Lisbon has 37% fewer holiday lets. Where are the homes?

Lisbon has thousands fewer holiday lets, and hardly any have come back as homes. It’s Saturday, 10 October. Twenty-four degrees. Air quality: 29 (Good). Expect road closures for the marathon today. Here’s what you need to know.

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LISBON’S HOLIDAY-LET CLEAR-OUT HASN’T FREED UP HOMES

Lisbon now has 11,704 units registered as AL, alojamento local, the licence for short-term rentals, 37% fewer than in 2025. The number of beds has fallen by a similar amount, 36%, to 69,070. The figures come from a new report by the residents’ association Vizinhos em Lisboa (Neighbours in Lisbon), which compared the national short-term rental register with census data from INE, the national statistics institute.

Earlier this year, the city council cancelled 6,765 short-term rental registrations, about 40% of the total, because they didn’t have the compulsory civil liability insurance, and many of those were inactive anyway. The market itself has barely moved: of the units still active, 81% were registered between 2015 and 2019, and only 332 have been added since 2023.

What the association wanted to know was whether those cancelled flats became homes. In a random sample of affected buildings in Santa Maria Maior, the parish that includes the Baixa and Alfama, only 11% had appeared for sale or rent on idealista, the property portal, over the past year. In Ajuda, where it checked every building, the figure was 6% to 8%. Total property listings in Lisbon are about the same as a year ago.

The historic centre is still saturated. In Santa Maria Maior and Misericórdia, there are more short-term rental beds than residents, and with São Vicente and Santo António they hold 61% of the city’s short-term rentals. Santa Maria Maior has 69 short-term rentals for every 100 occupied homes, against a city average of five. The association also tested bookings and found at least 4% of listings marked as cancelled were still taking guests.

It wants the council to keep restrictions in place in the most crowded parishes and to watch what it calls the “new expansion frontier” in Penha de França, Campo de Ourique and Alvalade. It also points to a bigger pool of homes. The 2021 census counted 48,018 empty homes in Lisbon, four times the number of short-term rentals, enough, it says, for around 105,000 people.

If you’ve been hoping the short-term rental crackdown would ease Lisbon’s rental market, this suggests it hasn’t yet. Many of the cancelled registrations weren’t being let to anyone, so there was little to free up. The report lands as parliament works through the new rental law.

Bottom line: Lisbon has fewer registered holiday lets on paper, but that hasn’t meant more homes to rent.

⚡ QUICK HITS

The two biggest parties have agreed to improve parental leave, with a final vote expected early next week. Under the joint text from the PSD, the main governing party, and the PS, the Socialist Party, the full six months of leave would be paid at 100% of salary if parents share it, with one of them taking at least 30 days. If one parent takes it all, six months is still guaranteed at 83%, and the fully paid period for one parent rises from 120 to 150 days. A seven-month leave would pay 86% with one month shared, or 90% with two. Fathers keep their 28 days of compulsory leave, while their optional leave doubles from seven to 14 days. Private-sector parents of children under 12 could also shorten their working day by up to an hour, with a 30-minute lunch break counted as work time, but only if their employer or collective agreement allows it.

A TAP flight from Lisbon to Paris turned back after crew members fell ill from a strange smell in the cabin. About 40 minutes after taking off on 21 September, the crew of the Airbus A320 reported a smell first described as rotten fish, then burnt cheese. Several crew members suffered dizziness, nausea, tremors and confusion, and the pilots put on oxygen masks, according to a report sent to the GPIAAF, the air and rail accident investigation office. No passengers reported symptoms. All the crew were checked at TAP’s medical centre, and one cabin crew member later lost consciousness at home and was taken to hospital. Similar smells have been reported on TAP Airbus aircraft since 2019. The cause hasn’t been confirmed, but incidents like this are usually blamed on oil or other fluids leaking into the air the engines feed into the cabin.

Nearly one in five 25- to 34-year-olds had a mental health consultation last year. The figure comes from INE’s National Health Survey, published for World Mental Health Day today, and some reports have stretched it to “one in five adults”, but it applies only to that age group. Elsewhere in the survey, depression was most common among people aged 85 and over, at 9.8%. Women were far more likely than men to take medication regularly: 20% for insomnia against 9.1% of men, 16.4% for anxiety against 7.5%, and 12.9% for depression against 5.5%. People with a university degree also found it easier to get information on looking after their mental health.

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A quick note: today’s ad comes from one of our network partners, Katusa Research. Partnerships like this one are what keep The Lisbon Letter free to read every morning, and we thank them for it.

🍽️ SPOT OF THE DAY

SOARES & CO. (MARQUÊS DE POMBAL)

Three friends, Ricardo Soares, Filipe Narciso and Tiago Marujo, started Soares & Co. in 2022 with one idea: bread made slowly, the old way. Their sourdough is just flour, water and salt, left to ferment slowly, with no additives, and baking starts at 3am. They also supply bread to hotels and restaurants around the city. In February they moved to a bigger shop on Rua Bernardim Ribeiro, a few steps from Marquês de Pombal, with a long bench and a couple of sofas, so there’s now room to sit down.

The counter mixes slow-fermented loaves, including olive bread, with pastries: croissants from €2, pain au chocolat and cinnamon rolls. The range changes often, as the team likes to try new things. Reviewers rave about the cinnamon rolls and a gooey pain au chocolat.

Worth knowing before you go: weekend opening is short, from 9am to 1pm on Saturdays and Sundays. On weekdays it’s open 9am to 3pm, Wednesday to Friday, and it’s closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

→ Find them here ←

Insider tip: order a loaf to take home with your pastry. It’s the same sourdough they bake for hotels and restaurants around the city.

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See you tomorrow morning.

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