Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 817 posts

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#661

Post by baud147258 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #612
sofixa wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we in the west allow people to buy a piece of the Planet Earth, and hold on to it forever, virtually tax free(in Western Europe at least) What do you mean tax free? There are inheritance taxes for that, which often go up to 50-60% of the value for higher values. That's why the majority of castles in the UK are in trusts and open to the public, paying 50% of the value of the castle and land every generation was too…

50% inheritance taxes are very rare in Europe, for normal homeowners it's mostly negligible, and there are workarounds like donating your property to your kids before you die to avoid the inheritance process and taxes. And the property taxes are mostly grandfathered to the price the property was last purchased at, rather than at the current market prices.

I don't know for which parts of Europe you base your knowledge on, but in France both are wrong

> like donating your property to your kids before you die to avoid the inheritance process and taxes.

Donation to family members (above a certain sum, but any property would qualify) is taxed just like any other income.

> And the property taxes are mostly grandfathered to the price the property was last purchased at, rather than at the current market prices.

Property taxes are set at the current market prices (and if the gov thinks the value is set too low, they will come back and ask for more, retroactively).

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#662

Post by zx85wes »

selectodude wrote: post #487
WalterBright wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can tell it's a monetary thing because you don't see deflation. > Fiat systems aren't inherently inflationary; but they target a low level of inflation because they prefer it to deflation. That's just the excuse. The real reason is so the government can spend money without raising taxes. So they sell you on the idea that inflation is good.

Deflation deepens recessions and lowers investment. It is inherently bad. It has nothing to do with spending money without raising taxes. Countries that can borrow in their own currency can already do that in any environment. Heck, parts of Europe had negative interest rates to combat deflation.

The eurozone only had a few quarters of deflation the past 25 years. The problem is that the ECB considers it main task to be providing governments in Southern Europe with cheap credit instead of focussing on price stability.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#663

Post by jonathanstrange »

alberth wrote: post #471
jonathanstrange wrote: post #97

Yes, the situation is dire. I live in Lisbon as a foreigner for more than 12 years now. We pay a rent for a small flat that used to be very expensive and now is on the cheap side in our quarter of the city. Luckily, we have an older contract that cannot be changed as easily as newer ones. I'm not thrilled by the possibility that our landlord might cancel it some day, however, e.g. for relatives to move in. Rents in t…

Gentrification > I live in Lisbon as a foreigner for more than 12 years now. We pay a rent for a small flat that used to be very expensive … Rents in the city have skyrocketed, we'd have a hard time finding anything I know this comment won’t be received well, but aren’t you describing gentrification & how you participated (maybe unknowingly) in what has caused prices to skyrocket. And you’re now complaining because s…

Yes and No. I described gentrification. No, I did not participate in it because I received a Portuguese salary from the start. I'm working at university where the salary levels are fixed by state institutions. (Which is a huge problem if you want to attract senior researchers from abroad, and also a problem because it causes talented people to emigrate.) The reason why I paid a rent that was then higher than usual was because landlords in Portugal assume foreigners are wealthier and therefore it was very hard as a foreigner to get an apartment at the low pricing that my Portuguese colleagues were paying.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#664

Post by _dain_ »

nemo44x wrote: post #441
_dain_ wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or you could just legalize building anything other than single family dwellings. there's a lot of room in between quarter acre lot suburbia, and a crowded favela! look up "missing middle housing". the problem is purely a matter of restrictive zoning.

The cost of materials and labor is really high for most people, not to mention land. And then there’s maintenance. It’s out of reach for most people. Populations are so much larger than they were 100 years ago and people want increasingly large dwellings. I think the tiny home concept makes sense as it’s trailers without the stigma. But yes, we probably need to think of a new type of town built around small propertie…

No, no, no, we don't need a "new type of town" built around some pre-fab gimmick. Literally you just need to lift zoning restrictions (and related bureaucratic crap like discretionary design review) and legalize building things that are slightly-to-moderately more dense than single family home suburban houses. That doesn't mean "dense towers".

Suppose you see a man strangling himself, and he wants to know how to get out of his predicament. Does he need a VC-backed startup to sell him an anti-strangulation machine? No, he just needs to stop strangling himself! To hell with "innovation".

