Comment by quonn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by quonn | Hacker News Reader

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> 3. Restrict foreign ownership of huge swathes of the country. This could be as simple as "new construction only".

This will make the problem worse as the Portuguese will complain that the foreigners own the beautiful modern buildings.

Additionally it‘s important to keep in mind that this is not feasible for EU countries with the four freedoms. It would be like Florida banning ownership of existing houses for Californians.

(1) would totally kill the Portuguese tourism industry.

(2) is reasonable and they are already doing it - but not sufficiently.

I have a better idea: Tax the nomads with a rate that matches typical tax rates (around 30-40% and waive the crippling social security if health insurance is covered from abroad, not the excessive Portuguese taxes of 53% + 35% social security for a total of 88% on a salary of > 80.000. Nomads are fully exempted because nobody would be willing to pay that much). It would bring more than enough money into the country for house construction.

> This will make the problem worse as the Portuguese will complain that the foreigners own the beautiful modern buildings.

I don't agree. We already have expensive housing in every country that those who aren't wealthy might covet. Also, new construction can be done in a way where you set aside, say, 20% of the units for locals in the same way that cities like NYC try to (but, you know, better).

> Additionally it‘s important to keep in mind that this is not feasible for EU countries with the four freedoms.

That's not strictly true [1] eg Malta.

Where it isn't possible, restricting non-EU citizens would still have a positive impact.

Also, where you can't actually restrict people, you can effectively do it with taxation, like having high property taxes for non-residents. This would be perfectly legal. US states do this too (eg a non-Indiana resident pays higher property taxes than an Indiana resident).

You can also discourage rampant property speculation with high transfer taxes, again targeted at foreign buyers.

> It would be like Florida banning ownership of existing houses for Californians.

I'm a big fan of doing this in Hawaii.

> ... would totally kill the Portuguese tourism industry

Build hotels. Build dedicated short-stay accomodation. Allow hoome owners to have ADUs. Build infrastructure for tourism. Don't use theoretical hits on tourism to make locals homeless.

[1]: https://realting.com/news/where-it-is-banned-or-hard-for-for...

It‘s not necessarily legal and the EU has already indicated for Spain that discriminatory taxes for non residents would not be permissible.

Also Airbnb is already banned in Lisbon, there are no new AL licenses given as far as I know. Or at least there was a plan for that.

Sure, no new licenses, but the entire AirBnB neighborhoods in the tourist areas are still there, sucking up valuable housing stock. There haven't been any reduction in the amount of AirBnB, just no new licenses are issued.

I'd go the other way with the buildings -- there are lots of unmaintained or even semi-ruined buildings, even in central Lisbon, which would benefit from foreign investment. Some of them are probably that way due to inheritance disputes, but others, I think, just need an owner that values their age. Maybe allow foreign ownership of older buildings over some particular size, or only if they do significant repairs, or something like that?

That was always the idea. There was a cheaper golden visa just for repairing ruins …

I wonder how much good it did? You do see lots of places for sale in the countryside with XXX of land with a ruin of YYY, and it sounds like people have been using those to build summer houses, but the city centre feels like where it with be needed most. And there are still prominent ruins in central Lisbon, right by Marques de Pombal for example.

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