The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

First the linked article would do with a bit of proofreading, it is painful at this point.

The market is mostly driven by portuguese government offering low taxes to people retiring in the country.

This won't be sustainable in the long run as all those people retiring now likely got less kids than the previous gen and will gonna die soon. This is a bubble that will pop in the next 20years when the amount of people dying and properties being put on sale will be much greater than people willing to retire there.

Also it is not like all these properties sold didn't benefit portuguese people.

As a relatively poor country (for European standards) with, crucially, a lot of debt, it is very difficult to go for massive public spending projects as would be construction of enough public housing to bring it to the aforementioned 20% goal (there are actually proposals to this effect in Parliament), even though this would (1) help control the housing crisis and (2) actually easily turn up a profit in the mid-long run.

The EU could change all of this and go for true European cohesion with Eurobonds under the blue/red proposal... but that's another story ;)

> Generally, having all these big money foreigners trying to come to your country is a good thing. It sure beats having no industry and you can crank up the tax heat on them as high as you want since nonresident-noncitizens don't vote.

Well but do they? Where is the evidence that golden-visa/NHR recipients have actually helped create jobs, invest, create industry...? In fact, there appears to be evidence to the contrary: https://www.publico.pt/2021/12/25/economia/noticia/vistos-go... (translated: "Golden visa: in nine years, the program created 241 new jobs. Investments which led to the residency permits since 2012 amount to 6000 million euro, the vast majority of which went to real estate")

Indeed there is some weirdness in this article.

For example, it claims Brazillians are going to Portugal in large numbers because Bolsonaro...

Except, Brazillians are going to Portugal in large numbers, because the Portuguese government invited them, out of necessity since the country is depopulated and has low birth rates.

I am one of the Brazilians that intend to move to Portugal, and part of the reason is that I am not exactly Brazilian, yes I was born in Brazil, but my family is from Portugal, and I was raised with a Portuguese culture, I just don' t feel like Brazil is my home and want to try going back to my family hometown (Leiria) to see if it is a place that clicks with me.

Lisbon and other metropolises indeed are bad, but because a incredible amount of people want to live there despite lack of enough land there.

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 the city have skyrocketed, we'd have a hard time finding anything, even though we both work full-time and have salaries above average. It's crazy because all new homes and apartments are "luxury apartments" with insanely high pricing both for buying and renting. They're mostly empty or are (often illegally) rented out as holiday apartments. It's incomprehensible to me how ordinary Portuguese families survive in Lisbon. I guess most of them have inherited property.

Quite honestly, apart from the generally increasing gap between rich and the poor, one big problem in societies nowadays is that you can simply get richer and richer just from owning property. For example, if you own three ordinary apartments in Lisbon, you can live in one of them and easily make a good living by renting out the other two as holiday apartments. Because cleaning services, guys who do repairs, etc., are cheap in Portugal, this involves almost no work. Moreover, the net worth of your property will continually increase while you do (almost) nothing. I'm not saying I blame these people, I would do the same if I had the opportunity, but this is a huge structural problem in my opinion.

I don’t know what’s the correct approach with this.

I’m a globe trotting engineer who understands globalism and what access tech is opening up to it. I don’t mean being a digital nomad. Rather, tech is collapsing or expanding concepts of borders, nationalism and so on in very meaningful ways. That’s a hugely compelling area to work in vs chasing an OKR for Google ads. I don’t think it’s reversible, and I find a lot of value personally and professionally from being in that space because this is the rare moment where the world is changing and I’m in a field directly involved with it.

The other aspect is it’s locals selling to the foreigners, and a personally compelling reason to go there is urban areas of the USA have screwed themselves up with the cost of living. I want to participate in problems, not pay $5k/mo for a 2bdr in NYC or soon Austin or Nashville so I can go to bars with other techies. So if locals weren’t selling at hugely inflated prices, I’d be firmly in favor of that. So, look to the Portuguese neighbors selling apartments first.

But, no excuses - I see $500k 2 bdr in Lisbon and think that’s a chance to live in a world that is way too expensive and commercialized in NYC. A local in Lisbon is getting hosed by that and my mobility, no way around it.

In short - am I part of the problem, what responsibilities do I have vs the locals and govt policies about foreign purchases, do my motivations matter at all vs the outcomes.

I don’t know yet, Hard to say, although it’s good to face hard facts via articles like this. Networked-globalism won’t reverse, and I think it’s more likely the quiet parts of the world (rural America, cheap Europe) are just going to go through some transformations that can’t be stopped and the symptoms look like this article.