en 
The freezing of leases prior to 1990 will become definitive and the Government promises to "compensate the landlord" in a "fair" way. This measure is part of the new legislative package presented by the Government to combat the crisis in the real estate sector, which determines that old lease contracts do not carry over to the New Urban Lease Regime (NRAU).
In an interview with Público the Minister of Housing, Marina Gonçalves, clarifies that this is not a new temporary suspension, but a definitive freeze.
"In contracts prior to 1990, which are still protected by the brake rule, we are going to define that they are not transferred to NRAU. This implies that the contracts are maintained. But we have to take into account a concern of landlords who have frozen rents, that they do not have no tax exemption because they have frozen rents and cannot increase their rent, except in the model that is defined for these contracts", says Marina Gonçalves.
The minister adds that "the State entities [are] carrying out a study" to define how many contracts there are in this situation and, thus, "fine tune the compensation to be granted to the owners".
"We haven't put together compensation in this package yet because we need the study to understand which contracts we are talking about, how many contracts are 20 euros, how many are 200 euros, how many are 400 euros. And, with that, set up a compensation that is fair, taking into account the rents that are not balanced against the median rents in the rental market".
Questioned about how this compensation will be calculated, minister Marina Gonçalves adds that the criteria will be defined "according to the current value of the rent, where the rent was frozen, because the values differ a lot", as well as "according to the typology".
"We're going to have to fit the values that we've had as a reference to the median in the market. But, to do that work, we need the fine data that is being worked on, and that's why we didn't want to define the design of the compensation yet".
The report of this study will be ready "during the first quarter", guarantees the minister. "What we intend is to resolve this situation, definitively, later this year", she concluded.
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More Socialist nonsense. Why should a tenant's rent be frozen at say, €50/month, because their lease is pre-1990? Even worse to now expect the taxpayer to foot the bill for compensating landlords trapped in such a crazy situation. Now the govt is going to waste a lot of time and money investigating how to maintain an archaic rent freeze policy. What they should be doing is liberalising all rents, so that they reflect true market conditions of supply and demand. Let's not have more complicated legislation to counteract the negative effects of previous ill-thought out legislation! These measures don't support the housing or rental markets, but destroy them: no-one in their right mind is going to invest in property to let out, given that the govt is clearly biased in favour of tenants and deliberately encouraging abusive behaviour by the latter. A landlord should have a guaranteed right to charge a fair market rent, and to recover vacant possession of their property when they feel the need to.
By Billy Bissett from Porto on 24 Feb 2023, 11:26
You are right Billy. Instead of having a real housing policy, Portuguese governments have been living off old rents for decades instead of regulating the market and providing social housing where needed. This housing crisis is not new and successive governments are responsible for the current mess it is now in.
By K from Other on 24 Feb 2023, 13:24
Great news! I know lots of people on my street, many of them pensioners, who will be delighted to here this. Well done PS.
By Henry John Harper from Lisbon on 24 Feb 2023, 22:58
Arbitrarily freezing the rents of some people who happen to have old leases is counterproductive for multiple reasons:
1. it makes the people on old leases gilded prisoners - they have a strong incentive not to move, even if say the could get a better job elsewhere. This is bad for the economy.
2. It subsidises people for no good reason at the expense of other taxpayers who may not be nearly as lucky. This is also bad for the economy.
3. It disincentivises property owners from letting their property for risk of being unable to take it back. This is a wider issue in the Portuguese rental market. Lack of supply causes artificially high rents. This is awful for young people.
The government needs some basic lessons in economy.
By Alex from Algarve on 25 Feb 2023, 10:03