Lisbon, June 26, 2025 (Lusa) - A new digital app launched by a collective of activists aims to create a map of vacant houses in Portugal and press for their recovery. However, the National Association of Property Owners considers the application illegal and has stated that it will take legal action.

Called “Devolutos”, the app allows users to identify vacant houses and buildings “and add them to a map”, aiming to “create the most accurate picture of the nation’s commitment to revitalising urban centres and welcoming new residents while there are calls for more construction”, Nelson Vassalo, a member of the activist group, told the Lusa news agency.

For this collective, which includes designers and programmers who created the app, Portugal has “a housing stock ready for more productive use”, a situation that the new resource aims to highlight, initially in Lisbon and later in the rest of the country.

According to Nelson Vassalo, censuses point to “around 48,000 houses currently unoccupied in Lisbon alone”.

The aim is to “make all these houses visible on the app” and contribute to solving the housing crisis, since “cities can absorb the housing needs of their populations”.

The Devolutos app, which aims to “push for the recovery of abandoned properties”, is accessible to anyone who “can photograph a vacant property and link it to its geographical location”. The app is available free of charge for both Android and iOS devices, as well as in a web version at www.devolutos.com.

The collective sees the app as simple, yet the National Association of Owners calls it “illegal” because “everyone must obtain the owner’s consent to photograph (...), advertise or publicise private properties”, its president, António Frias Marques, told Lusa.

Acknowledging that he would “take legal action against the authors”, the owners’ representative warned: “this matter requires organised action” and “solving the housing problem is the responsibility of public authorities”.

António Frias Marques stressed that many of the vacant houses “come from long-term contracts, where tenants have remained in the house for many years, paying very low rents”, and many of these houses require renovation work before owners can put them back on the rental market.

This will require “thousands and thousands of euros”, since he explained, “for a 100-square-metre house in Lisbon, the average cost of renovation is €40,000”.

The association’s president also warned that the app may contain “photographs of medium and large buildings, already with approved plans to be converted into hotels” and which remain available “until work begins”.

The app’s founders and property owners also hold different views on inheritance procedures.

‘We need legislation to speed up and unfreeze the processes,’ argued Nelson Vassalo, claiming that properties should not stand idle for 10, 20, 30 years while inheritance is being discussed.

For Vassalo, tax reform and incentives are needed to ensure inheritance processes remain “a facilitator” for using these properties, proposing that “authorities compulsorily rent houses that are in good condition”, with “the rental income always reverting to the inheritance treasury”.

António Frias Marques pointed out that “there is already legislation” and that people can rent houses “while the inheritance process is ongoing”, but he argued that the parties involved should agree on this rental, because enforcement would be “yet another attack on the owners of vacant houses who pay 10 times more” than the Municipal Property Tax (IMI) applied to other buildings.

The promoters of the application estimate that they will extend it to the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto in the coming months, and subsequently to the Algarve and the rest of the country.

The owners warn that they can do so “concerning public buildings”, and they plan to limit the measure to private ones.

“If the situation worsens, the legal department of the National Association of Owners will take legal action to cancel this website, because it currently offers no solutions,” said António Frias Marques.

DA/ADB // ADB.

Lusa