Portugal’s Lease Support Program to be altered

The value of the maximum rents in the lease support program, Porta 65, will be updated according to the values ​​defined in the Affordable Lease Program and the access rules will be changed, says the OE 2022 (Orçamento do Estado 2022 / State Budget 2022) proposal.

According to a report in the Portuguese broadsheet daily Público, there are houses in Lisbon and Porto that will have double the maximum rent limit, making them more accessible to candidates.

For those unaware, Porta 65 was created in 2007 and is a rental incentive program designed for young people aged up to 35, who receive a percentage of the rent. Hitherto, the pre-requisite for all eligible applicants in order to apply for the program, was to be the holder of a lease for housing, whose rent value did not exceed the defined limits for each region.

These maximum rent values ​​are updated annually, according to multiplicative factor or the coefficient reviewed annually by the Portuguese government for updating housing rents. With this rule, the maximum values ​​of the rent are believed to have been increased by 13 percent, and according to INE data, between 2017 and 2021 the median value practiced in the rental market increased by 38 percent.

The proposed 2022 State Budget provides for the enhancement of the rental value limits. ​​

Público’s report suggests that with the increases in the rental market, it has been challenging to find rentals that meet the requirements of Porta 65. The report goes further to cite the latest data from the National Statistics Institute - INE (Instituto Nacional de Estatística), wherein a residential unit of 60 square meters in the municipality of Lisbon will have a median rent of 674 euros, a value that exceeds the maximum rent of 581 euros established then at Porta 65 for a T1 in Lisbon.

Under the aforesaid criteria, most applicants for Porta 65 were rejected. Another Portuguese daily, Porto-based Jornal de Notícias reported that in 2019, nearly fifty percent of the applicants for the program were rejected whereas in 2018, the percentage of rejected applications for the Rental Support program was an alarming sixty-five percent.

The forthcoming State Budget of the Portuguese government for FY 2022-23 factors in an adjustment in the values ​​of maximum rents, according to the values ​​set in the Affordable Lease Program, starting in June, when the aforesaid proposals will come into effect, meaning the applicants for the program by then (when the bill becomes law) will no longer be required to have a housing lease.

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