Two in 10 owners (21.4%) did not increase their rent by the 6.94% coefficient allowed this year by law and 10% maintained it because they considered any increase unaffordable, according to a barometer by the Lisbon Owners Association (ALP) .
According to the VII edition of the ALP “Owner Confidence” barometer, around a third of respondents did not apply the 6.94% increase because they have contracted by mutual agreement another annual coefficient in the lease contract, while 14% of respondents they preferred to update the rent by another percentage value “because they understand that the coefficient calculated by the National Statistics Institute (INE) for 2024 could put their tenants in default”.
“Despite being permanently demonized in public opinion, 10% of these landlords kept their rent unchanged, as they considered that any increase would be unaffordable for their tenants”, emphasizes the association.
In turn, 9% of respondents decided not to make any increase “because they currently have an income that allows them to have a comfortable life, without the need to take away purchasing power from tenants”.
According to the ALP, in this edition of the barometer there were “two phenomena that gained ground and reveal a lack of confidence in the rental market over the past year”, attributed by the association to “instability caused by the ‘More Housing’ package”: The sale by landlords of houses they had on lease and the increase in non-compliance with rent payments.
“Practically 9% of respondents claim to have sold properties that were subject to traditional leasing”, he notes, adding that “to these are added almost 6% of landlords who reveal that they have transferred properties that were placed under traditional leasing to short-term rental ”, namely for accommodation for students or foreign professionals or digital nomads.
The association also states that half (50%) of the respondents point to real estate and rental as markets with increasingly less attractive margins, while 43% consider them to be “bureaucratic and difficult to understand” markets and 29% indicate that it is an investment that requires excessive operating costs.
Still, for almost a quarter of respondents (24%) it is a profitable and safe market to invest in.
Despite the reformulation of affordable rental programs and the creation of programs such as “Rent to Sublet”, within the scope of the “More Housing” package, the responses collected by the ALP barometer indicate that only 2% of respondents signed contracts under these programs .
The barometer also shows that almost a quarter of landlords (23.6%) report cases of non-compliance with rent payments by tenants at the end of the third quarter of this year, with 30% having more than half a year of rent arrears and 28% two to three months.
Even so, according to the ALP, less than half of the landlords (48.7%) who report non-compliance with the contract are considering instructing an eviction and, of those who are not going to go to court to claim payment, the majority (25%) point to it as justification the fact that it is a time-consuming process and costs more than the amount owed.
For 18% of owners, the resolution is through extrajudicial means, while 15.6% say they understand the economic and social situation that tenants are going through, 17% believe that justice always favors tenants and 4% say they do not have the means to access justice.
Asked what should be the first measure to be adopted by the new Government, which takes office this Tuesday, 20% of property owners point to the issue of freezing rents (which affects contracts prior to 1990) and 15.8% say that only They want to be seen by the executive as “partners” and not as “enemies”.
The promotion of a “fiscal shock”, with a considerable reduction in taxation on real estate assets, is the third most requested measure by property owners in the VII edition of the ALP Barometer, which received more than half a thousand responses and was developed among March 14th and 22nd.
