'More homes on the market? The maze of permissions needs to be resolved'

Diverse Portuguese cities such as Lisbon and Porto are gaining new life through urban renovation, becoming more beautiful and attractive to live, visit and invest in. This transformation can only be achieved by real estate companies such as Splendimension, which buys buildings, restores them and offers mostly new homes on the market.

In the last ten years, the company, run by Lebanese Salah Osseiran, claims to have invested between 80 and 100 million euros in real estate renovations in Portugal, an area that in recent years has received incentives such as a 6% VAT and property tax increases for empty properties.

There is still much more''There is still work to be done to speed up urban redevelopment in our country. "What will help us to place properties on the market faster is to improve the issue of licensing," Pedro Alves, a member of Splendimension's board of administration, told idealista/news.

It all started in mid-2012 when Splendimension's main shareholder, Salah Osseiran, realized while on a business trip to Lisbon that the real estate market in Portugal was starting to develop and there was a need to renovate historic city centers. "From the beginning, our policy was to focus on renovation because we realized the need and the opportunity to do so.

This was how investor Salah Osseiran - Lebanese but also holding a Portuguese passport since the 80s because he lived in Portugal at the time and created an emotional connection with the country - decided to invest in real estate in Portugal, starting with the purchase of several buildings in Lisbon in 2012. Years later, between 2016 and 2017, Splendimension intensified its search for buildings to renovate and identified a number of assets not only in Lisbon but also in Porto, in a logic of diversification. One''of the historic buildings that attracted public attention was the Bijou Palace, located in the city of Porto, which was purchased from EDP, renovated and converted into 32 new apartments and 2 stores.