Portugal has changed.. A LOT!

Portugal has changed a lot and there is no getting around it also apparently Americans are fleeing but am what is the one thing that has changed the most in Portugal I would say that Portugal is no longer a secret gym anymore it used to be a place that no one have ever heard about and now everyone and their mother has visited and even grandmothers and I think we are partly responsible for that because we have made over 400 YouTube videos showcasing how brilliant portal is in every way although with Shades of Gray one of the craziest examples on how tourism has exploded here is Lisbon airport I mean it has been over capacity already for many years but it's so over capacity that they have to say no to 1.2 million tourists every single year so right now they're scrambling to build a new airport when you think about it it makes totally sense that Portugal is no longer a secret G because when we arrived 7 years ago for the first time we were like how is this place not as touristy as Italy for example and discovered and I think why Portugal got so popular so fast is because most people probably already thought that there was no more to discover in Europe love your channel really oh yeah can you see to say to the camera sorry to put you on the spot so an obvious result of Portugal no longer being a secret gym is that a lot of expats SL immigrants have come here to Portugal and I don't blame them we are we are we're one of them you know and that's something that was especially kickstarted around 2020 you might remember an event when we say Portugal has changed it's the whole world that has changed you know people being able to work on their computers from wherever they want why would you not be on an island like Madera rather than Hoboken New Jersey and when you have all these foreigners coming that does something to the real estate market I have six houses that I'm doing interior design on right now all foreigners that means that the house market has changed quite a lot I think it's around 600,000 foreigners who now live in Portugal and that's why the housing market has just exploded not just in prices but also just development the reason why there's being built so much is because you have foreigners coming from America from Scandinavia Germany France the UK Canada South Africa South Africa that means that a lot of the local here who had land or had apartments in the cities they're selling their Apartments to foreign prices which unfortunately does not allow the people in Portugal who doesn't have land to follow the economy so it's creating a little bit of a strange Vibe and that is definitely new here in Portugal cuz the local people do not earn more even though inflation has taken its t on to on Portugal I hate to complain but it's here in mid December it's so warm let's go in the shade I mean the last three years have been tough on everyone but especially the Portuguese people have suffered because they have not seen a rise in celeries they have not seen any added benefit basically ER everything has gotten more expensive to the point where Portugal is no longer a a country where it's like wow this is so cheap here I remember when we moved here in 2018 I would usually say that it's three to four times cheaper than than than Copenhagen or or Denmark now it's like maybe 40% cheaper here compared to Denmark which is still a lot groceries are almost on pair with the prices in Denmark right now it has gone up quite a lot but isn't that mostly when you do um like organic uh grocery shopping with which is what we always do it's actually general what if you what if you pick the cheapest like the cheapest in in Portugal versus the cheapest in Denmark it's almost the same it's only meat that is more expensive in Denmark I talked with my sister about it we went through the grocery store and we were like oh my God I truly feel the Portuguese um in in in this regard I feel their pain because every one of us who come here from outside of Portugal we have that one benefit that we don't have to get a job here because we get money from foreign uh companies if you come here as a foreigner and you want to get a job in Portugal what pays you maybe let's say 67,000 a month in the US will pay you a th000 here so imagine being a local actually earning a th having to spend the same amount of money that we think is expensive on groceries that's crazy I think something has also changed with the news value of Portugal people like things that are new and interesting and then when they start hearing it a lot again and again they lose interest in it and I think if what you fell in love with with Portugal was the tax benefits and the easy cheap lifestyle then you will not like it anymore because that's not what it is but if you fell in love with Portugal because of the food and the people and the lifestyle and the culture then you will still love being in portug you know exactly and that's why we still live here uh speaking this is not Portuguese food this is so far from Portugal as a v conosur it's pretty good what we have seen also as a positive um benefit to living in Portugal is that there's a lot more diversity in terms of food it's not just Portuguese food so for foreigners like us we don't have to eat Portuguese every single day we do like Italian restaurants we do like meditar Iranian food we do like trying Asian fusion and all that and you have that now in Portugal I think that's a nice development um but it comes with a price because when we moved to Lisbon we could find authentic Portuguese Cuisine made by grandmother in a little cute restaurant now you have to go out of the city to find these kind of restaurants or you got to know the small places that are not ripping you off or it's not even a Portuguese chef and if you want to get the firstand inside to this you have to go to Adega Dom Luis in Lisbon it's a old angry Portuguese man but with a big heart who talks about this and we went there and we didn't film it unfortunately but he was like this restaurant along with two three others in central Lisbon are the only true Portuguese restaurants left everyone else that are Portuguese have no Portuguese in the kitchens anymore and then you start to remove the soul of of the whole experience so in that regard Portuguese food f is suffering but it's not all that bad because when you leave you know Lisbon when you