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Comment by throwaway13337 | Hacker News Reader

The golden visa isn't causing the housing shortage because it's a very small program.

I couldn't find a primary source but all sources say the same as this one: https://www.imidaily.com/datacenter/portugal-data/

The program lets in on the order of a few thousand people per year.

Other visa programs there vastly outstrip this is number.

The golden visa is just a great marketing term for political ire. It implies wealthy privilege so it's easily targeted.

Of course, the reality of things is that Portugal has recently rightly earned a reputation for being a great place to live and people (not many of them super rich) decided to live there. Housing is being built to compensate.

The airbnb thing is more interesting and nuanced but harder to get a handle on. It might be that airbnb is causing some unhealthy things in the real estate market.

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> The airbnb thing is more interesting and nuanced but harder to get a handle on. It might be that airbnb is causing some unhealthy things in the real estate market.

I have friends living in Lisbon and Porto for 10+ years, others that were born and raised there. All of them mention how entire neighbourhoods are slowly being emptied out from locals and getting rented on AirBnB. It's more profitable to rent an apartment short-term for a season than having permanent tenants. There are neighbourhoods hollowed out from people living in them and are just boxes to be rented during peak tourism season and left empty during winter.

It's not so nuanced if you see the transformation happening in your city, you notice your friends living further and further away from where they grew up, you walk through the same places and see the language being spoken on the streets is not what you were used to. You check prices for T1 and T2 apartments and they skyrocketed, are very hard to find through real estate services but can be found easily on AirBnB.

The same in Amsterdam. The 55 square meter apartment that I lived in from ages six to ten is now split into two studios rented out on AirBnB in the hipster neighborhood of 'de Pijp' for a large multiple of what it would fetch in rent (which are already way too high).

This goes for many of the listings on AirBnB in Amsterdam, four stories worth of not-quite-a-hotel instead of room for four families to live are pretty common. And there always was a housing shortage in Amsterdam, now it is much worse than before.

Yes but the difference is that expats in Amsterdam work for companies based in the Netherlands. They ad to the economy they aren't just here for the weather and cheap housing (nobody comes to the Netherlands for the weather and cheap housing).

But he’s talking about Abnb

It's crazy that Portugal, a country with almost exactly the same GDP and population as Hungary, Lisbon has average square meter prices reaching 7k EUR/m2. Budapest is barely 2-2.5k EUR/m2. That's just the effect of airbnb.

Where would you rather go as a tourist

Why should a tourist get a house? Especially if it takes away from the locals being able to actually live somewhere.

That’s kind of funny, I just spent a week meeting a Hungarian co-worker who, from the sound of things, refuses to return home until Orbán is out. She claimed that there were state-sponsored billboards that read things like (this is her words) “IMMIGRANTS RAPE WOMEN.”

If there’s any truth to that, then I’d say their rental market is pretty well-protected from foreign workers, to say the least…

Yep.. happening everywhere.

Somehow the regulators (and governments) prefer more money over their own citizens. Banning short term rentals would solve (or atleast reduce) housing problems in many cities, while tourists can still come and stay in hotels.

why not simply build more houses?

We are building, but building takes time, and all the houses and apartments are bought by 'investors' that then use them for airbnb... This is even more true in places like portugal (and many others), where realestate prices are so high compared to normal peoples income (due to speculative and airbnb investments), that normal people cannot afford them anymore, and only people with a lot of money or other realestate (for mortgages) can buy them, and the best way to earn back investments is again, airbnb.

So, you need to both build new stuff and ban airbnb for any chance that normal people with normal incomes will ever be able to afford to buy anything decent to live in. Also somehow stop buying realestate for investments. Also fix zoning laws in many places. Also...

> but building takes time

this is by choice.

> and all the houses and apartments are bought by 'investors' that then use them for airbnb

if the demand is there then the only sensible solution is to build a lot more.

Building more housing just to satisfy speculative demand never ends well. You get ghost cities/districts and lots of pink elephants; and when the bust comes, its a huge mess to clean up, and a lot of those units will never be used before being torn down.

If it were that easy and simple, it'd have been done.

The places where AirBNB and their like are causing problems are not in the places where there's abundant land going, it's in the areas where there's significant tourist demand. This is in the cultural hubs.

