If Lisbon is often presented as a city where life is good, it is still necessary to have the means to appreciate its soft atmosphere when you are not an expatriate or an employee of a foreign company… It is this local reality that points out the British insurance company CIA Landlord in a recent study, which compares 56 major cities around the world.
The Portuguese capital emerges in this ranking as “the third least financially viable city” to live there, reports the Business Journal. The Portuguese economic daily takes up the arguments of the study: the average net salary in Lisbon is 1,031 euros, the rent for a three-bedroom apartment is around 1,622 suros and the average cost of living is around around 558 euros per month.
Lisbon residents pushed to the periphery
In his bimonthly column in the newspaper, Pedro Fontes Falcão, director of the Master of Business Administration (MBA) of the University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE), points out that the methodology of this study is questionable since it starts from the postulate that a single member of the family receives a salary. But the editorialist confirms the growing difficulties of the Portuguese to stay in their capital:
“The reality is dramatic […]it pushes the majority of Lisbon residents out of the city and leaves no hope for young people to one day manage to live there.”
For comparison, Rome occupies the first place in the ranking of the most expensive cities. The average salary in the Italian capital is around 1,400 euros, the rent for a three-bedroom apartment costs 2,000 euros and the average cost of living is 785 euros. Conversely, Bern, Switzerland is considered the most affordable city, thanks to an average salary of around 5,000 euros.