Lisbon and Porto need 70 thousand new houses a year

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The president of the Association of Professionals and Companies of Real Estate Agents in Portugal (APEMIP), Luís Lima, says that to satisfy the demand that has existed for Lisbon and Porto it would be necessary that both cities obtained a rhythm of construction that allowed to be placed in the market about 70 thousand new homes per year. And the new housing licenses, although they have been showing very high growth rates, are far from this need.

According to the Housing Statistics that were released this Monday by the Association of Industrial Construction and Public Works (AICCOPN), only in the first half of 2018, the city councils issued 7,329 licenses of new construction and rehabilitation of residential buildings "which represents an increase of 20.7% in year-on-year terms ". Growth is much more significant if the indicator to be analyzed is the number of fires in new constructions, which rose 35.7% year-on-year to a total of 9,688 houses. This number exceeds the total number of licensed fires during the year 2014, and that was in 6,785 houses.

For Luís Lima, the ambitious package of measures announced by the Government in the scope of the New Generation of Housing Policies (NGPH) has not had any effect in the Portuguese residential market. One of the main measures is the possibility of finding houses with the so-called "affordable income" in the rental market, which, in the Government's view, will allow the sale of houses whose income is 20% below market prices. This would require convincing public and private landowners to lower their incomes to have access to tax incentives - but the truth is that although many voices say that the incentives proposed by the Government will never be enough to persuade landowners to lower their incomes, is that the legislative package has not yet reached the ground, and is still being discussed by the Assembly of the Republic.