Do you have a vacation home that you have not used for some time? Find out if you can be forced to make this accommodation available

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The Mais Habitação bill is already being approved in the Portuguese Parliament. The bill, which aims to increase the supply of housing in Portugal, through measures such as the simplification of licensing, coercive leasing, the end of gold visas or limits on rent increases, has raised some doubts among owners of secondary residences, the so-called “vacation homes”.

First, it is necessary to know how to distinguish own and permanent housing from secondary housing. The idealist explains:

Permanent Owned Housing: refers to the properties used as the main and usual address of the owner and his household. This dwelling corresponds to the fiscal address of the families in the Finance Portal;

Secondary Owned Housing or simply secondary address: concerns the properties which do not correspond to the official and permanent address of the owner and the family and which, in many situations, is used for vacations. For example, if you have a property in the Algarve or Madeira to spend vacations or to rent, it is a secondary residence.

In an interview to pP, the Minister of Housing guaranteed that “vacation homes” will not be affected by the forced lease, clarifying that emigrants’ homes, those of people displaced for professional or health reasons, and second homes are not vacant.

Marina Gonçalves explained that any vacant house, i.e. one that has been empty for more than a year and is in good condition, can be compulsorily rented in Porto or Lisbon: “An empty house is a vacant house, even if it is in a perfect state of repair”, however, permanent homes and vacation homes, for example, do not fit into this concept of vacancy.

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