Get a European (or Asian) Golden Visa for Less

The second half of 2024 saw some significant changes with European Golden Visas. This comes after substantial changes the year before that.

In 2023, countries that had offered a five-year residency in exchange for investment in real estate began to withdraw that option. The most important was Portugal, which had welcomed tens of thousands of foreigners (or at least their money) this way. For good measure, the Portuguese ended their Non-Habitual Resident Tax Scheme (NHR), which gave you a flat tax of 10% on foreign-source income.

At the same time, Greece began hiking the minimum investment requirements for its own residential Golden Visa. Then, in early 2024, Spain’s government began talking about ending not just the residential option, but all Golden Visa offerings.

But recent developments show that this isn’t because southern European countries don’t want any more long-term residents. They just want different things from them in exchange for letting them settle in their countries.

In previous articles I’ve explained that Golden Visas arose when countries faced financial calamity after the market crash of 2008. The immediate need was to boost property values, to prevent a collapse of local banks’ balance sheets. But that was so successful that countries like Greece, Spain, and Portugal began to experience political unrest due to rising property values and rents.

Instead of terminating Golden Visas altogether, the Portuguese led the way by shifting eligibility towards investment in the broader economy. They introduced an option to invest €500,000 in Portuguese venture capital funds. They also kept options that involved non-refundable donations, but the fund option now garners more than 95% of all new applications.

Earlier this year Portugal announced it was offering a new pathway to residency: investment in local startup firms. Greece and Italy both followed suit. In all three cases, the idea is to generate capital for small companies in technology or renewable energy. If the Golden Visa applicant has skills to share, that’s even better.

These programs are in their early days, so it’s too soon to tell how “hands on” these countries expect applicants to be. Early indications from my contacts in Europe suggest it will be possible to make a financial investment only, without needing to be directly involved in the business. The amounts to qualify are still uncertain but could be less than half of the €500,000 fund option, if not even lower.

This reflects a pattern of intelligent management of immigration policies in these countries. Just as the residential option and favorable tax schemes like the Portuguese NHR were meant to attract investment in real estate, these new policies are designed to boost the local economy more broadly, and to support local entrepreneurship.

I predict we’ll see a lot more of this in 2025. Indeed, countries like Malaysia and Indonesia in Southeast Asia are already jumping on the startup bandwagon with special visa categories of their own. Like the Europeans, they started out with digital nomad offerings but then realized that they don’t translate into as much skills transfer as they had hoped. They’re keeping the digital nomad option but now offering better residency packages through equity investment in startups.

So, whether or not you’re a tech entrepreneur yourself, keep an eye on the opportunities presented by this shift. With the right connections and the right proposal, you might be able to get a European or Asian Golden Visa for a lot less than today’s going rate.