People with capital are able to buy up the limited stock of housing and make a lot more money through short-stay, rather than long-term tenants.

This causes major flow-on effects.

Businesses which cater to long-term residents find their customers disappearing, and leave in favour of those catering to tourists/visitors.

The nature of the people in the area change: people in short-term stays are less likely to respect the local cultural-norms like not partying until 3am, or other behaviours.

The people who work in the local businesses, find it harder to do so - instead having to commute from longer distances because they now can't afford the rents/property prices locally.

Knocking down a few apartment blocks and putting in more high-density accommodation won't solve it.

places change, no? people move, businesses go out of business, new people move in, new businesses get setup etc etc

Changes can be good and bad. Without regulation the incentives can hollow out desirable places of all but the richest occupants and tourists. Over time even the rich may leave if the help cannot afford to live or commute to serve them. The end game could be ghost towns or whole communities essentially becoming artificial, amusement parks.

You cannot build new houses in Venice, or Amsterdam center. That's where tourists want to go, not in those new houses in the peripheries where you would forcibly relocate your citizens with the proposed housing projects.

> You cannot build new houses in Venice, or Amsterdam center.

sure you can. it's just that people don't want to.

> That's where tourists

aka money.

Housing doesn't follow the simplistic supply/demand model. What happens in a lot of places here in Europe during the past 10+ years of low interest rates: developers + investors buy land and buildings to develop them, either chopping up older larger apartments into smaller units or building new housing but they don't sell all of them at once after developing. They hold onto units and drip-feed the market to keep prices high, the lost opportunity cost of selling earlier is offset by selling later at the inflated price.

I bring up low interest rates because getting a larger amount for a mortgage is cheaper, buyers will go to banks to check what's the largest mortgage they can get to fit into their budget to then go shopping for a house, so the prices are directly correlated to how much credit you're able to get, pushing prices upwards which the investors/developers can scoop up.

Now prices are extremely high, mortgages aren't so easy to get and we see prices going down (here in Sweden there's been a 10-20% fall), but they are still much, much higher than 10-15 years ago. It's pushed people like me, with a decent salary but no family wealth whatsoever to be basically priced out of the market. I'd need to save about 20-30% of my net salary every month for about 2-3 years to afford just the down payment for a small apartment on the outskirts of the city. I'm not able to do that while my parents depend on me and I still have rent to pay.

>Housing doesn't follow the simplistic supply/demand model

Yes it does, and I'm tired of pretending that it doesn't.

If I want to build a house in Portugal, if I am even allowed to do so, I will have to spend about half of the cost to the government.

From VAT, to real estate tax, to licensing fees, etc... That's a significant portion of the cash spent going directly to the state for no actual practical reason.

And that's not even mentioning the time spent dealing with all that, or the fact that housing is essentially banned in the majority of the country.

My family has been in real estate for generations, and Ive listened to multiple generations on both sides of the family for years struggle with these politically inflicted issues.

There is no housing crisis.

There is a political choice to make housing unaffordable and unbuildable. Anything that doesn't address that issue will only make things worse.

Housing is not a commodity. [0]

[0] https://ggwash.org/view/10809/housing-is-more-than-supply-an...

Except it is.

I can assure you, if you build 1000 times as many houses as there are people who want to live there, housing prices there will decrease.

For a lot of these places there are enough houses for the people who want to live there. Or it's a whole hell of a lot closer. The issue is there's not enough houses for the people who want to live there and all the tourists who feel entitled to be able to stay in a house on their vacation. A house that takes away from locals, and destroys any culture of the neighbourhood.

So there aren't enough houses.

Also, why do you think you should be the arbiter of what "enough" is?

What right do you have over the property of others?

> So there aren't enough houses.

There are close to enough for the locals. The problem is when tourists feel entitled to houses, like I said. Stick them on the periphery, and let the locals actually live where they work. Instead, we're doing the opposite, and destroying cities and neighbourhoods and pricing out locals in the process.

> What right do you have over the property of others?

