The purchase of property in the Algarve by foreigners is increasing, thanks largely to the government’s notably benign tax treatment of inbound foreigners whom it treats better than Portuguese nationals.
The British remain the best customers for Algarve property, followed by French, Chinese, German, Belgian and Swedish buyers many of whom are swayed by the generous tax breaks offered to retirees.
In April, May and June 2014, foreigners accounted for 2,424 property purchases in the Algarve region, a daily average of 27 transactions with the most popular areas being Loulé, Albufeira and Lagos, but what of the Portuguese?
Looking at central Paris, it is the Portuguese who are buying the majority of properties in this expensive area.
Official figures just in from Parisian notaries show that it’s the Portuguese that are investing the most in French real estate in the Parisian Ile-de-France region, followed by Italian and Chinese buyers.
Portuguese passport holders represent 15.2% of all foreigners who have acquired Ile-de-France property in recent years, in fact the percentage is higher as dual nationals are classified as being 'French' on official property records.
The vast majority of these property buyers already are resident in France and are paying over €8,000 per m2 for city centre pads as French sellers leave the country, many to Portugal, due to political and taxation worries.
The Portuguese investing in property in Paris are often in the buy-to-let market and are mostly those who went to France as unskilled workers in the dire years of the 1960s and 70s, living in the many slums packed with foreigners in preference to staying in Portugal under the Salazar dictatorship.
These Portuguese that have ‘made it’ in France also are fulfilling another function as many are acting in loco parentis for the tens of thousands of young Portuguese who are fleeing their homeland, not because of dictatorship issues this time, but due to the dire economic downturn and the lack of opportunity in what many view as an overtaxed, over regulated and uncaring environment in modern Portugal.
The established, well off, older Portuguese immigrants in France are able to offer support, accommodation and often a first job to the new wave of immigrants who now are in the same city as Portugal's former Prime Minister José Sócrates, but for rather different reasons.
