Real estate developers call for government agreement with PS over ‘More Housing’

Portugal’s ‘More Housing’ programme introduced in February, 2023 in a bid to help offset the country’s chronic affordable housing crisis in Lisbon, Porto and parts of the Algarve, was hotly debated during the election campaign in the run-up to the March 10 general election.

The right-wing coalition Democratic Alliance (AD) made a commitment to partially revoke, and in some cases totally cancel, measures in the package. However, some real estate developers think that an understanding reached between the new government led by Luís Montenegro and the opposition PS party, which narrowly lost the election, would be positive.
In an interview with Jornal Económico, the President of Portugal’s Association of Real Estate Developers and Investors (APPII), Hugo Santos Ferreira (pictured), said that the AD should seek to reach a consensus with the PS over the issue.
He admitted, however, that the new government would be very constrained by the measures laid out in its election manifesto which would have to be met with or without the consensus of the socialists, and even might have to seek an agreement with more far right parties – this referring to Chega.
“For us to have faith in their manifesto pledges, we need to believe that the AD will fulfil the pledges that it made to the Portuguese by having an agreement with the centre or the right”, he stressed.
THE APPII says an agreement should be brokered over the Golden Visa and Non-Habitual Resident programmes, particularly with the parties on the right where it would be easier to reach an agreement since all of them have called for a review of overseas investment attraction programmes.
“We know that the PS did not end the programmes, and they have continued on, but in a different way,” he said.