Shit housing quality is absolutely true in my experience. For context, I'm Portuguese but I lived abroad for quite a few years and returned while doing the digital nomad thing, mostly because I have plenty of friends here and because I make what locally is considered a ridiculous amount of money. Anyway yeah. In order to get a house to a standard that I consider acceptable (and acceptable != good) I pretty much had to househunt at the very highest end of the market which didn't have much offer (this being in Porto). Granted, it's still stupid cheap compared to what I paid elsewhere but most houses in the country are flat-out appaling in quality and missing basic features or insulation.

edit: and public roads too, I often describe half of the city as being effectively goat tracks. I like nice cars, which means low profile tires, hardly a year goes by where I don't damage a wheel or blow a shock absorber, the amount of roads not made of tar is stupid.