What motivates international homebuyers? Investor to lifestyle ‘migrants’ in a tourist city

In the aftermath of the economic crisis, Lisbon has ascended on to the urban tourism and international property market with a velocity that is transforming the city. Investor immigration programmes and fiscal policy have met their objective of attracting wealthy third country and intra-EU migrants to invest in housing in the city. To date, there is a dearth of empirical and theoretical analyses that explicate the motivations and aspirations of international overseas residential investors. Situated at the intersection of the literature on investment and lifestyle migration, and based on 20 in-depth interviews with experts in the intermediary elite economy, our objective is to understand buyer motivations and the current attraction of the city. We present our results in the form of a typology of new transnational urban homeowners revealing complex forms of mobility that intersect in the city. Our results reveal the continued importance, both directly and indirectly, of lifestyle motivations related with quality of life, culture, amenities and climate. Yet, economic motivations are the most significant, even if diverse, among the residential investor typologies with some seeking a safe haven and others geoarbritage or income optimization. Moreover, our results suggest that the success of government incentives (immigrant investor programmes or tax exemptions) to attract foreign second home buyers are dependent on prospects of city economic growth, rent legislation and the perceived attractiveness of the city/region for tourists making them difficult to replicate across contexts.