Some things I noticed as a foreigner exploring the Portuguese house market for the past 6 months:
Indeed, prices in Lisbon and Porto are insane. Yet, even in those cities (especially in Porto) there are quite a lot of old buildings, often in bad shape, and often empty, or sometimes inhabited by just one elderly tenant. You don't see that elsewhere in Europe in cities with similarly high prices. You would expect someone to buy these properties, renovate them and then rent them out. Clearly, the rental market desperately needs this new supply.
That this doesn't happen, could be because there is a lack of capital, but to me the actual problem seems to be over-regulation and especially an over protection of tenants. If, as the article states, foreigners buy multiple apartments, and then let them sit empty, it's because they are afraid of renting them out. Especially with elderly tenants, you can't increase the rent, and you can't terminate the contract. Once you start looking around for a house to buy, you'll almost certainly bump into some homes costing only a tenth of similar houses in the neighborhood, and any Portuguese knows what that means: there is an elderly tenant, paying only 20 euros of rent per month, and your only hope of ever getting them to leave, is wait till they pass away (and even then, their children might try to continue the lease at the same conditions).
That this doesn't happen, could be because there is a lack of capital, but to me the actual problem seems to be over-regulation and especially an over protection of tenants. If, as the article states, foreigners buy multiple apartments, and then let them sit empty, it's because they are afraid of renting them out. Especially with elderly tenants, you can't increase the rent, and you can't terminate the contract. Once you start looking around for a house to buy, you'll almost certainly bump into some homes costing only a tenth of similar houses in the neighborhood, and any Portuguese knows what that means: there is an elderly tenant, paying only 20 euros of rent per month, and your only hope of ever getting them to leave, is wait till they pass away (and even then, their children might try to continue the lease at the same conditions).