Government introduces ‘forced leasing’ regime for vacant housing

The government will adopt a “forced leasing” regime for vacant homes under the Mais Habitação program, unveiled this Thursday.

“We will introduce, in addition to the already existing measures to aggravate taxes on vacant properties, a mandatory rental regime for houses that are vacant,” Prime Minister António Costa said at a presentation to journalists of the adopted package. measures at today’s meeting of the Council of Ministers, devoted exclusively to the housing issue.

He explained that the state or municipality would have to “pay the owner the rent due” and collect “the rent resulting from the sublease”, which they would do later.

At the presentation of the package of measures, which took place at the Ajuda Palace in Lisbon, Housing Minister Marina Goncalves recalled that, according to the National Institute of Statistics, there are about 730,000 vacant houses, but she refused to set a reduction target that would be achieved with mandatory leasing.

“We do not have a goal,” he stressed, noting that the mechanism can evolve depending on emerging needs.

The five areas of the More Housing program, which will be publicly commented within a month, include: increasing the supply of real estate for housing development, simplifying licensing processes, increasing the number of houses on the rental market, combating real estate speculation, and supporting families.

Prime Minister António Costa announced the Housing Council meeting in January in an interview with RTP, with the government seeing affordable housing as one of the biggest challenges of today.