This Country Is Now Number 1 for Golden Visas Applications

One of the best-known tricks in publishing is to run a headline revealing “the best” something or other, or the “No. 1” whatchamacallit. Funny enough, I did it for this column, but for good reason.

See, most people can’t resist clicking a link that promises to help them wade through a mountain of information and take them straight to what they want to know. 

The problem, of course, is that because this tactic is so popular, we’re overrun with articles promising the same exclusive information. They can’t all be right. Consequently, a lot of these articles are full of nonsense, including AI generated twaddle. 

That’s why I prefer to use personal analysis and hard statistics to assess anything important, especially if the headline of a column I write promises to reveal the “best” of something, as I did for the headline of this column. But when it comes to the popularity of golden visa programs, the numbers from 2023 show an unmistakable winner. 

When Portugal announced it was ending the residential property investment option as a route to its own golden visa, I predicted we’d see a big shift in visa applications… and just as I anticipated, Greece is now the top of the log in the golden visa game. 

Greek golden visa applications from January to November 2023 rose by 78% compared to the previous year. Over 7,750 new applications came in: 

The flood of applications is so large, in fact, that the Greek authorities are struggling to keep up. Only about 20% of 2023 applications have been processed. But the good news is that it has only rejected 14 of those.  

What makes this even more remarkable is that the Greek government increased the minimum investment for a golden visa in key parts of the country from €250,000 to €500,000 in July 2023. Although there was a bump in applications just before the change took effect, volumes continued to remain elevated for the rest of the year.  

From an economic standpoint, this has had a tremendous impact. Based on the average investment per applicant, Greece brought in between €2 billion and €2.5 billion from its golden visa program last year. 

In terms of the source of applicants for Greek golden visas, China continues to dominate. Over 2,000 of last year’s applications came from Chinese, who already hold about 60% of Greek golden visas. The next largest group, from Turkey, was only a little over 450. The rest came from an assortment of other countries in the Middle East. 

By contrast, North Americans barely register… but this is changing quickly as Americans and Canadians become aware of the Greek option. 

Once again, Portugal is a catalyst. In 2023, Americans went from near the bottom of Portuguese golden visa applicants to the largest group. Once potential American immigrants learned that Portugal was changing its policies, many of them started looking at Greece—again, something I predicted last year.  

I’ve long felt that Greece was likely to continue offering its golden visas despite the impact on property prices. Unlike Portugal, whose favored cities and towns are clustered on its straight Atlantic coastline, Greece is a nation of islands and peninsulas. There is so much seafront property available in the Aegean nation that it can easily absorb tens of thousands of foreigners without any significant impact on prices. 

That’s why the Greek government raised the minimum investment amount only in areas around Athens and Thessaloniki, dense cities where visa applicants do have an impact on property prices.  

But I certainly wouldn’t relax and take my time if I were interested in getting a Greek golden visa in 2024. Already, opposition parties are starting to grumble about the program, arguing Greece should follow Portugal’s lead and clamp down on the program. 

I don’t think that’s likely to happen in the next couple of years, but as 2023 showed us, change in the international migration space can happen unexpectedly and quickly. 

So, if long term residency in one of the most beautiful places on earth is on your to do list, make sure you tick it off sooner rather than later.