Land prices in the US (or the UK, or any other place with a housing crisis) are not a limiting factor, if anything they're what would fuel the construction if it were allowed to happen. Property values within cities are so inflated precisely because of the zoning which makes it impossible to build the kind of housing needed to serve the immense demand.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#665

Post by pipodeclown »

screye wrote: post #363
jonathanstrange wrote: post #97

Yes, the situation is dire. I live in Lisbon as a foreigner for more than 12 years now. We pay a rent for a small flat that used to be very expensive and now is on the cheap side in our quarter of the city. Luckily, we have an older contract that cannot be changed as easily as newer ones. I'm not thrilled by the possibility that our landlord might cancel it some day, however, e.g. for relatives to move in. Rents in t…

Airbnb and uber for all their benefits have taken away a lot of urban planning capabilities of local govts. At the same time, they expose the general unwillingness of local govts to accomodate the need of the population or those who bring in economic value (tourists, transplants). If you are becoming a tourist hub, then create an off-town tourist area and add a convenient transit line/people mover to the central part…

Sure, but why on earth would any tourist choose to stay at some off site tourist hub? The whole point of visiting a historic city like say Lisbon, is that you get the stay in an historic city, not some modern off site tourist hub where you get to take a crammed full tourist bus to the centre..

Or would you propose strict accompanying zoning laws with strict enforcement? I think that would meet stiff resistance from property owners but would be feasible. I do think all of this would make the destination much less attractive to visit though so it really comes down to how much you want/need the tourists.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#666

Post by em500 »

Drunk_Engineer wrote: post #39
cinntaile wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What EU countries? The only ones I am familiar with have housing prices spiraling out of control just like in Portugal.

Austria. In Vienna, for example, 44% of the rental stock is public housing.

In Amsterdam 57% of the rental stock is rent-controlled housing (capped at below €800/month). But that doesn't help at all when you don't keep building more: the average time on the waiting list for a new allocation is 13 years, and rarely move out. And if they do move out physically, it's popular to not move out administratively and illegally sublet it for a lot more than that they're paying (that's the story I've been told by locals).

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#667

Post by tmnvix »

nicolas_t wrote: post #563
TekMol wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those really making a dent? What percentage of Lisbons apartments stay empty? What percentage is used for short duration rental? I would think only a small one-digit percentage?

I have an apartment that sits empty, I'd love to rent it, I even have a license to rent it for holiday rental but it took 2 years and an half for the proper permits to be filled for me to renovate the apartment, once that went through, covid happened and it was not possible to find anyone to do the work, eventually the constructors I hired started doing the work but stopped in the middle claiming they can't find empl…

Why not sell it?

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#668

Post by _dain_ »

mr_toad wrote: post #530
_dain_ wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we somehow managed to build houses for thousands of years, so it can't be that hard, can it? the scarcity is entirely artificial.

There weren’t many building restrictions prior to the 20th century. Earthquakes, fires and wars provided a sort of natural urban renewal.

Zoning restrictions != building codes

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#669

Post by tijl »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #97

Yes, the situation is dire. I live in Lisbon as a foreigner for more than 12 years now. We pay a rent for a small flat that used to be very expensive and now is on the cheap side in our quarter of the city. Luckily, we have an older contract that cannot be changed as easily as newer ones. I'm not thrilled by the possibility that our landlord might cancel it some day, however, e.g. for relatives to move in. Rents in t…

Some things I noticed as a foreigner exploring the Portuguese house market for the past 6 months: Indeed, prices in Lisbon and Porto are insane. Yet, even in those cities (especially in Porto) there are quite a lot of old buildings, often in bad shape, and often empty, or sometimes inhabited by just one elderly tenant. You don't see that elsewhere in Europe in cities with similarly high prices. You would expect someone to buy these properties, renovate them and then rent them out. Clearly, the rental market desperately needs this new supply.

That this doesn't happen, could be because there is a lack of capital, but to me the actual problem seems to be over-regulation and especially an over protection of tenants. If, as the article states, foreigners buy multiple apartments, and then let them sit empty, it's because they are afraid of renting them out. Especially with elderly tenants, you can't increase the rent, and you can't terminate the contract. Once you start looking around for a house to buy, you'll almost certainly bump into some homes costing only a tenth of similar houses in the neighborhood, and any Portuguese knows what that means: there is an elderly tenant, paying only 20 euros of rent per month, and your only hope of ever getting them to leave, is wait till they pass away (and even then, their children might try to continue the lease at the same conditions).

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#670

Post by glcheetham »

jhugo wrote: post #604
glcheetham wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, foreigners don't have just as much right to live in Portugal. That's what this article is about. Foreigners need an investment visa, so they have to buy the right to live in Portugal. A literal condition is that you have to buy property over €450,000 and restore it. This selects for rich foreigners so the house value increases. If you are Portuguese you get the right to reside in Portugal for free. Everyone else…

> Everyone else (apart from EU citizens) must buy it. That's a ~440-million-person "apart from".

Yes, but the article is about people who buy property in and emigrate to Portugal through the golden visa program or D7 visa / digital nomads
Post reply on HN