The Government has given the green light to a decree aimed at “ending blockages" in an important area: housing. Announcing the decision after Thursday’s Council of Ministers, on 22 October, Minister of the Presidency António Leitão Amaro said ministers had approved the decree-law “regulating, and seeking to end, the scourge of undivided inheritances, [...] which are blocking [the sale of] hundreds of homes across the country”.
In practice, a single heir will be able to demand a sale after two years have passed without agreement. “When housing is hard to find for want of homes, and we have many, many empty properties fit to live in because the inheritances are stuck, that is unacceptable,” the minister argued.
He recalled that the Government sent a bill to parliament a few months ago, which was finally approved and promulgated by the President a matter of weeks ago. Parliament had also had the chance to adjust the legislative authorisation, “and now we approve this diploma”.
Portugal has some 485,000 empty homes sitting in perfectly good condition, and around half of them have no one intending to sell or let, Leitão Amaro said. “Many of these homes are stuck in inheritances. Because of a disagreement between one heir or several, they cannot be put on the market and lived in by people who need them.”
Additionally, there are around 3.4 million rural plots in undivided inheritances, land that has “nobody to make decisions, nobody to clear it, and which goes unused”, the minister said, speaking of a “waste” of resources, and the “risk of wildfires” posed by uncleared land.
He called the new decree “a genuine reform”, explaining that it will change the terms for unlocking estates, some of which have sat untouched for decades. “Probably there isn’t a Portuguese person who hasn’t looked down a city street, or along a country lane, and seen a house standing idle or an uncleared plot belonging to an undivided inheritance,” he said.
Previously, a single heir could hold up the division of an estate. Now, “a single heir will be able to demand a sale after two years without agreement”.
The decree guarantees a sale at market value, based on independent valuations, through an electronic auction. Heirs are protected from the sale of the property if it is the primary and permanent home of a family member, preventing it from being forcibly sold or unfairly taken. Family members may also bid, and have first refusal on the property. They will have six months to reach an agreement, or to sell privately, before the auction goes ahead.
The Government is also strengthening the position of those who leave an inheritance, giving them greater freedom to decide what happens to their assets, to appoint an executor, and to opt for succession arbitration. The rules apply to estates already open and still undivided. “It is meant to solve the problems right now,” Leitão Amaro stressed.
“This is a measure with the potential to solve a very big problem: access to housing,” he added.
Asked by journalists about the tendency of some politicians to link the housing shortage and rising prices to the arrival of immigrants, he responded: “Over the past seven years there have been another 1.2 million immigrants. That’s 200,000 new people looking for a home each year. We have been building only 15,000 homes a year. You can see the gap. The blame doesn’t lie with the immigrant looking for a home. It lies with the irresponsibility of the politicians who governed the country during that time”.
Source: JN
Photo credit: Archive image
