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Portugal, a country with a housing crisis and of half a million abandoned houses

PortugalHousing

The country has a big housing crisis, which is probably the main reason why locals leave, also the main reason why Lisbon is a high expact/asylum seekers/tourist city instead of a place where Portuguese can have a life.

The country does not build houses, AND, on top of that, they have thousands of empty

abandoned properties doing NOTHING. Everybody knows about the problem, but no action are taken

They are ridiculous laws about who gets to decide whether to sell or not the house, in some cases, more than 10 family members are involved with no agreement

The government (who specialize in taxes already) should tax strongly those abandoned houses, push for a solution so they can become available to others

When I speak to locals about it, their attitude is like: “well, yea, it’s a problem, but it is what it is” no, no, no, this problem can be solved or at least become less severe!

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Comments3

  • Red Handle

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    May 31, 2025

    Most of the empty house are not empty by choice. They are normally in 4 situation

    1. They here from some old person that died and now all of the family is fighting to get ownership of the house (and yes this happens a lot and take ages to be resolved. This cases are basically only solved when all but one of the heris dies and finally the house as a single owner)

    2. They belong to some public entity: Either from the central government itself or from the local administration and due to burocracy and a lack of interest they do nothing with them.

    3. They belong to the Catholic Church: Yes, they still have a lot of property in Portugal and refuse to sell it or to give to who needs it.

    4. They belong to investment funds: After the 2008 housing and financial crises a lot of banks got stuck with houses and sold then to multiple investment funds and those funds simply resold those houses over and over again to other investment funds. A lot of houses are in these loop, of being sold and bought by investment funds.

  • Pink Rice

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    May 30, 2025

    You cannot walk through Lisbon, gaze upon thousands of empty homes and say, ‘We have a housing crisis because of foreigners’.

    You cannot actually do this with a straight face, surely.

  • Tomato Beach

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    May 29, 2025

    Literally all of Portugal’s housing problems have been solved 40+ years ago in Singapore.

    Another self-made political problem.