Thatās just an ad with no useful information (rather more misinformation)ā¦ A regular D2 has no stay requirement? Thatās not true at all!
TPN is not good. At best, theyāre useful for alerting you that something has happened, but never really useful for understanding what happened and why it matters
Yes. The article reads like ChatGPT to be honest.
chatGPT has PT in it. something to think about 
GPT = Generative Pre-trained Transformer 
Prime Minister Costa has submitted his resignation to the President.
Bloomberg:
Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa resigned after his chief of staff was detained as part of an investigation into possible crimes of corruption involving lithium and hydrogen projects.
Costa announced his decision in a speech in Lisbon on Tuesday. His resignation will likely lead to an early election.
The Portuguese Prosecutor-Generalās Office said in an emailed statement on Tuesday that Vitor Escaria, the premierās chief of staff, was among five people detained as part of an ongoing probe related to lithium exploration concessions and a hydrogen production project.
Costa, whoās been prime minister since 2015, currently led a Socialist government backed by an absolute majority in parliament. While he had all that support from lawmakers, over the past year heās been rocked by other challenges including surging living costs, teachersā protests and controversies related to state-owned airline TAP SA, which the government plans to privatize.
The prime minister met President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa in Lisbon earlier. In Portugal, the prime minister and his government set policy. The president is mainly a figurehead, though he has the authority to appoint the premier, dissolve parliament and call elections.
A survey published by Diario de Noticias on Oct. 29 indicated 28.6% support for the Socialists, 3.7 percentage points ahead of PSD, the center-right party thatās the biggest opposition group in parliament. Portugal last held an early election in January 2022.
Searches were carried out on Tuesday in locations including offices used by the premierās chief of staff as well as the environment ministry and the infrastructure ministry as part of the probe. The prosecutors have also named Infrastructure Minister Joao Galamba as an āarguido,ā a status thatās similar to person of interest.
References made by suspects about Prime Minister Costaās intervention to āunblockā certain procedures will be separately analyzed in an inquiry at the Supreme Court of Justice, the prosecutor said.
Iām not totally convinced this will happen, although it is a possibility.
That being said, I donāt think we should expect any short-term changes to the GV program even if there is an early election and the conservative parties come out victorious.
Whether the current budget proposal for 2024 (including the scrapping of the NHR program) would have time to be implemented before any potential new election could take place is something Iām also uncertain about. Last time the government fell (due to failing to get approval for their budget at the end of October 2021), the early election was held about three months later (end of January 2022).
I agree (thatās Bloombergās line, not mine). PS has a solid majority, and it seems possible that Marcelo just appoints another PS figure as PM.
Hopefully Sousa will replace the PM with someone ethical who will actually do something for the Portuguese people instead of using the GV as the reason there is a housing crisis. It would be nice if the new PM would allow the GV again to finance affordable housing and to renovate dilapidated buildings.
I was just talking about this with someone else. They were complaining that there wasnāt enough capital to build more housing in Portugal and I was like, yes there is! Huge demand for the GV, just need to funnel the investments in a socially productive way.
But Portugal (like many governments out there) canāt get out of their own way to build housing with their own money, let alone othersā!
That assumes the problem itself is a function of the government. I would suspect the government is only partially responsible:
- property seen as tangible wealth due to history (anyone remember the escudo?), reluctance to let go of it for any reason, leading to short supply
- hangover from the 2008 crash, properties tied up in complicated webs of marked-down/bad loans and agreements no one can fess up to without going bankrupt
- much property available especially in desirable areas is in truly poor repair, meaning attempting to re-develop is a very expensive and painful proposition
- demand in locations where there is no land to build on, no demand in the back country.
- lack of willingness to deploy greenfield for any number of reasons, many quite valid in the eyes of the Portuguese public
- lack of urgency in construction or indeed most projects - here where we are now, there is a project building new apartments. We were here 2.5 years ago and they were pouring the top floors. two years later, itās still not even close to done; theyāre projecting Q3 2024 for initial occupancy and neither my wife nor I believe it for a second. And this is being done by a major established construction firm in this area, no fly-by-night. What good is capital when it takes forever to deploy?
- no one anywhere wants to build āaffordable housingā; the margins are terrible and thereās a whole conflicting web of constraints and requirements and viewpoints around it. (whatās āaffordableā? whatās āacceptableā, does it have to include a dishwasher or marble floors or can it just be 4 walls and a sink? how big? etc.) legislating its creation is a nightmare. The US certainly does a shit job of it. I see any amount of griping here about the poor returns on funds here, the implied cost of tying up capital vs keeping it in the S&P or whateverā¦ how many are going to invest in funds where what you are basically doing is putting up risk capital for no return?
