Portugal faces an accumulated housing deficit of 300,000 homes over the last decade, with 59,000 pre-certified units left unbuilt in the last three years. According to the article, this situation is not the result of speculation or greed on the part of real estate developers, but rather of economic unviability. Taxation represents approximately 40% of the final value of a home, to which are added unpredictable licensing processes, excessive bureaucracy, high land costs, and mismatched technical requirements.
The private sector states it wants to build more for the middle class, for families that can afford to pay up to 300,000 euros for a home, considering that there is a huge market with repressed demand. However, with the current sum of costs and the inability to guarantee licensing deadlines, the middle-income housing segment is not economically viable. Regulatory unpredictability is described as the most profound problem, with direct costs that are transferred to the final price or render projects unviable.
The article highlights that Portugal has a public housing stock of only approximately 2% of the total, one of the lowest values in Europe, with no state capacity to replace the private sector in responding to the housing crisis. The text acknowledges that developers and real estate investors sustained the existing supply in recent decades and that the current situation would be substantially worse without them.
The sector requests a regulatory framework with predictable and binding licensing deadlines, stable rules applied uniformly, and a tax burden that allows building for those who need it most. The article concludes that the reforms approved by the Government and the Assembly of the Republic are already addressing this sum of costs, reinforcing the economic viability of projects, and providing greater predictability to the sector.
