Portugal’s Council of Ministers approved major changes to the rental law and inheritance rules this Thursday, aiming to speed up evictions, unlock unused properties, and address long-standing housing and land issues.
Speaking to the press after the meeting, Minister of the Presidency António Leitão Amaro spoke of “true reforms with a capacity to resolve the country’s structural issues”.
“These are extremely important reforms to tackle the hundreds of thousands of empty homes that could be used for renting, to resolve blocked inheritances and to deal with abandoned properties which can pose fire risks,” the minister said.
Leitão Amaro highlighted that around 3.4 million rural properties in Portugal are currently indivisible or neglected. In cities, an estimated 250,000 homes are in good condition but unavailable for sale or rent, while another 130,000 homes could be rehabilitated for the market. In total, around 500,000 homes could be rented if legal and administrative barriers were removed, the minister explained.
“We don’t want a country where plots of land are abandoned and forests burn. We don’t want a country with empty, decaying houses while Portuguese people, especially young people, struggle to find housing,” he said.
The minister insisted that the government has been building public housing and encouraging new construction by reducing bureaucracy and taxes. “But we also need to act on rental housing and indivisible inherited homes that are not being used. We cannot continue with such a housing shortage while many properties are legally stuck and unavailable for people to rent.”
“These three initiatives – one that regulates faster resolution of indivisible inheritances, another that revises the rental law, and a third decree-law that creates an emergency housing fund – are fundamental to achieving these goals: fewer empty, decaying homes; fewer abandoned lands; fewer young people struggling to find affordable housing; and people who inherit property but cannot benefit from its economic value due to legal blockages,” Amaro added.
The reforms were approved in principle and will be shared with political parties next week. Final approval is expected by the end of the month, with some measures going to the Parliament or directly to the President.
