As a Portuguese living in Lisbon, I find this article to be all over the place. Sometimes it’s realistic, often it’s just sensationalist.

Yes, real estate prices are nuts right now. I have no clue how my kids are going to find places to live when they want to move out, but I can tell you that a lot of that is just plain and simple greed from builders and homeowners who often refuse to maintain (let alone re-paint or improve) existing buildings.

There are also political aspects to how zoning and development takes place, but those vary so much depending on region and party lines that I’ll just call it lack of political responsibility (also, most people outside the extreme left or right don’t want to get involved in politics, lobbying or economic discussions).

There was a very big emphasis some 40-50 years ago on building thoroughfares, regional transportation, and nationalizing what passed for core industries, but all roads led to district capitals at the expense of doing actual regional development. Efforts to foster or sustain most industries largely failed (although there are echoes of those in current startup support programs, and some regional programs of note), so young people gravitated towards the shoreline (and towns, and the services industry) and the countryside just aged away.

I have been thinking of moving out of Lisbon to a smaller town (property prices are tempting), but health, shopping, etc., are just not there, because everything of interest (brand and specialists stores, entertainment, etc.) is mostly only available in district capitals, and most large companies only have offices in Lisbon or the mongrel outskirts of it, in business centres that are only reachable by car and lack decent public transportation.

So that makes it hard to get a decent paycheck outside Lisbon and Oporto, unless you’re willing to become a chattel to some lobbies who are sponsoring local colleges hoping to get cheap tech labor out of new graduates, paying them just enough to stick around.

A good summary of all the above is what happened in a district near Lisbon —- a previous mayor (who went to jail for corruption and actually got reelected afterwards) supported the creation of malls, business centers, etc., but punted on public transportation (leaving a local university center effectively stranded) and futzed about with zoning to allow premium villas to be built.

I have been expecting the Lisbon real estate market to crash _hard_ for a while now, but people with college degrees are somehow managing to pay rent or mortgaging other family assets to buy flats in the city. The rest struggle, of course, and are pushed out to the suburbs.

I wonder for how much longer things will stay this way. Portuguese are becoming more technically literate on average, so that gives me some hope, but I just don’t see the overall economy evolving beyond the primary industry/services and tourism dichotomy, no matter how many tech unicorns spring up and bring expats here.

(On that note, Portuguese wages, even in FAANG companies, are merely a fraction of our US, UK, German and Swiss counterparts, and that can’t be explained solely through cost of living comparisons… but that’s a completely different discussion)