There now is a shortage of €500,000+ properties to sell to non-European residents so they can qualify for Golden Visa status.
The head of Portugal’s Association of Professionals and Real Estate Companies (APEMIP) says there are fewer and fewer properties at this value or above to sell and that someone ought to invest in urban regeneration, and fast.
The shortages are mainly in Lisbon and Cascais, but even the Algarve in certain desireable areas has no more qualifying properties to offer.
The alert come from the president of APEMIP as he kicked off today’s Salão Imobiliário de Portugal conference and exhibition running from 8 to 12 October in Lisbon.
The main objective of the event is to bring Chinese, French and investors from Portuguese-speaking countries. The president of APEMIP, Luís Lima, said it is not only the Chinese that are looking for houses in Portugal.
Lima said the tax benefits attracting Europeans using the non-habitual resident house buyer’s scheme also is bringing in "a lot of money."
Luís Lima believes that this second programme is as important as the Golden Visa scheme and noted that the Brits are the foreigners responsible for the highest number of homes purchased in Portugal.
The numbers of properties purchased by foreigners does not stop growing and now more than one in five transactions are by foreign buyers.
From January to September this year the British bought 3,866 properties; the Chinese 3178; and the French 2,712.
The new and rather unexpected problem, according to Luis Lima, is that there now is a lack of very expensive homes to sell in certain areas of the Algarve, Lisbon and Cascais.
The APEMIP boss argues that the country must renovate old city centre properties to increase the supply for those coming from abroad.
Another bet is to get foreigners to other areas of the country than the Algarve and Lisbon regions.
http://www.imobiliario.fil.pt/?lang=en&page=info_geral/info_geral.jsp
