Prices have increased, rents have risen, buying has become more difficult and building is still expensive and time-consuming. Each news item portrays a part of the problem and almost always generates a new discussion about a specific measure. But perhaps it is precisely this fragmented way of looking at housing that is preventing us from understanding the true dimension of the challenge.

Two recently published figures help to understand the problem. Between 2021 and 2025, Portugal accumulated a supply deficit equivalent to about 300 thousand homes, as a result of the difference between the formation of new households and the ability to put new homes on the market. At the same time, an analysis by idealista estimates that, in the second quarter of this year, the effort required to rent a house corresponded to 82% of household income and to buy reached 76%. We can discuss the methodologies, but it is difficult to ignore what these indicators, taken together, tell us: there is a deep imbalance between what the country needs, what it can produce and what families can afford.

The most worrying thing is that we continue to look for isolated solutions to a structural problem. We encourage buying for young people, change taxes, discuss limitations on local accommodation, create benefits for certain rents and announce public construction programs. Some of these measures may be useful, but none solves a problem accumulated over many years in isolation. In fact, if construction in 2025 has already managed to roughly keep up with the creation of new households, that is good news, but it only means that we have stopped increasing the deficit that year. The hundreds of thousands of houses that were left behind are still missing.

That is why Portugal needs to look at housing as an economic and social infrastructure and not just as a set of houses. We need construction for sale, but also a real professional rental market, public and affordable housing, residences for students and seniors, recovery of vacant properties and mechanisms that allow the mobilisation of long-term private capital. We also need to reduce licensing times, increase the capacity of the construction sector and realise that Lisbon, Faro, Porto, Guarda or Castelo Branco face completely different realities. A national policy cannot ignore these differences.

Housing influences much more than the place where we live. It conditions the mobility of workers, the ability of companies to recruit talent, the decision of young people to stay in the country, the formation of families and, ultimately, the competitiveness of the Portuguese economy. When a family is financially tied to a location because it cannot find a housing alternative close to a new professional opportunity, the problem is no longer just real estate.

Perhaps this is why, before we announce the next measure for housing, we should first define where we want to be in ten years. Portugal does not need another solution to part of the problem. It finally needs a strategy for the whole.