The Bloco de Esquerda presented a bill to prohibit the sale of real estate to citizens or companies with headquarters or permanent residence abroad, as a way to combat the increase in prices in the real estate market.
On the day that it is organizing a session on housing in Lisbon entitled “Where are we going to live?”, Bloco de Esquerda (BE) announced the delivery of a bill to parliament that aims to prohibit the “sale of real estate in the territory national”. territory to natural or collective persons, with their own permanent residence or headquarters abroad.
According to the party, this measure – which, in general terms, was recently adopted in Canada – aims to “combat the rise in housing prices.” In the articles of this diploma, BE points out, however, that this prohibition would not apply to “Portuguese citizens with their own and permanent residence outside Portugal”, nor to asylum seekers or immigrants with a permanent residence permit.
“Real estate transactions in low-density territories” would also be excluded, as well as “foreign citizens who acquire a property, jointly owned, with their spouse or common-law partner.”
In the explanatory statement of the bill, the party led by Catarina Martins argues that “in Portugal, the fundamental right to housing has not yet been fulfilled.” Bloco de Esquerda advances with statistics according to which, between 2010 and 2022, housing prices “increased by 80% and rents rose by 28%”, causing residents in Portugal to spend “a brutal percentage of their income on home”.
Despite recognizing that the “housing crisis is not exclusive to Portugal”, the BE considers, however, that “Portuguese governments have only exacerbated this trend, with their policies of privilege and inequality”.
According to the party, the “process of gentrification and financialization of housing motivated the mobilization of citizens and local authorities in several European cities”, causing legislative changes at an international level. Among the examples cited in this bill, the BE specifically mentions that, “in Canada, the Liberal Party government prohibited the sale of residential buildings to foreigners, a measure that had already been implemented in New Zealand and will also recently be a reality on the islands of Ibiza, Mallorca and Menorca”.
“The defenders of these measures, whose application has been hampered by the power of real estate interests, invoke the same argument: the competition of financial capital makes housing prices unaffordable for local citizens,” says the draft of law.
For BE, “if this is the reality in Canada, the Netherlands, Germany or Catalonia, it is even more so in Portugal, where salaries do not compete, neither with the financial power of investment funds, nor with the personal income attracted by the ‘ gold’ visa regimes, tax benefits for non-habitual residents, or cryptocurrency speculators”. The party also adds that these international experiences show that “the process of housing inflation requires exceptional measures, aimed at protecting the right to housing.”
In this sense, “in addition to the repeal of the measures to attract foreign capital in the Portuguese real estate sector, BE proposes the prohibition of the purchase of real estate for housing by non-residents, provided that they are located in areas of pressure urban development”, refers to the document
BE argues that “this measure, recently adopted in different versions, by the Governments of the Netherlands and Canada is justified by the recognition of the situation of serious violation of the constitutional right to housing, on behalf of short-term economic interests.”
Source: Observadora
