Military Personnel Get the Keys to 161 Low-Rent Homes From the Armed Forces Welfare Institute, at an Average 329 Euros a Month

The Instituto de Ação Social das Forças Armadas (IASFA, the Armed Forces Social Welfare Institute) is handing over the keys to 161 low-rent homes to military personnel on Thursday at a ceremony in Lisbon led by the Defence Minister, Nuno Melo. Lusa reported the figures from an official source at the Ministério da Defesa Nacional (Ministry of National Defence): 200 homes were offered, 194 were allocated and 161 were finally accepted.

According to the ministry, 92 percent of the new tenants are serving military personnel and 40 percent are under 35. The average rent is 329.24 euros a month and the highest is 848.36 euros. Contracts run for five years and can then be renewed one year at a time.

Where the homes are

The list of the 200 homes on offer, published by IASFA, shows that most are in and around Lisbon. The capital itself had 125, Almada 21 (all in the Bairro Social do Alfeite), Amadora 11, Póvoa de Santo Adrião 10 and Mem Martins 8. Elvas had 6, and the rest were in Cacém, Moita, Queluz, Carcavelos, Ramada, Tomar, Coimbra, Évora and Ponta Delgada. Sizes ran from studios to six-bedroom flats, with three-bedroom homes the most common. The maximum rent set for each home ranged from 85.76 euros to 848.36 euros.

The homes were empty and need repairs. The notice opening the competition (Aviso n.º 1910/2026/2, published in the Diário da República on 2 February) says tenants carry out the work at their own expense, on homes where IASFA estimated it at no more than 10,000 euros before VAT. Lusa reported that the cost can later be deducted from the rent, up to that 10,000 euro limit.

Who could apply

The homes are only for IASFA beneficiaries, so they are not open to the general public. Under the competition rules, the main round was for career military and militarised staff in the permanent ranks. A second, extraordinary round was open to other beneficiaries, such as disabled veterans of the Armed Forces, students at the academies that train career officers and the widows of beneficiaries. Existing IASFA tenants on economic rents could not apply.

Applications closed on 4 March. IASFA's final report shows the jury received 38 objections to the provisional allocation, most about whether a household's size suited the home it was given, before it approved the final list on 8 October. Applicants then had 15 days to accept or refuse; a refusal counts as withdrawal and the home passes to the next person in the ranking.

Part of a wider push

This is IASFA's seventh rental competition since 2019, when it began letting homes that need work, and 710 homes have been offered since then, Lusa reported. Nuno Melo has repeatedly said that housing is one of the main factors in recruiting and keeping military personnel.

A separate Army project runs alongside it. In February 2025 the government announced 31 million euros from the Plano de Recuperação e Resiliência (PRR, the EU-funded Recovery and Resilience Plan) to turn 13 Army buildings, in cities including Lisbon, Porto and Leiria, into 427 homes for about 600 military personnel and civilian Army staff. They are temporary lets of two to three years at a rent of about 45 euros a month, and the minister said then that they should be ready in July 2026.

For residents outside the military, the state's affordable-rent routes remain the ones open to the public: see our report on the rent ceilings for the new affordable-rent scheme and on the 477 empty state buildings offered to councils for housing.