Rents in Lisbon have jumped 65% since 2015 and sale prices have sky-rocketed 137%, figures from Confidencial Imobiliario, which collects data on housing, show. Rents increased 37% last year alone, more than in Barcelona or Paris, according to another real estate data company, Casafari.
Red and Green with a golden crown roughly at the center and 5 blue shields representing the 5 burdens of Christ.
But a decade on, she still lives in a tiny, rented room - one of tens of thousands of young Portuguese hit by a housing crisis exacerbated by the arrival of richer foreigners lured in by incentives pushed by her own government.
The 30-year-old, who has two degrees in tourism, shares a flat with five others, pays 450 euros ($475) per month for a 13 square-metre mezzanine room, but makes as little as 800 euros a month during the low tourism season.
"Even for me - having an income from another country - it's a lot of money," Esmee said. "If housing stays this expensive or gets worse, (foreign) people earning a Portuguese income ... will start moving back to their own countries."
Some leave the city. Some stay with their parents. The average age people leave the parental home in Portugal is 33.6, the highest in the European Union, according to data from the bloc's statistics office.
Since then, critics say those schemes have come back to bite the economy by ramping up competition for scarce housing - fuelling inflation and piling pressure particularly onto young, local, entry-level workers.
But even some of those remote workers are becoming increasingly aware of the housing crisis. Esmee, a 28-year-old from the Netherlands, lives in the coastal town of Costa da Caparica, across the Tagus, and pays 825 euros per month for her flat.
Rights groups have pointed a finger at the "golden visas", which the government has promised to scrap. The programme has been giving foreigners residents' rights since 2012 in return for investments, attracting 6.8 billion euros primarily into real estate.
Portugal ranks as one of western Europe's poorest nations. But its capital was last year ranked the world's third least financially viable city, thanks to its punishing combination of low wages and high rents.
Red and Green with a golden crown roughly at the center and 5 blue shields representing the 5 burdens of Christ.
But a decade on, she still lives in a tiny, rented room - one of tens of thousands of young Portuguese hit by a housing crisis exacerbated by the arrival of richer foreigners lured in by incentives pushed by her own government.
The 30-year-old, who has two degrees in tourism, shares a flat with five others, pays 450 euros ($475) per month for a 13 square-metre mezzanine room, but makes as little as 800 euros a month during the low tourism season.
"Even for me - having an income from another country - it's a lot of money," Esmee said. "If housing stays this expensive or gets worse, (foreign) people earning a Portuguese income ... will start moving back to their own countries."
Some leave the city. Some stay with their parents. The average age people leave the parental home in Portugal is 33.6, the highest in the European Union, according to data from the bloc's statistics office.
Since then, critics say those schemes have come back to bite the economy by ramping up competition for scarce housing - fuelling inflation and piling pressure particularly onto young, local, entry-level workers.
But even some of those remote workers are becoming increasingly aware of the housing crisis. Esmee, a 28-year-old from the Netherlands, lives in the coastal town of Costa da Caparica, across the Tagus, and pays 825 euros per month for her flat.
Rights groups have pointed a finger at the "golden visas", which the government has promised to scrap. The programme has been giving foreigners residents' rights since 2012 in return for investments, attracting 6.8 billion euros primarily into real estate.
Portugal ranks as one of western Europe's poorest nations. But its capital was last year ranked the world's third least financially viable city, thanks to its punishing combination of low wages and high rents.