The rental market in Portugal has long ceased to be just an economic problem. It has become a mirror of the country we are, and the country that, if nothing changes, we will be condemned to become.
It has been too easy to blame the poor immigrant. The courier who sleeps in a shared room, the family who looks for a house too late, the student who accepts what comes his way. The problem isn’t there. The problem is at the other end of the chain, those who buy entire buildings, those who transform the right to housing into a financial investment, those who treat the city as a capital fund and people as statistics.
Numbers are just the veneer of the tragedy. Median income on new contracts rose 10.5 percent in the last full year with data available. In Greater Lisbon, it reaches 13 euros per square meter. This growth does not reflect an improvement in the housing stock, it reflects the speculative race for quick returns, fueled by those who have the liquidity to buy, wait and inflate.
Meanwhile, overcrowding has become the new normal. We see police operations that find twenty people living in a T2. But what exists there is not poverty, it is despair. And despair should not be treated as a crime. What should be treated as a crime is the exploitation of other people’s needs.
When the door to Gold visas closed, the circuit of capital did not close. Only the name of the game was changed. Today, investment funds and high-net-worth foreign individuals buy entire buildings to rent at prices that the real country cannot afford. And it is in this context that contractual abuses, false reports of non-compliance and eviction attempts disguised as legality arise.
As a lawyer, I see these situations every day. And no, these are not exceptions. This is a culture of legal impunity that has allowed the lease contract to be transformed into a tool of blackmail.
The law is clear. Article 24 of the NRAU requires that any income update be communicated in writing, at least thirty days in advance and only according to the annual coefficient set by INE. In 2026, this coefficient is 1.0224, which represents a maximum increase of 2.24 percent. Everything else is illegal. But in practice, how many tenants have access to this information? How many know that they are not forced to accept arbitrary increases?
The same happens with denunciations and non-renewals. Article 1097 of the Civil Code allows the landlord to prevent renewal, it is true, but this right is not absolute. It is limited by good faith and the constitutional principle of the social function of property. And this is where article 334 of the Civil Code comes in, which prohibits the abuse of rights. There are recent court decisions that have already recognized that terminating a contract just to force a new lease at a speculative price constitutes abuse. It is a discreet but fundamental advance.
More than new laws, we need to enforce those that already exist. It would make sense to refocus the discussion on the essentials: ensuring predictability and respect for contractual good faith. A home is not a financial asset, it is an asset with social and human value. THE Dignity is not measured in square meters, it is measured in the stability that a person feels when they close the door at the end of the day.
It would also make sense to take action against those who split up apartments and turn them into disguised dormitories. It’s not about punishing those who need it, but about stopping those who profit from other people’s despair. It is not leasing, it is commercial exploitation outside the law.
And it would make even more sense to talk about ethics. A serious landlord, who declares rent, pays taxes and complies, needs trust and legal security. The speculator, who manipulates the law to expel those who pay, needs limits. The law serves precisely this purpose: to separate the legitimate from the abusive.
The Portuguese rental market is not doomed. You’re captured. And he can be released if the State monitors, if the courts apply the law with courage and if the legal profession refuses to be complicit in speculation.
The problem is not poor immigrants. The problem is the rich who confuse property with power. And the law also exists to remind them that it is not the same thing.
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