. Assuming of course it ever gets completed before all the non-natives get disgusted with the immigration situation and leave, which is probably the biggest risk.
question; can public servants be sued in Portugal? any idea? or are they shielded? I’m thinking about naming individuals in addition to sef/aima/irn in my lawsuit once the new law is approved - loss & damages. yes, I know, a lost case, but gotta do something to let it out..
if possible, the first person I’ll name is that stand-up gentlemen! who openly admitted that they’ve willingly and knowingly put GV applications at the back of the queue..
It is 100% nonsense because most of CPLP are in in survival mode. They work to survive and do not have means to impact on property market in Portugal.
) bubble - no CPLP can afford to rent these in the inner city, there’s only so much AirBnB potential (for various reasons) and do the Euros want to rent these places c/f buying them ?