leave Porto and go to rural Portugal you still find epic Portuguese food so because there are so many tourists and because so many foreigners live here the Portuguese restaurant owners are also kind of forced to raise their prices so this creates another problem for the locals as when they go to their restaurant and eat they can't get a pint of beer for €2 and2 anymore now it's 5 there's no stopping this development because the Portuguese government they are uh doing everything they can it seems to attract foreigners and you know you can't on the other hand I don't think you can blame Foreigners for coming here and taking advantage of everything that is being offered to them so it it's a dilemma and the only solution in my book is to dump the Social Security no more taxes on employees because that's why they're not earning so much one of the reasons I get a glass you get a you usually don't want the cone there's a lot of real estate in this cone the best way to understand the real estate market in Portugal is that you can't understand it it is so crazy how things are priced and it's a mixture of enormous greet from landlords and sellers to Sellers and landlords who understand what things are actually uh worth and I think that for people who don't understand how to really read the market it seems like it is very expensive here but you have to keep in mind that there is the sales price and then there is the actual price and that's something that especially foreigners they don't really understand they look at a rental apartment and they're like oh my God this is €3,000 for 80 square meters in Lisbon where you can find another apartment at the same uh size and same quality and it'll be half the price it is not easy to buy a house in Portugal If you don't know what you're doing if you don't have the right lawyers so that's why a lot of foreigners they have a bad experience with the real estate market but prices are also crazy they are crazy to make up for the next boring topic we went to beautiful nature because am it's about Texas Texas does this look good Ed go you look handsome so 2023 has been the year of outcry among foreigners uh Living in America actually not America Portugal but there are a lot of Americans who are fleeing Portugal according to a lot of YouTube videos and articles and first of all there are only like 12,000 Americans living in Portugal and it said that 2,000 went back but there's a lot of negativity online about that they removed the golden Visa the nhr which is a non-habitual residency where you get a flat rate of 20 or 10% or even 0% in taxes but reality is that the golden Visa is still here the golden Visa is applicable for anyone who wants to buy or invest in bonds or whatever there's you just can't buy a house anymore and that's that's why a lot of people there are crying over the Golden Visa being removed but by the end of December 2024 the nhr is done it's phased out and that's what a lot of people they they came to to Portugal for because low taxes did you get your nhr what did you come to L to the party but actually what a lot of people aren't aware of is that there's coming a new nhr and it's almost the same hey cow hello ladies have you heard of the new nhr it's allegedly very good because in Madera entrepreneurs are paying 0% in taxes a lot of these people who are leaving Portugal they leave Portugal with this negative idea of the country as oh it's not you know prices went up and everything has gotten more expensive and their language barrier the bureaucracy is terrible and I'm like what did you expect I mean seriously you moved to Portugal you expected them to just speak English understand everything you say come on man you you come on man come on it is what it is and now we are here and if we want to be a part of the country we have to accept the way it is and we have been confronted with issues again and again especially the way that certain people treat animals here it's very difficult to say okay that's just the way they are here I think it took us like two or three years to to kind of adapt to to the way of life you know we are so anal where we come from in Denmark you know Germany Scandinavia Western countries in general oh my goodness this is the look at this yeah this is the best and I'm not talking about the beautiful guy but Amelia this takes us to the next point of our corporate presentation yes it is our home because we loved Portugal for more than just the taxes and the low cost of living obviously it was something that attracted us but the reason we actually love the country is the culture the festivities the nature the diversity the climate the chillness of people people here are so relaxed that you know the police on the street they appear more focused on what they're having for lunch than figuring out who's parked illegally I think a lot of people are romanticizing about what it is to move to a country like Portugal oh it's so fun it's so amazing and it always is in the beginning yeah we made a video way back talking about the honeymoon phase and then the actual phase where you get to live there and a lot of people are loving all the novelty of moving to a new country in the beginning but then they start wanting to jam their own ways down to the way that a country does things and that's where you start making mistakes because yeah that's when you start not appreciating where you moved to I mean for US Portugal is a dream country no no place is perfect and I think that's something you just have but Portugal is godamn close is it the world spiciest noodles allegedly can you eat it all yeah three best favorite things about Portugal the food the people the food the people in the nature is juding me so hard right now I have to stop because I'm about to out are you taking an ice bath I said that I only ate this CU I was hungry and we had nothing in the house and then you order

Channel: STAY CLASSY VLOG

Views: 35,185

Keywords: portugal, living in portugal, moving to portugal, portugal travel, americans in portugal, americans leaving portugal, americans leaving us, life in portugal, foreigners in portugal, is portugal worth visiting, why portugal is the best country, canadians leaving canada, best country to live in europe, best countries to live in the world, NHR portugal 2024, golden visa portugal 2024

Id: tUVIr9KwC7o

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023