Slightly off-topic, but I didn’t want to start a new thread. I’ve seen mention on a Facebook group of a potential strike by SEF coming soon. Since I’m arriving in Portugal in 9 days and will also need to quickly deal with a quixotic attempt to update my address on my resident title card at SEF, news of a looming strike worries me. I see nothing mentioned in news media, either Portuguese or English. Does anyone know about this?
Via Prime Legal - According to news released today in the Portuguese media, the Portuguese Government, as part of a housing support package, will change the Golden Visa programme. The details of the intervention and its scope / impact are still unknown, however, the Government meeting will take place on the 16th of February.
Anyone has any updates or news inks?
In his recent interview with RTP, the prime minister stated that the meeting of the Council of Ministers on the 16th Feb 2023 would be exclusively dedicated to housing. In the budget discussions of last year, the issue of Golden Visas was brought up in the context of the budget on housing. Parliament discusses housing on the 15th at 15hours. Hence, speculation that the meeting on the 16th on housing will necessarily cover GVs.
It is possible that the Council of Ministers considers that the evidence that GV puts pressure on an already tight housing market is sufficient to decide/advise on modifications to GV laws (including a decision to close the programme). If so, their decision/advice would still need to be ratified via Parliament in order to change the current law. Clearly, if the Socialist Party do not wish to continue with GV as a whole, the programme would close eventually, as they would swing the Parliamentary vote.
Nothing in the Portuguese press so far on this. The link to Prime Legal did not work for me - so I cannot see the news to which you refer.
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Certainly the golden visa program increases demand for real estate
This should be solved by allowing supply to increase by making it easy to build new housing, but that seems to be Anathema to basically every government everywhere
Nimbys delenda est
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*except Japan 
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Oh of course, Japan is a shining beacon of yimby attitudes. Bit of an immigration and birthrate problem for them though. I’m hopeful they can fix their population pyramid but that’s tough
Hopefully, if they are worried about real estate pressure, they could just remove the real estate investment path but keep the GV program as a whole. None of the other paths should be altering the real estate market.
Or just make it so that GV applicants have to buy real estate that is some multiple of the housing a typical citizen can afford, which would ensure GV holders arent competing with citizens for housing, especially since they might only spend a week or two per year in these units.
hah, that’s already true, the average citizen can’t afford a EUR500k house anyway. admittedly you can buy multiple properties to get to the amount but I doubt that is the normal path. it sort of doesn’t matter. it’s actually unlikely that the GV crowd is affectiing the real estate market for average people - it’s the conversion of housing into AL for airbnb for tourists and the mass influx of americans and others on D7 who are looking for inexpensive housing and/or aren’t interested in buying 500k properties when a simpler (what was 200k) property suits them just fine. there is very very little stock left in the lower ranges and that is generating plenty of noise/pushback in some sectors. Barrio Alto for example is now just a big tourist hotel and the locals are super cranky about it, they lost their neighborhood.
it is however reasonable for the gov to regularly review the progress and path of GV investment and steer it where they want it to go or change the minimum investments to speed up or slow down intake.
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Thursday is likely to see the “new permanent mechanism for rental support for families with falls in income ”; the end of golden visas and tax incentives announced for the construction and/ or rehabilitation of residential properties in order to “increase the availability of accessible rentals” .
“What Expresso learnt from a government source was that other measures on the table will be serving to stimulate, through tax incentives, the placing on the national rental market of properties – that up to now have been destined for Alojamento Local (short-term holiday lets) – and empty properties”.
So it seems they are at least kind of acknowledging the problem of lack of supply, but want to hamstring airbnb and the tourism sector in order to make housing cheaper for locals. Maybe fair, but just building enough that both sectors get the housing they need/want would be better.
Hopefully the tax stuff to encourage building comes with red tape cutting, which I assume is a significant factor based on our experiences here.
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That reads like it isnt the end of GVs altogether, just the real estate path to GV. Or I am just being optimistic.
Regardless, I hope my lawyer is right that people who have already submitted applications will not be retroactively rejected due to change in law. They claimed any restrictions or cancellation of the GV program would only impact new applications.
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Really not understand why the media keeps talking about the GV as the main cause to the housing issue in Portugal.
Acording to the statistic on idealista 2022, more than 43000 properties were sold in Portugal
Idealista statistic
. The total number of GVs per year never exceeds 1500. How can 1500 GV applicants make an significant impact on the housing market ??? 
GV investors now cannot even buy residential properties in Lisbon Porto. Let’s see if they stop GV or not. I doubt not. EU Politicians are not stupid to cut off the cash flow into their economy. They will continue use GV as a thing to blame or to avoid talking straight to the real problem of housing market. But to stop completely 100% GV, it is highly unlikely to happen.
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I think an argument could be made that the funds options could also be having an impact on the real estate market. We did not take the fund option, but it is my understanding that at least some of the funds invest in Portuguese real estate, at least partially.