I suspect this is where we're going to inherently disagree. People don't own their property in a vacuum, nor do they (nor should they) have unlimited 'rights' to do what they want with it. We don't let people dump toxic waste or oil on their properties for good reasons, and I think extending this to short-term lets is perfectly sensible due to the overwhelmingly negative benefit it has on residents. Doubly so when its corporate landlords in question doing it.

Again, it is not that simple as you can see from London's issues with drip-feeding new housing from developers. [0]

[0] https://blog.shelter.org.uk/2019/08/more-planning-permission...

It really, really is that simple and anyone making the argument that it isn't either hasn't thought this through, has never actually looked at the data, or is outright maliciously lying about it.

[This chart on it's own with no further context is enough to disprove any argument anyone may have that attempts to claim housing prices aren't solved by building more housing](https://twitter.com/JeremiahDJohns/status/161535236504076697...)

It's really that simple.

A Twitter chart vs the arguments of people working with research in housing departments in some of the largest cities in the world. I guess I know what source I'll actually trust a bit more.

The cities that built 1000 times more houses are actually more expensive. Does anyone think that Manhattan-like density in San Francisco is going to lead to Houston prices?

>Yes it does, and I'm tired of pretending that it doesn't.

It doesn't, because the housing market is not the "free" market like the one for commodities, but is an asset heavily manipulated by government, banks, NIBYs and institutional investors to maintain a steady increase in value of their investments above inflation, and incidentally above wage growth. The bigger the growth of their investments, the better for them.

Again, that's a political choice, not a housing crisis.

Low interest rates also mean it’s practical to hold real estate and drip-feed the units. Much harder to do when you’re paying 10% interest on a construction loan.

this is an issue that I've seen in several beach towns in france as well, and it's not limited to airbnb. You will see real estate places that offer weekly rentals of beachside properties at very high rates. Of course those places are basically unused outside of that.

This sort of stuff sets in, and then of course people are shocked that their entire local economy lives or dies off of one season. We should build more housing of course, but limiting the percentage of places that can just be sitting empty most of the years seems super important. At least making it extremely expensive to keep them empty

100% true in Ireland. In 2020 the number of long-term lets doubled due to AirBnB people fleeing into long-term when tourism was basically non-existent. Sadly, they've all moved back to AirBnB by now, and Ireland is now facing the worst housing crisis yet.

> I have friends living in Lisbon and Porto for 10+ years, others that were born and raised there. All of them mention how entire neighbourhoods are slowly being emptied out from locals and getting rented on AirBnB. It's more profitable to rent an apartment short-term for a season than having permanent tenants. There are neighbourhoods hollowed out from people living in them and are just boxes to be rented during peak tourism season and left empty during winter.

I'm currently living in Nashville, Tennessee, and one can see the same effect here.

The town is completely unequipped to handle the level of tourism and unregulated hotels it has. The price of housing has shot up to insane levels (by local pay standards), and neighborhoods are inundated with drunken revelers.

I would never wish this fate on a city, but many seem to foster/welcome it with open arms. I know Nashville has, because the tourist money spends. But be careful what you with for, turning a city into a theme park / tourist destination has some horrible effects on the people who actually live there, and it seems like it should not be sustainable.

Sadly, it looks like it is. For another example in Tennessee, look at Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Even as recently as 50-60 years ago most the locals lived in the areas. Since then, they've been priced out by all the tourists and cabins, etc. And it doesn't really show any signs of slowing down, to my knowledge.

Yes, it's a small program but it has created some negative side effects - although you could also consider them positive, depending on your viewpoint. I've been living in Lisbon for 14 years as a EU citizen and currently have to renew my permanent residency card. Unfortunately, the authority SEF responsible for that is not reachable. Online processing doesn't work, making an appointment online doesn't work, writing emails returns auto-replies to call them, and I've given up via phone after more than 60 trials. Even when you get a connection, they don't respond. So I've contacted an immigration lawyer, and they several times mentioned "Gold Visas" and later sent me an offer: 500.- EUR for an appointment they would make with SEF. This might sound like nothing to people from elsewhere but these are substantial amounts for someone with a Portuguese salary. However, this would be peanuts for a Gold Visa applicant.

This sounds like regular old corruption, incompetence and/or underfunding.

