The problem in Portugal is it is difficult to build housing and make a profit. Clearly there is plenty of capital both foreign and domestic, but as several people here can confirm, permitting is ridiculous and tenant protections are absurd, along with slow courts and tons of property caught in limbo
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There are. When I was doing my initial research I found at least one fund that pays you out at the end of 7 years with a freehold property.
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I’m in a fund that buys derelict or run-down buildings in Lisbon and turns them into nice apartments, so while they aren’t building completely new buildings they are increasing the housing supply by a few dozen units every couple of years. Fund is run by a couple of architects that have construction experience in Lisbon and have been doing these kind of flips for years.
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I agree with the position that the law should not allow golden visa investors to invest in real estate. Although I do believe ANY investment helps the country, the real estate focus of golden visas has become a distraction for the program and the easiest way to end the distraction is to disallow future real estate investments. Certainly the government could specify that all golden visa investment must be in low income housing, I think there is a problem policing and enforcing that restriction. In an ideal world, here is what I think the government should allow for new gv investment qualification:
-€1,200,000 capital transfer to be held in PT banks
-€750,000 real estate investment only in select areas/housing where the local govt elects to participate (e.g. Madeira) (Lisbon, Porto, Algarve excluded)
-€600,000 investment into qualifying investment funds, or investment in business creating at least 10 jobs.
-€550,000 low income housing investment to build new low income housing. Guaranteed 3% interest over 10 years plus Principal will be paid back over 10 years from lease revenues and any shortage will be forfeited by investor. The government will own the real estate.
-€400,000 donation to PT charities or cultural works or for low income housing subsidies
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I think 250k EUR is plenty for a cultural heritage donation…unless your goal is to take the program out of reach of even more people.
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I think they should keep the real estate option for hotels as that supports tourism and doesn’t impact housing costs.
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They should keep the real estate option for all forms of development of new property. It’s hard to make building affordable housing commercially viable with current construction costs, but even building higher end housing helps - it increase supply, and it’s primarily lack of supply that pushes up prices.
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Building a million euro house in Portugal doesn’t seem like it would mesh with the GV dream of easy residency permits, but I agree with your logic.
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For those still following along, there will be votes in the Housing Committee on the bill starting 1pm and again at 5.30pm on Thursday. I’m unclear exactly how this works, ie how they reconcile the competing drafts.
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Parliament is very procedural. The broad idea has already been approved, details to be negotiated - at the Committee level and then the vote in Plenary on Thursday afternoon.
It still could go to the committee level after the Plenary to sort out details, or they could decide that inconsistencies be sorted by the large legal team that supports Parliament as long as the major thrust is agreed.
PS is cutting more slack now than in Feb this year, except for direct or indirect investment in private housing.
I presume you have seen the Quadro comparativo at the end of all the submissions?
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Indeed, the process is understood, and yes, I’ve reviewed the comparison tables. I’m just not clear on Thursday’s voting - whether they take the smaller parties’ amendments first and vote them down, and end up with PS’s draft, or what. Will be interesting to see.
Indeed. Im hoping both will be aired. And will the PM appear in Parliament for the plenary session, or not. The timing of the plenary session in Parliament suggests that they anticipate a short debate!
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So many votes!
Can they still get this passed before the August recess? My lawyers kept saying not possible but it looks like it still is (possible)?
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So now that the text is mostly finalized, what’s the verdict on the retroactive nature (for applications in process), or if real estate golden visa renewals will be allowed etc? Basically is the govt keeping ita word that the law won’t impact those who applied before end-July?
I’m not sure we can say yet whether the text is mostly finalised… I suspect and hope that it’ll be tidied up significantly before the final plenary vote. As it stands, it’s a mess - the language in Article 45 about entrepreneur visas no longer makes any sense if the ARI continues to exist, and there’s a big retroactivity problem in both Article 44 and 45 for anyone who’s invested in a fund (either an investment fund or a property-related VC fund).
Lots of people have written to parliamentarians in recent weeks pointing out various issues, and there is some evidence that at least these comments have been read. So I guess we’ll see.
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Does anyone know how many approvals there were the previous months? Thanks!
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Try here:
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What’s striking is that the proportion of GVs granted to US/UK citizens has risen from about 12% in 2021 to 41% in June. China, which used to be regularly 35-50% of approvals, is now below 10%.
And funds have gone from 5% of the total in 2020 to 36% now.
(of course these are final approvals, so everything is lagged a couple of years)
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I wonder if pandemic lockdowns prevented the Chinese from applying as much since 2020? Trying to think of reasons they would crater.
Although it could just be US and UK applications went way up, but China seemed so over reprented previously it is hard to imagine this being the only factor.
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