Portugal is full of heritage with untapped economic potential: unused public buildings, old industrial facilities, convents, stations, rural properties, degraded properties in urban centres, and other assets that have lost the function for which they were originally built. The problem is that a building can exist physically and, economically, practically nonexist.

An empty property does not produce housing, does not receive companies, does not generate tourist activity, does not create jobs and often continues to degrade. It is fixed capital, and this issue becomes particularly relevant when we look at the future of Portuguese tourism. The OECD argues that the next strategy of the sector should seek greater value creation, productivity, territorial cohesion and business competitiveness, instead of depending only on the growth in the number of visitors. Transforming existing heritage can be part of this strategy.

Portugal has already demonstrated this through the REVIVE program, which seeks to give new tourist uses to public heritage through private investment. Interestingly, the Portuguese model inspired REVIVE Brazil, highlighted by the OECD itself as an initiative to reuse public properties of historical, cultural and architectural interest through concessions for hotels, restaurants, cultural facilities and other tourism projects. Perhaps we should look at this example not only as tourism policy, but as economic policy.

The same logic can be applied far beyond hotels. An obsolete building can become housing; an old commercial space can gain a new use; industrial heritage can host businesses, culture or tourism; and public buildings with no function can reparticipate in the economy. Another European study we analysed places precisely the reuse of the existing building stock at the heart of the response to future needs: resizing, recovering, converting, renovating and expanding before resorting, whenever possible, to new construction.

This does not mean that Portugal can solve its real estate needs only through reconversion. It cannot. We will continue to need new construction, particularly in housing. But there is a difference between a country that sees an empty building as a problem and another that sees it as a capital waiting for a new function.

To do this, we need to know the existing stock better, accelerate changes in use when they make sense, simplify reconversion processes and create conditions for private investment to recover economically viable assets. For decades, real estate development has mainly meant building; in the coming decades, an increasingly important part may mean, that is, transform.

Portugal needs more productive real estate assets, and some of them may already be built.