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Owners of vacant buildings will have 100 days to use the property

housing crises in PortugalMunicipalities are left with the task of detecting vacant buildings with habitable conditions and promoting forced leasing. The Government's proposal envisages that, at first, the council make an offer that, if not accepted, evolves into a forced lease.

Municipalities that detect, in their geographic areas, vacant properties that, "preferably" meet "livability conditions that allow their immediate lease", may proceed with a "forced lease procedure for vacant dwellings". 

The measure, which had already been announced by the Government as part of the Mais Habitação package, has now been implemented in a draft diploma made available for public consultation. 

And the first step will be the presentation to the owner of a lease proposal, to which he must respond within ten days of receipt. In case he refuses or says nothing, then, keeping the property vacant for another 90 days, "the municipalities proceed with the forced lease", reads in the proposed article. 

If the property needs work, then these can be carried out, also coercively, by the municipalities, "with the compensation being made on account of the rents due", the proposal also refers, which takes up an instrument that is now available to the councils, but to which they have given little or no use. 
 

The Government refers, in its proposal for a diploma, to the Basic Housing Law, which already foresees the possibility of, in areas of urban pressure, municipalities advancing with lease proposals to the owner for subsequent lease. It is also there that it is determined that the contract must then be concluded "preferably under the Affordable Lease Programme", with the rent having the limits provided therein.  

Exceptions to the vacant and defense of the owners

Outside the concept of vacant properties will be those intended for second homes, homes for emigrants or homes for people displaced for professional, training or health reasons; properties that are not being used during the period in which works are carried out, duly authorized or communicated, or that are the subject of legal actions that prevent such use; real estate that is acquired for resale by individuals or companies; or even those that form part of a tourist enterprise or are registered as a local accommodation establishment.

The law, remember, already establishes when a property should be considered as being vacant. This will be the case if you have been unemployed for at least one year, evidence of this being the absence of service contracts (water, electricity, telecommunications) or consumption, or the existence of low consumption, considering as such consumption whose relative billing do not exceed, each year, consumption greater than 7 m3, for water, and 35 kWh, for electricity. There must then be an inspection, carried out by the municipalities, which can also conclude that, despite there being consumption, the property is really unoccupied.

For this purpose, municipalities annually receive information on consumption, sent by supplier companies, and from there identify potentially vacant properties. 

They then notify the owners to exercise the right of prior hearing and they will then be able to present their explanation. If this is not accepted and the council even decides to classify the property as vacant, the law provides that the statement in question is susceptible to judicial challenge.