Are nomads raising the rent prices in Lisbon?
Goncalo Hall
CEO @ NOMADX | Transforming Digital Nomadism & Talent attraction strategies with governments innovative institutions
Are nomads raising the rent prices in Lisbon?
We have so many data points and yet, media chose the story that gave them the clicks.
I am a Lisbon raised human, I grew up in the city center and saw the city going from empty and abandoned to one of the most loved by people globally. It's still strange to see the changes, but as an Alfacinha and a nomad I do need to look into the data to see if the story being told is supported by any data.
First we need to understand what is a digital nomad and a digital immigrant (check my previous article https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/goncalohall_digitalnomads-digitalnomadism-digitalimmigrants-activity-7051146885041983488-E8Hv?) we can have a proper discussion based on data.
When we compare the rent prices evolution from Lisbon and compare with the rest of Europe we can see that thIS problem is affecting many major cities, with public manifestations similar to the one in Lisbon in Germany for example.
Check the European cities where prices went up the most:
1st Amsterdam
2nd Lisbon
3rd Rykjavik
4th Paris
5th Milan
6th Munich
None of these are receiving nomads or rich expats.?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1084608/average-rental-cost-apartment-europe-by-city/
In Portugal, these are the cities with the biggest rent increase:
évora +55%
Faro +39.6%
Viseu +37.1%
Castelo Branco +36%
Lisbon comer later with +30.9%
None of these are nomad hubs!
https://www.imovirtual.com/noticias/imoblog/barometro-precos-das-casas-anual-venda-arrendamento/
The rent prices explosion is not even a Portuguese or European challenge.?
It's being felt all over the world from Asia to the USA.?
Singapore rent is up 70%!
https://www.ft.com/content/ec0f0ddf-d6b0-40b4-80f9-8287df941db2
All over the US rents are rising and the alarms are on!
领英推荐
https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/rents-and-home-prices
The inflation and rent increase is making families lives much more difficult, but only understanding the problem we can implement solutions, only by informing people with data instead of opinions we can think and implement better policies.
2. So why are global rental prices going up like crazy? And, how is Portugal different?
In short:
Low interest rates and inflation pushed the house prices up, less people can buy so they moved to the rental market.?
Adding the surge of Airbnb with the massive slowdown on construction we have a supply and demand issue.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/rent-inflation-housing-demand-prices/671179/
Portuguese people in specific are very exposed to real estate prices, we are one of the countries in Europe with fewer social housing, most of our loans are still with the flexible rate.
We can't ignore that foreigners are indeed moving to Portugal, not just the rich, but more than 50.000 people immigrate to Portugal in 2022, most of them to work on services, coming from countries like Brazil, Cabo Verde and India.
When it comes to nomads, they are 0.1% of the total tourism numbers in Portugal. The numbers don't add up.
Action steps for Portugal?
- Build more social housing (Madeira is already doing it all over the island)
- Speed up the legal process of building a house/apartment building (it can take 2-3 years for a city hall approval
- Regulate the Local tourism accommodation and number of hotels in areas with high pressure of tourism accommodation. (not in the whole country as it's currently planned).
- Create tools against real estate speculation
- Decentralize the incentives and focus on a proper implementation of the repopulation plan
In short, the answer to the initial question is a big NO. Nomads are not responsible for the increment of renting prices in Lisbon. No data supports that.
Most of the articles and public opinions are not supported by any real data and when comparing with other cities with similar problems there's no single causation that lead us to think that nomads are the problem.
Can/should we do more to integrate digital nomads, digital expats and spread their positive impact while mitigating a possible negative impact in Portugal?
Absolutely, but that's the theme of tomorrow's post.
Java Software Engineer - Java|Spring|Kafka Certified Professional
1 年Finally some common sense
Angielska konwersacja dla startupów i ma?ych firm.
1 年I don't think the answer is that simple. It's a mix of all of the things: tourism (probably the worst in this case), migrants, things like golden visas and visas for the countries like the US, which allow people move to Portugal if they have money and if they buy a property and yes, nomads, too.
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1 年Interesting post and I agree with the negative answer. In my opinion, most of the reasons why rents raise so much cities like Amsterdam, Lisbon, Reykjavik, Paris, Milan, Faro, etc. is their massive "touristification", fostered by Airbnb and similars, plus government subsidized low cost flights. Regarding the solutions, I disagree with building as primary solutions, mostly for 2 reasons: 1. I don't see available spaces to build social / residential housing in the cities themselves. Means it would be more on the suburbs and just continue the process of transforming these cities in museums. See the example of Saint Malo in France, where after many public services such as court, tax office, police station, post office, library and schools moved away... (https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2023/04/12/en-depit-de-quotas-sur-les-locations-airbnb-saint-malo-s-enfonce-dans-une-crise-du-logement_6169141_3224.html) 2. Building more and more for needs related directly or indirectly to tourism is not sustainable. Soil artificialization is a big topic for sustainability. Building and construction are also responsible for a big share of greenhouses emissions and energy consumption.
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1 年Very well put Gon?alo. This question is asked to the community more often now - personally it’s coming up in conversations daily! So much of my answer, and my thoughts & feelings on the topic are similar to what you’ve written here. Nice to have a well articulated and data backed article to share with people whenever this topic comes up now!
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1 年Thank you for sharing this, I feel like I always only hear one side of the story!