Problem is sef has been extinguesh (but not really) a few years ago due to an high profile case with them beating to death a ukranian man. For the ‘left’ in this country it is also considered a racist institution. Problem is, as with all that is done in this country, they announce the end, make no real plans for alternatives, leave the people working there in a limbo, noone gets hired and people leave, but they get more and more work to do with the immigrant influx.

The golden visa wasnt already the big deal since it wa slimited, but the digital nomad visa (over two thousand issued in just a few months) and the open door policy of this government (you dont need even a promis eof work anymore to just come to portugal) overwhelmed the services. And then there is the stupid laws that lawyers and other classes working in behalf of clients have priority in these services

In UK just filing an application for a normal work visa for a family of 4 costs o £10,000. This is what the government 5akes, no lawyers

For each applicant, there is a ~1500 application fee and ~1500 healthcare fee ( NHS, 3 years). Ofcourse you will be paying for NHS twice because you also pay the taxes to fund NHS. Spesifics will differe with individual case, but thats the broad strokes.

If you need a lawyer to explain something, they rarely get up for less than £500

Yes, but we're not talking about a work visa, e.g. my case is about a process that would normally be automatic by the press of a button. They even have a web form, it just doesn't work. As someone else noted, the problem is that this agency has become virtually nonexistent and unreachable due to re-structuring and Covid, yet nevertheless keeps being required by law for essential services. I've been tempted to start a EU solicitation process, but then again, being confrontational with an immigration police who have already unlawfully killed an immigrant in the past does not seem to be a good course of action.

SEF has spent a significant amount of time, energy, and money dealing with the Withdrawal Agreement situation for post-Brexit British immigrants. An entire program was set up to convert EU-standard residency paperwork into a customised biometric residency card for around 46,000 people.

That process will be over soon, and SEF may find it has time to spend on other issues.

That may be true and I'm sure individual SEF employees are not to blame, but that still doesn't explain why they've made a web page with a button "Schedule Appointment" and when you press the button it says in red letters "Making an appointment online at this time is not possible" or why they have someone who seems to read emails you sent to them and chooses different replies each time, only to tell you in different ways you need to call them by phone, or why their phone system accepts calls, opens the line (as a technician by the telecom confirmed), but no machine or person actually replies.

Are you claiming that a few thousand of these visas a year overwhelm the system? Then the investment visas are not the problem. The problem is the agency responsible for processing these and the attorneys knowing of the service shortage take advantage of people. Supply/demand. It’s not meant to be affordable for people, it’s meant to be expensive because if you’re reaching out to them to renew, you’re probably desperate.

The golden visa program was put forward as a "job creation" initiative, but results show it generated as little as 280 jobs in a decade https://www.publico.pt/2022/11/07/politica/noticia/decada-vi...

It was mostly used for wealthy foreigners to acquire real estate, hence the ire. As for AirBnb, it has decimated historical neighbourhoods in Lisbon and turned its historical areas into a kind of theme park.

AirBnb is similarly catching flak for much of Prague's recent spike in housing costs too, and tbh I don't think it's unjustified.

Which should be bringing money into Lisbon to the net benefit of all people living there. If most of the theme park money isn't staying in Portugal then they should pass some legislation to favor the local economy.

it could be doing more damage because high house prices destroy local economy.

When willvl the West finally learns the lesson that unaffordable realestate is uneconomic suicide just like unaffordable food would be

They don't just destroy the local economy. They also destroy trust in politics - always fragile at best - and hugely increase the odds of a racist/fascist government.

We've already seen this in the UK, where a drum beat of race hate aimed at immigrants and refugees has been used to misdirect the population away from neoliberal austerity and "low tax, small government" (big profit) policies.

Which - not coincidentally - include a huge amount of literal rent seeking and property profiteering.

100%

That's a tough sell for, say, a barman whose landlord realises they can double their rental income by doing short-term lets. Just because there's suddenly a lot of money flowing in, doesn't mean all people immediately benefit (or even eventually benefit), and in the meantime those who already lived there suffer an explosion in prices for renting and buying property.

Sounds like they should establish rent control and lodging tax on hotels/airbnbs/shortstays.

Portugal is a small country of 10 million with another 450 million people entitled to move there freely without visas...

> Portugal is a small country of 10 million with another 450 million people entitled to move there freely without visas

For a stay of up to three months[0], yes.

