Just returned from Porto in December and talking to many many local Portuguese, the low wages and high cost of housing is usually one of the first things mentioned. One thing I had to discover after a bit of digging however was that inheritance law plays a largely undiscussed factor in the housing bubble currently happening.
All housing is inherited in equal share by all descendants which usually goes exactly the way you'd expect when money and family mix, no one can agree on what to do so it sits unused / unmaintained until some rich dumb foreigner offers 2-Nx the market value and everyone can at least agree to profit.
That and the previous junta and dictatorship before that means tons of property is sitting basically rotting in place.
> > All housing is inherited in equal share by all descendants
> Isn't that's how it works pretty much everywhere these days unless there is an explicit will?
No, in highly advanced countries we use the Highlander rule, "There shall be only one left", descendants fight eachother, cutting heads of loosers until only one remains and inherits the property. This is also the reason UK tries to ban knives, they are way to small to cut someones head with a single strike. We are humane after all.
or they realise they can make a killing on short term lets / AirBnb. A Portuguese acquaintance of mine proudly related how her family was converting her deceased grandmother's place into 2 (two!) AirBnBs - they'd even found a little old lady down the road to do the cleaning.
The Portuguese are lovely but they can be completely oblivious to the world around them sometimes.
All housing is inherited in equal share by all descendants which usually goes exactly the way you'd expect when money and family mix, no one can agree on what to do so it sits unused / unmaintained until some rich dumb foreigner offers 2-Nx the market value and everyone can at least agree to profit.
That and the previous junta and dictatorship before that means tons of property is sitting basically rotting in place.