- It is nice to say that building property for the wealthy will free up stock at the lower end, but from looking around at reality here I have my doubts. Letās consider above apartment building. It is a very high end building for the area. Who is buying? According to the agent, primarily foreigners moving here or getting second apartments. Yeah, thatās helping free up space for the locals. Thatās one sample but I imagine itās representative.
I am not saying GV money cannot help, but actually channeling it in a way that helps create affordable housing is IMO a $&%$ of a problem for any government to attempt to solve, and I donāt think the Portuguese are extraordinarily worse at it than anyone else.
Itās very well established that affordable housing is market rate housing (or in other words, building more housing of any sort helps everyone)
upjohn specifically has been doing a lot of good work in this area, but there are any number of studies. I can link more if you like (though maybe a new topic would be appropriate and we can really get into it?)
Agreed that subsidized affordable housing is not the way to go, for a number of reasons including many you listed.
The slow pace seems to me to be because of a lack of competition. Itās not like thereās a ton of construction going on, relatively, and I assume (though donāt know) that thereās a lot of red tape for construction companies from say, the USA, from getting into the market. Not that the USA is all that much better at building 
To your example - if the foreigner that wanted to buy couldnāt buy in the new building, theyād buy some existing housing and make that more expensive for locals, kicking the local rich folk down a level, etc etc
Hi Jeff, yes I would be so frustrated at the amount of time it is taking to construct your buildingā¦as I know exactly where you are invested. We had lunch with our realtors while there and they said one of their biggest concerns with the govt changes is the amount of 1/2 done construction in the area. Mainly companies like Mercan who were now moving toward Investment funds. They were definitely working on your buildings everyday while we were there, so I have no idea why it has taken so long. I feel for you, but I do think it will finish (hopefully) by projected date. Unfortunately, you have some good points on the affordable housing issue.
This is not a new problem. No one wants to build anything if they canāt make reasonable ROI. That doesnāt mean that affordable housing canāt be built. It will require, as it does in many parts of the world, government intervention in the form of subsidies, tax abatements and guaranteed rent payments. Thatās not a bad thing, per se. You see the same with fuel subsidies, groceries subsidies, tax subsidies. Housing subsidies are no different.
An example is any type of grocery stable. If the free market says it costs 2 euros to grow tomatoes and people complain that they canāt afford tomatoes. You really have two options. You can force growers to grow cheaper tomatoes or you can subsidize the price of tomatoes at retail. In most cases, the latter would be preferable from an efficiency standpoint. I read that Spain is solving this problem by opening state owned supermarkets. I think thatās a terrible idea that probably will cost the government in the long term 5x the price of just giving out food vouchers.
And as for affordable housing, there isnāt a shortage of land in Portugal. There also needs to be an honest realization that not EVERYONE can live in the city center. But thats for another topic.
In at least one jurisdiction (UK) this isnāt the case. I suspect PT would be at least as complexā¦
The building - Minimum housing standards are set at a national level, and applied by local planning authorities.
Who can actually live in an affordable house is defined by government schemes in conjunction with other statutory bodies but typically those who canāt afford (to rent or buy) in a local regional authority on average wages or performing local services (police, healthcare workers etc).
Horrendously complex and little affordable housing gets built, even when planning incentives are provided.
So the problem for GV funds would actually be *what is an affordable house * and generally they would have to provide lower returns than regular houses otherwise itās just more (unaffordable) housing IMHO
FWIW, I think Iād agree that subsidized housing as a topic is getting fairly well off track of the overall topic of the GV law changesā¦ I got on a rant, didnāt mean to divert, if discussion wants to continue then best to fork it. For me, I view the entire sub-topic as āawfully complicated and GV capital is only one piece of a very messy puzzleā and would otherwise leave it there as Iām not really sure what I think about any of it.
True. However as a GV applicant what would you rather invest your 500k in? Venture capital funds with a high risk of capital loss? (By its very nature VC is high risk compared to real estate). Or a fund that invests in building affordable housing with pretty low returns? I think it would be a no-brainer.
Amendments to the Regulations are up:
https://diariodarepublica.pt/dr/detalhe/decreto-regulamentar/1-2024-837022979
Machine translation:
Regulatory Decree No1-2014.pdf (392.7 KB)