61–70 of 184 posts
Thankfully I got my housing situation clarifyied several years ago.
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You don't need infinitely much, you just need a more than you have now. We have vast areas here (Ljubljana, slovenia) where you're only allowed to build two-story two apartment buildings and nothing more.. and right next to those buildings are large socialist-time apartment buildings with many apartments. But nope, you're not allowed to build higher there. Even in rural areas, we have a lot of empty land, right next…
>You don't need infinitely much, you just need a more than you have now. How long do you think "a little bit more than you have now" will last until housing stops being sufficient again and you're back to square one? Cities like Lisbon have virtually infinite demand due to how attractive they are and how many people would like to live thre, so yeah, you would technically need infinite housing to satisfy the never end…
Well obviously "infinite" is not true since there are limited people on earth with mobility to visit Lisbon, and not everyone would want to visit, and not everyone can do it at once...
But in good-faith arguments, there is a lot of difference between "build on an empty lot" and "turn Lisbon into Manhattan". As others have pointed out, there are a lot of crumbing buildings in Lisbon. You don't need "more" forever, you need "more" until demand is satisfied or supply of buildable area is exhausted (which it is not).
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> As for Airbnb, that’s the same is most touristy cities and it’s not just because of nomads. Cities should be for citizens... tourists belong in hotels.
What if the citizens want to make an extra buck renting their property?
Usage patterns and resource usage of residents and tourists are not equal. Tourists tend to need less space (since they just sleep there) and tend to be noisier (since they don't usually have a worker's schedule, and/or may be loud while vacationing). They tend to have different transit usage from locals, and they tend to travel to different parts of the city. All of this causes un-even wear on the resources and infrastructure within the city.
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Expats complain about bureaucracy everywhere. A German expat in Sweden will complain about Swedish bureaucracy. A Swedish expat in Germany will complain about German bureaucracy. It does not mean anything. Expats complain about everything.
I moved back to my native Netherlands after several years abroad and encountered significant problems with the bureaucracy, more so than in any foreign country I've lived. I don't think it's an expat problem, rather it's a "if you fall slightly outside of the happy path then you can expect to run in to a lot of trouble"-problem. It's just that expats are a group of people that fairly frequently tend to fall outside o…
By the way, I've lived in a few European countries and researched many others. The Netherlands was by far the easiest/most efficient in terms of bureaucracy.
Currently living in the Algarve after moving to Lisbon with my partner for her studies years ago. I know a few non-crypto entrepreneurs who came here for the NHR (non habitual resident scheme - the scheme mentioned in the article which allowed for the 20% tax cap on foreign income). I can confirm that a lot of them were incredibly frustrated with the bureaucracy they encountered, not just when dealing with the govern…
I suppose it depends on your definition of "hefty" but a couple of thousand USD is usually sufficient, depending on jurisdiction, and obviously is expected to pay for itself many (, many, many) times over.
It's not that hard and it's not just for the 1%. Especially if you're anything approaching a "digital nomad" I can't think of any reason why you wouldn't establish a consulting company somewhere offshore, bill from that, pay yourself a quarterly dividend and then import only the money you actually need.
Young Portuguese have been emigrating for the last 50 years. The country is full of second residences, bought by people who took advantage of cheap real estate until recently. Blaming today's inflation and cost of living on a few digital nomads or crypto people doesn't make much sense. What also chocked me when visiting Lisbon or Porto is the number of old abandoned buildings in what I would consider nice areas. I ha…
No idea about Lisbon but it was common in Brussels to let an old building "rot" to the point where the owner could destroy it and rebuild a new one. This way, they could build a bigger/better building and sell apartment at higher price than just fix the original building. Demolition permit are hard to obtain but if your building is too decrepit, the city will force you to destroy it.
Is this purely a Lisbon thing, or has it exploded over the last 6 months? I visited Porto last spring and there weren't any crowds nor many foreigners, it was pretty quiet.
This year quite a few thousand university students had to give up their place, because they could not find affordable housing.
Currently living in the Algarve after moving to Lisbon with my partner for her studies years ago. I know a few non-crypto entrepreneurs who came here for the NHR (non habitual resident scheme - the scheme mentioned in the article which allowed for the 20% tax cap on foreign income). I can confirm that a lot of them were incredibly frustrated with the bureaucracy they encountered, not just when dealing with the govern…
You need someone (in Spain it's called gestor) who does all of that for you. I live in Portugal, by now I speak the language but I don't get the rules etc. I have a guy who does everything, never had any issues. It's very cheap.
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No idea about Lisbon but it was common in Brussels to let an old building "rot" to the point where the owner could destroy it and rebuild a new one. This way, they could build a bigger/better building and sell apartment at higher price than just fix the original building. Demolition permit are hard to obtain but if your building is too decrepit, the city will force you to destroy it.
It used to be common, but then many cities got fed up of it, and now many municipalities have local laws to take ownership for the city if the owners behave this way.
-the only economically sensible option is to let the building fall into disrepair bad enough that the government lets you demolish
-governments close this "loophole" by seizing your property
and the problem is "the owners behave this way"? FMD.
Currently living in the Algarve after moving to Lisbon with my partner for her studies years ago. I know a few non-crypto entrepreneurs who came here for the NHR (non habitual resident scheme - the scheme mentioned in the article which allowed for the 20% tax cap on foreign income). I can confirm that a lot of them were incredibly frustrated with the bureaucracy they encountered, not just when dealing with the govern…
> those that didn’t pay hefty fees to set up companies in tax havens I suppose it depends on your definition of "hefty" but a couple of thousand USD is usually sufficient, depending on jurisdiction, and obviously is expected to pay for itself many (, many, many) times over. It's not that hard and it's not just for the 1%. Especially if you're anything approaching a "digital nomad" I can't think of any reason why you…
In one case one person, as you say, did everything on their own and pays a couple thousand every year to keep the entity in the favourable jurisdiction. When asked if it was all above-board, they said it was one of those grey areas where they hoped the govt didn’t look too deeply into it, but so long as they weren’t making millions they weren’t worried about an audit.
The other cases asked various accounting companies to set this scenario up for them (one to establish a software engineering consulting company, others to set up other companies). The responses ranged from “yes we can do this, it’ll cost you 15-20k upfront, then 5k in annual upkeep” to “no this isn’t looked upon too well by the Portuguese govt”.