‘There is increasing supply of local rentals to satisfy the market in the Algarve’ trumpeted the misleading headlines this weekend.
The fact is that more owners of illegally rented villas and apartments have signed up for the new Alojamento Local regime so the private sector now has outstripped the number of beds available in the region’s hotels.
This always was the case but a mixture of harsher penalties and a ‘softer’ regime for local lettings, once property owners have understood the still confusing rules, have raised the official bed count in the private sector.
The head of the Hospitality Association of Portugal reckons that there are 48,000 beds in the Algarve’s 220 hotels and more than 50,000 beds at 8,602 registered villas and apartments in the Algarve.
The total number of beds in reality is far in excess of this reported figure with only 6% percentage of the Algarve's 140,000 privately owned rental properties being registered.
This enduring lack of willingness by owners to comply with the Alojamaneto Local rules, despite help being available from a new organisation Nalle and from Portugal’s premier membership organisation afpop, is a thumbs down for Secretary of State Adolfo Mesquita Nunes who said at the Faro launch of his new Alojamento Local scheme that the compliance system now was ‘simpler.’
With the continuing involvement of local councils, the tourist board, Finanças, ASAE and the Immigration and Borders Service, 'simpler' perhaps was a bold choice of word.
"As the summer approached, owners feared tax authority inspections and have been registering their properties, which previously were outside the legitimate economy," said the Hospitality Association’s Luís Veiga.
Fear of the taxman still has not been enough to get anywhere near the levels of registration envisaged by Nunes so in this regard his scheme has performed very poorly, despite the bouyant headlines.
Afpop: http://www.afpop.com/
Nalle: http://algarvedailynews.com/features/business/5486-nalle-local-lodging-association-launched