Remember that when people talk about freedom of movement within the EU it's actually the free movement of workers[1], meaning beyond three months, you have to meet certain conditions, and will likely need to demonstrate you have income/employment/insurance/social security/pension...

[0] https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/ju... [1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/41/free-m...

That's academic. Apart from very rare cases where someone has been deemed an "unreasonable burden" (e.g. homeless creating problems) no-one is going to be deported. In fact no-one tracks who's in the country and how long they stay.

Certainly, for the purpose of this discussion the point is that anyone who's got EEA or Swiss citizenship can freely move and live in Portugal. So if some people in Portugal think they are being overwhelmed there is actually little they can do.

> That's academic

Are you suggesting that EU citizens are allowed to stay for more than 3 months in Portugal without a residency certificate?

> In fact no-one tracks who's in the country and how long they stay

This is typically completely fine, right up until the moment anyone in authority gets a reason to start asking questions:

"When did you arrive in Portugal, mytailorisrich?" "Ah, over three months ago. Can you show me your residency certificate?" <sucks air through teeth> "Can you explain why you didn't get a residency certificate?"

In practice EU people would be free to lie about when they arrived, your EU passport don't get stamped when entering another EU country. You don't even need a passport, your ID card is sufficient for travelling inside the EU.

I have no experience with Portugal, but the vast majority of deporations in Austria are other EU citizens who stay for longer than three months without permanent registration. You need to show proof of being able to support yourself to move to other EU countries.

First they need to show proof that you are staying there for longer than allowed. How do they do that?

(Assuming of course that you are staying in hotels and airbnbs, or even at relatives / friends - of course, if you rent and register officially then it is obvious.)

> First they need to show proof that you are staying there for longer than allowed. How do they do that?

It's not like police is ramping up people who stand somewhere for longer than N months. These cases typically come up because people end up homeless, are trying to start claiming benefits, are dodging taxes or are otherwise appearing in front of the authorities.

>First they need to show proof that you are staying there for longer than allowed. How do they do that?

At least here in the democratic republic of Hungary: Cell network subscriber logs, ATM/POS flags, the passport number you enter when getting your public transit pass, the filed invoice the phone repair shop fills out when you get your battery replaced.

If you're a backpacking 20 year old it's very unlikely anything will happen to you, but if you're running a business or a "digital nomad" making FAANG salaries you'll get a rude awakening one morning with a knock on the door.

If you're making FAANG salaries you just register and be done with it.

The whole discussion is not very relevant and is a nitpick. The point is that anyone in the EEA/Switzerland can freely move to Portugal (or any other country) and that unless you get onto the authorities' radar very negatively you are safe. The vast majority of people will have an income and/or look for work and will be entitled to stay, anyway.

> In practice EU people would be free to lie about when they arrived [..]

That's fine, until it isn't.

> You don't even need a passport, your ID card is sufficient for travelling inside the EU

I've slightly lost track of the scenario here. Are we talking about a hypothetical northern European who basically moves to Portugal without telling anyone? Is she registered as self-employed? Does she have a bank account? Does she have any dependents? Does she own a car? Does she have insurance? Does she still have a permanent postal address in the northern European country?

Are all those things running as if she were still living in her original EU country, and she's just in Portugal "off the books"?

If so, wow. Good luck.

They don't need to be registered, that's the point. Legally, yes, practically not.

Because you know, they are coming from somewhere, another EU country, where they have a permanent address, a bank account, a job even (they are just working remotely), a mobile which works for the first few months via free roaming, a car which they take back to their home country for the yearly checks, health insurance which is technically only valid for emergencies in another EU country (but if you are seriously ill you'll probably want to go home anyway)...

It may or may not work in all cases (for example, in Italy they like to confiscate cars with foreign license plates that are illegally staying there - don't ask me how they know).

But if you imagine an average 20 something, still living with their parents, but wanting to travel across Europe while working remotely, then today this is very easy and straightforward to do. Without telling anyone. Except their parents, of course :)

Portugal recently introduced a separate Digital Nomad visa.

In practice it's nonsense to pretend you can just turn up. You need access to the health service, you can't rent without a tax ID, your car needs to be insured, and so on. All of which require registration. And there are occasional ID checks, which will raise questions if you don't have a residency certificate.

