> IMHO this was an overreaction. If the issue was pricing out locals, you could simply remove real estate as a qualifying investment under the visa and/or increase the minimum investment amount.

This is what the ban did. The golden visa for creating 10 non-temporary jobs remains, but for 9 years, there were 250 jobs created, with 20 takers (meaning almost all of them created the bare minimum 10 jobs).

https://observador.pt/2021/12/25/vistos-gold-criterio-de-cri...