What is a Golden Visa?
Golden Visa is about establishing residency or citizenship in another country. Typically, this programme is very popular with American citizens who want to establish their residency in Europe, but also with Chinese residents who want to to move to the United States, Portugal, Greece or Spain. Which countries profit the most from the Golden Visa programmes?
A golden visa is a permanent residency visa issued to individuals who invest, often through the purchase of property, a certain sum of money into the issuing country.
Wikipedia
Top 13 Countries issuing Golden Visas
The countries which issue the biggest numbers of Golden Visas are:
- United States
- Greece
- Malaysia
- Canada
- Spain
- Portugal
- Thailand
- United Kingdom
- Malta
- Ireland
- New Zealand
- Australia
- Latvia
So yes, you can buy a citizenship. Although the “EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program” in the United States leads the ranking, the success of the investment programme is gaining success in many countries such as Greece.
Foreigners invest billions to get the residency
Not surprisingly, there is a lot of demand. Over the past few years, the Golden Visa market has turned into a multi-billion-euro global phenomenon with price tags varying from country to country, costing anywhere from €250,000 to €10 million.
How much money does it represent? European countries have received 25 billion euros in the last decade thanks to applications for the golden visa. Forbes published recently an article called “Seven Best Places To Get Residency And A Second Passport In Europe“. So this is a very competitive market.
Greece deserves the golden medal
Greece is a clear winner of this “competition” between countries. Indeed, how did a country of 11 million people become the undisputed golden visa gold medalist?
At 250,000 euros, Greece’s minimum investment requirement is lower than that of most other European residency programs. On top of that, real estate prices in many areas of Greece are still 40% its below peak (pre-2009 crisis). Together, these two facts make Greece a very attractive investment opportunity.
- Greece is selling the European residency for €250,000
- With this price, Greece is the cheapest golden visa in Europe
- Property prices in Greece are still 40% below their peak of 2009 (pre-crisis)
- Greek property prices are clearly going to recover
- The number of residence permits allowed to foreign investors grows very fast in Greece
What nationalities of buyers are concerned by Golden Visas?
Many nationalities of foreign buyers are concerned by Golden Visas , for example the Chinese, Russians, Brazilians, Turkish, South African. However it’s a country per country phenomenon.
Indeed, in Portugal the biggest nationalities are the Chinese and the Brazilians, yet another 50% come from multiple countries as you can see below. In total, this programme has generated 4.4 billion euros worth of investment for Portugal since 2012, 91% of which went to real estate investments (the remainer to capital transfer).
In comparison, people seeking a residence permit in Greece were coming not just from China (almost 50%) but also from Russia, Turkey, and a multitude of other countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Irak, Syria.
Europe wants to end the Golden Visa
Yet Golden Visas may very well not last much longer, at least in Europe. Indeed, the European parliament is urging states to put an end to this, to curb money-laundering by ending programs to sell visa and passports. Will European governments follow this recommendation? We can not be sure that governments want to say goodbye to a multi-billion-dollar industry, helping their economy recover from the 2009 crisis after a complicated decade.
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