LA owners don’t want long term rentals

The majority of owners of properties rented out to tourists say they are not interested in renting out their apartments to long term tenants to help ease Portugal’s struggling rental market.

It means that the government’s tax incentives offered under the More Housing programme are not convincing them that the will be better off. Instead they would rather prefer to use the properties for personal holiday use and risk having properties standing idle for the rest of the year. They also would prefer to rent out to foreigners for medium term lets, or even sell them altogether.
It is another blow for the government’s second term cornerstone housing policy that has generated confusion and disagreement across the board and has few supports whatsoever, save tenants’ associations.
This is the conclusion of the study ‘Evaluating the Impact of Local Accommodation in Portugal’ carried out by economists and researchers Pedro Brinca, João Bernardo Duarte and João Pedro Ferreira of Nova SBE at the request of ALEP – the Association of Local Accommodation in Portugal.
The study found that the vast majority of LA landlords are not planning to place their properties on a long term rental three-year contract or more) with only 13% suggesting that they might do so. Local Accommodation represents over 2% of tourism GDP in Portugal.