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This is true. But some also don’t, and only have a positive effect on the country, eg. Helping farmers. Short sighted for them to paint them all with the same brush.
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“Stupid” often depends on viewpoint.
Money is a driving factor sure, but there’s more important things than money to many people.
It’s highly problematic to spend tons of money on pensions you can’t afford, but votes are more important. Same can apply to GV, if it is considered unpopular enough to influence your re-election or some other priority. Vote buying only gets you so far, priorities change.
Truth is a relative and fickle thing. You already know that. Same here. Is GV really the source of the housing problem? Does if the public thinks it does.
Sure, money is important too. But consider:
GV cash: EUR 650m last year. EUR5bn over the years. Politically somewhat problematic now. By SEF’s own published statistics only a handful in the “create 10 jobs” category, and most in the “real estate” category. Oh and now we’re getting sued by the applicants even. What a pain.
NGEU funds: EUR 2.4bn/year, totally under the control of the government in terms of how it is spent, conditioned merely on the EU thinking the right things about you.
EU says “Here’s EUR20bn to do all sorts of stuff that you need done. (You know though, we’re still not too fond of that GV thing you’re doing…)”
Yup, money sure is important.
I know you can make all sorts of arguments here how the true picture is really different and how GV is really beneficial and all that. So? What matters more, what you think, or what’s ending up in Expresso?
All that said, you could also read it as deciding to pull all real estate options from the GV - can’t buy any residential property, can’t buy commercial property that gets used as habitation, can’t invest in funds that invest in real estate. You have to invest it in funds that invest in companies or create permanent jobs in non-real-estate sectors.
Would of course deter some people from GV because they don’t want to take on real risk, but maybe that’s considered worth the cost.
I don’t have the original text of course. I need to subscribe to Expresso. Keep meaning to, never do.
Also to consider: the GV depended heavily on real estate in the beginning. It had to, because that’s all that was really on offer. There were no funds - the economy wasn’t even sophisticated enough to HAVE venture capital funds. Well, now it is and now there are, and now maybe that’s how they’d prefer the money to be coming in - directed into funds run by Portuguese managers to invest in Portuguese businesses creating jobs. This is actually a very reasonable viewpoint, and Gavin had in the past talked about hearing something like these kinds of viewpoints coming out of the ministries. Maybe it’s time.
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The biggest point to argue here is: annually GV investors are not over 1500, but the total properties are sold yearly in Portugal is 43000. Everyone can do the math to find out exact percentage (3.48%). So who bought the rest 96%? It is the brutal truth that speaks itself. Number does not lie. That’s why EU politicians only talk crap about the possibility to shutdown GV and they do not shut it down. If GV investors took over 50% of total properties, they would have shut down the entire GV program by now. Unfortunately bad luck for them, it is what it is. They still might shut down the program, but they will use a different reason, such as: GV is a money laundering tool. It is interesting to see if they finally shutdown GV because it harms the properties market. They can use press and media to steer public opinion against GV, but to shutdown the GV program to compensate the rest 96%, it’s gonna be cool to see!
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I agree with this. GV has become a distraction for the government. The GV should be changed to have more tailored categories of investment, in my opinion. Categories such as: donate 500k to a Portugal housing fund for low income Portuguese citizens; invest 750k in areas deemed worthy by the government such as clean energy, infrastructure; transportation, funding TAP Air, etc.
Sure, it will mean more risk for investors, and less investment but that seems to be the goal, and it will also quiet those who say the GV hurts rather than helps.
Jeff is correct that at this point, Portugal does not need to incentivize investment in (above) market-rate housing. That is already coming in droves from northern Europe, USA, Brazil, etc with or without the GV. One could argue that Portugal is a victim of the success of GV and welcoming immigration policy which has attracted investment into real estate and revitalized housing stock and infrastructure, thereby making Portugal more desirable for immigrants. Chicken or egg. Maybe that’s true, maybe it is not. I don’t really know.
Another point is that these policies tend to be reactionary. After years of loose money policy has boosted programs such as GV, now we may see a recession hit and money will dry up like the desert. Then these countries may look at revitalizing these types of programs or create new ones to attract more money. That seems to be the pattern.
Hello Guys,
We work in this field and the general consensus in the industry is that the program will change significantly but not be cancelled entirely, perhaps also rebranded. It is anyones guess at this stage. However, our predictions for Thursday’s announcements based on the rumours are:
- Cancellation of the real estate option (with a small chance of commercial real estate remaining eligible)
- Abolishment of the fund option
- Cultural & Arts Investment Pathway to remain along with the business options.
- Changes to come into place at the end of the year with a cut of date for new applications (we would then expect huge demand over the next few months as investors try to get their applications in)
Fingers crossed
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Thank you for your insight! I hope these changes won’t affect cases submitted in 2021 but yet approved?
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