In recent months, positive signs have emerged. The reduction of VAT to 6% on housing construction is a clear example that there is political awareness about the need to increase supply and make projects more viable in a context of high costs. But it is important to be clear: this measure, by itself, will not solve the problem. It can help, it can relieve some of the pressure, but it doesn't attack the hard core of the issue.

Those who work in the sector know that the highest cost is not only in materials or labour. It's in time. The time that is lost in licensing processes, in opinions that contradict each other, in successive revisions and in a bureaucracy that, in many cases, seems designed to slow down rather than facilitate. This time is not neutral. It has a high financial cost, creates uncertainty and drastically reduces the market's responsiveness.

And as long as the system continues to work in this way, any fiscal measure will always have a limited impact. We can reduce taxes, but if it takes us years to approve projects, the result will always be the same: little supply and high prices.

But there is a second level to this discussion that is equally important and often ignored. Portugal has built, over decades, a very particular relationship with housing. The house is more than an asset. It is security, it is stability, it is the main asset of many families. In a country where the welfare state has never played a strong role in housing, property has become the natural substitute for this protection.

This model worked for decades, but today it is clearly in tension. The new generations face a market where prices have grown much faster than incomes, making access to housing increasingly difficult. And here one of the great contradictions arises: we continue to encourage purchases, but we do not create the conditions to develop a real rental market.

In many European countries, renting is a stable, professionalised, and scaled solution. In Portugal, it remains fragmented, unpredictable and often seen as a second-line alternative. Without a fiscal and legal framework that gives confidence to investors and security to tenants, it will be difficult to create a balanced market.

At the same time, the way we build also needs to change. Construction productivity in Portugal remains low and very dependent on traditional processes. The industrialisation of construction, prefabrication, and the incorporation of technology, including robotics and artificial intelligence, are not futuristic concepts. These are solutions that have already been tested and implemented in other markets, with clear gains in efficiency, cost reduction and improved deadlines.

The problem, once again, is not in the absence of technology. It is the difficulty in scaling these solutions and integrating them into a system that still works in a fragmented way. There is a lack of connection between design, execution and financing. There is a lack of an integrated vision that allows the sector to transform in a structural way.

And all this converges on an essential point: the housing problem in Portugal is not just real estate. It is economic and social. When young people cannot access a home, when families are pushed out of urban centres, when talent cannot settle where there is more productivity, the impact goes far beyond the sector.

Housing directly influences economic growth, mobility and social cohesion. And that is precisely why responses cannot be punctual or reactive. They need to be structural.

The path is identified. We need faster processes, a more efficient system, a more robust rental market and a more modern and productive construction. We need to align public policies, regulators, municipalities and investors around a common goal.

Building more is important, but it is no longer enough.

The real test is to build better, faster, and with a system that works.

Because in the end, the problem is not a lack of solutions.

It is a lack of execution.