Why Portugal Has Empty Homes but Housing Is Out of Reach

Portugal has hundreds of thousands of homes recorded as vacant, yet finding somewhere affordable to live remains a serious problem. Why can a country have so many buildings and still leave people struggling for a home? This documentary examines the gap between housing stock and housing access: construction, renovation, tourism, finance and the policies intended to help. It explains what Portugal's latest price figures do—and do not—tell us, and why a housing announcement is different from a home that a family can actually occupy. Research checked on 22 September 2026. Vacancy figures refer to Census 2021. National house-price figures include INE's Q2 2026 release. Government delivery figures are attributed; economic examples are illustrative. Archival photographs retain their original dates. We distinguish asking rents from new-contract rents and study publication dates from the years analysed. Key sources: • INE latest releases: https://webinq.ine.pt/home • INE housing stock: https://www.ine.pt/ine_novidades/semi... • Banco de Portugal housing analysis: https://www.bportugal.pt/publicacao/b... • OECD Portugal housing chapter: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/... • 2026 short-term rental study: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10258-026-00... Production instruction, not description copy: add the exact credits for photographs actually used from `Image_manifest.md`. There is no AI-reconstruction disclosure sentence because no such reconstruction is planned. If the production changes, use section 17. The complete long source list belongs in the research dossier, not an overloaded video description. Chapters: 0:00 Empty homes, rising prices 1:30 Reading the price tag 3:24 Houses that cannot become homes 6:34 When the postcard becomes a market 9:16 More money, the same door 11:55 Announced, finished, occupied 13:54 What would count as a solution Image and footage credits: • Wikimedia Commons - milos milosevic — CC BY 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Wikimedia Commons - Dale Cruse — CC BY 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Wikimedia Commons - Alexkom000 — CC BY 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Wikimedia Commons - _morgado2 — CC BY 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Wikimedia Commons - Dicklyon — CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Wikimedia Commons - Jules Verne Times Two — CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Wikimedia Commons - Esquerda.net — CC BY-SA 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Governo de Portugal - PRR housing statement — Portuguese public sector information - reuse with attribution • Assembleia da Republica - Proposta de Lei 103/XVII/1 — Portuguese public sector information - reuse with attribution • Wikimedia Commons - Michael Gaylard — CC BY 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... • Assembleia da Republica / Presidencia do Conselho de Ministros — Portuguese public sector information - reuse with attribution https://www.parlamento.pt/ActividadeP... • DECO - Associacao Portuguesa para a Defesa do Consumidor — Parliamentary record - reuse with attribution https://www.parlamento.pt/ActividadeP... STRATALUM — The systems behind the story. #Portugal #HousingCrisis #Housing #Documentary