So even if you want to live out of your car - which sounds like fun - you're still going to leave a paper trail and face some risk of awkward questions and perhaps a fine and/or deportation.

> In practice it's nonsense to pretend you can just turn up.

No, in practice it's nonsense to pretend you can't.

You can rent short term apartments (airbnbs for example, but there are other services). Or you can just stay at hotels.

Why would you need extra car insurance? Is your car insurance not valid for all of Europe?

Why would you need access to the health service (beyond emergencies, which are already covered by your EU insurance card)?

Occasinal ID checks? But what do they check? They can check if your ID card is valid and you are not wanted for crime.

Sure, you leave some minimal paper trail, but in reality no one ever checks, no one knows, no one cares.

I'm not saying anybody SHOULD do this, but there are some people who definitely COULD.

> Why would you need extra car insurance? Is your car insurance not valid for all of Europe?

Check the wording of your car insurance policy. I doubt regular car insurance covers moving abroad without telling them. Oh, and the vehicle registration isn't going to be valid either[0].

Let's say our hypothetical person has a car accident, a serious one, where the police get involved.

She was driving her (say) Swedish car, with [technically invalid] Swedish insurance, with [technically invalid] Swedish registration and number plates, they ask her for her ID, she shows her Swedish ID card [can't show a residency permit, she chose not to get one].

One big hole she digs herself if she starts lying to the police. A different hole, but a hole nevertheless, if she tells the truth.

> I'm not saying anybody SHOULD do this [..]

Quite

> but there are some people who definitely COULD.

(Not wishing to sound too old and grumpy) but there might just be a whiff of this sounding like it's the story of young privileged well-off types who can't be bothered to follow rules everyone else has to, thinking it doesn't apply to them, and expecting to get away with it when things go wrong? :)

[0] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/vehicles/registration/...

As an example, I have seen videos of "house sitters" in Portugal that effectively "work" by staying at other people's houses while the other people travel, usually for longer periods, eg. weeks or even months. They water the plants, feed and walk the dog, make sure the property is lived in. They are not officially living there, but practically, they are. I was surprised that it is possible to make a living of this, but apparently it is!

The thing is - nobody really cares or checks this. I know so many people doing this with 0 issues.

Yes northen europeans just living in portual/spain without telling anyone. Its typical example.

Also most people traveling/living europe like this tend to travel somewhere every 3 months (often to their home country).

You reset the counter by traveling. The rules are not enforced especially if you are bringing money and behaving nicely.

It does when you enter the region from outside the region , which is all that matters. Is not 3 months in Portugal, it’s 3 months in the region.

mytailorisrich shurgs.

Nothing happens.

Or what would happen?

> the EU it's actually the free movement of workers

You can also be self-employed in that country or a student. So it does not apply just for workers. My guess is that its written in that way to give police power to remove homeless people from different countries.

I think it's more abstract, it's the freedom of movement for work.

Despite what some may think, students do work. At least some of the time :)

> homeless people

Not wishing to sound negative, but when the Treaty of Rome was signed, way way back in 1957, I doubt anyone was thinking about the homeless.

As I understand it, that rule exists to stop people from moving 'on paper' to collect social security in a rich country while they keep living in a lower cost of living area. Which is nevertheless seems to be quite an issue in some countries. (Not that your explanation is automatically wrong)

Rhode Island is a state with a population of 1 million people with 334 million people entitled to move there freely without visas.

This reminds me of:

Doug the Head : We've got sandy beaches...

Avi : So? Who the fuck wants to see 'em?

That's a great movie.

Goa is a small state of about 1.4 million people with another 1.4 BILLION people entitled to move there without visas.

Me (on phone): Help! There are people outside my house

Police helpline: How many do you reckon?

Me: Around 7 billion

Over 10% of houses in Portugal are AirBnB. That's just crazy! In some neighborhoods, it's over 60%.

Plus, there's something like 700k empty houses, for some reason on another.

There's no lack of houses for everyone, just hoarding and speculation.

How did you find that stat? I'd love to look it up for Ireland, Dublin and Galway especially.

The PM gave an interview a few days ago on local TV.

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