Housing crisis? No solution, just the means to a solution.

How to solve the housing crisis that Portugal is experiencing? How to increase the supply of housing on the market that can be bought or rented by the middle class? The answers to these questions are not so simple, and it is the government, for example, that is trying to contribute through the Mais Habitação program.

According to Georges Botha, president of the Association of Real Estate Advisory and Appraisal Companies (ACAI), the issue is not about "one solution" but rather a "set of tools". "The Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) and the 1º Direito program will not solve the issue of affordable rent or middle class housing. It is certainly a very important contribution and a lot of money that will be welcomed, but what about the rest.... In Spain a solution has been found,''in which the government enters into a partnership with the private sector, for example. A real estate company can enter into such partnerships, they are interested in investing, but it has to be something that goes quickly, without delays. There's not just one solution here, it's a set of different tools to help facilitate better and faster solutions to deal with these problems," he says in an interview for idealista/news.

According to the ACAI chairman, who is also managing partner of consulting firm B.

Other possible solutions listed by Georges Botha, as well as other industry players, are related to the cooperative model and the industrialization of construction. "These are all contributions, that's why I said it's a set of tools and that there is no miracle solution here, but many solutions, because in housing there are different problems that are solved in different ways. "

Renting versus owning your own home Looking back at the past, he notes that a few years ago many people were living as renters in homes rented out by insurance companies, pension funds and Social Security, for example, and that this phenomenon has disappeared. "Couldn't these institutions that continue to have financial''opportunities, to continue to invest, if they had some certainty of repayment and a legal guarantee that those lease payments would be honored and that the rules wouldn't change every year with every state budget? Perhaps that would be of interest to them. "

He believes that "there are a lot of solutions that can be explored." "People don't remember, but there was a traumatic period of 40 years when rents were frozen, which caused a lot of market participants to leave, and it's an issue that still hasn't been resolved. There are many people who, because of their advanced age, low income or some physical limitations, are still not updating their rents to normal values. In other words, landlords''play a social service role instead of the state doing it, which has a duty to do so,' he concludes.