According to Sapo, the €900 million package of measures to combat the country's housing crisis, presented on Thursday by the government, is far from convincing real estate investors.

"There's a Portuguese tendency to think that too much legislation solves things", says Pedro Coelho, CEO of Square, which has more than 1.5 billion euros of assets under management through real estate funds.

Despite noting the Government's will to contribute towards solving the problem of the housing crisis in the country, namely by promoting an increase in the supply of real estate, Pedro Coelho still notices what he considers to be the disparity between the Executive's discourse and the State's own behaviour in the market.

"The State wants to make the rental of vacant houses compulsory, but we know that the State does not set an example: it has hundreds of vacant dwellings in Lisbon and also in Porto, and it does nothing to these dwellings", says the Square leader, underlining the weak public management in relation to a series of spaces that, due to telework and the reduction of employees, are "clearly underused".

According to an order published in Diário da República on 17 March 2022, unused public housing assets amounted to more than 700 properties.

For both the Government and investors, it is clear that there is a need to increase the supply of real estate on the market, since the numbers reflect a housing stock that is insufficient to meet demand.

António Costa's Government believes that part of this problem may be solved by simplifying the licensing processes, namely through the possibility of approving real estate projects based on the authors of the projects' terms of responsibility.

Despite applauding the intention to simplify the licensing of projects, investors have many reservations about its application. "I have many doubts that the Orders (architects and engineers) have the means to evaluate whether or not the decision has been made," said José Botelho, CEO of Vanguard Properties, one of the largest property developers in the country that already has investments exceeding 1.2 billion euros in six years.

"Faster licensing everyone likes to hear", notes Pedro Coelho, underlining that this "is a decades-old problem", but "now we need to see how it comes about", he adds.

The same reluctance regarding the simplification of licensing is shown by Manuel Vasconcelos, COO of Fortera. "A promise/measure long claimed by all players in the sector that I wait to see how (and when) it will be realised...", writes on LinkedIn the head of this real estate developer that has more than 700 million euros of projects underway for the next five years.