residency by investment
residency by investment
Residency by investment — the golden visa — gives you the right to live in a country in exchange for a qualifying investment, without granting a passport. It is a different product from citizenship: you get residence, and often Schengen or regional access, but a second nationality remains a separate, later step measured in years. The honest options here run from Portugal and Greece in the EU to the UAE’s ten-year visa; each buys residence, not a passport, and each is judged on cost, presence requirements and how far it is from eventual naturalisation.
- From
- env. $289 000≈ $385 214 — estimated family total
- Processing time
- 12–24 monthsAIMA publishes no official processing time. Immigration firms documented a 12-month best case, an 18 to 24-month median over 2025-2026, and up to 40 months where files are re-examined; the full path including the physical residence card commonly runs two to three years. The minister pledged in October 2025 to clear the backlog in 2026; lawyers publicly doubted it.
- Physical presence
- Seven days in the first year, then fourteen days in each subsequent two-year period.
What residency by investment is
Residency by investment — the golden visa — gives you the right to live in a country in exchange for a qualifying investment, without granting a passport. You get residence, usually the right to bring your family, and often Schengen or regional access — but not, by itself, a second nationality. It is the residence-first counterpart to citizenship by investment, and confusing the two is the most common mistake in this market.
Residence is not citizenship
This is the distinction to hold onto. A golden visa is a residence permit; citizenship is a separate, later step, measured in years of naturalisation with its own conditions. Portugal's 2026 law, for example, lengthened naturalisation to ten years while leaving the residence permit itself intact. If a passport is your actual goal, plan for the long horizon — or look at citizenship by investment instead, where the passport comes directly.
The honest options
The active choices run across regions. In the EU, the Portuguese golden visa (funds since real estate was excluded) and the Greek golden visa (real estate, no minimum stay) lead, alongside Malta's MPRP. Outside the EU, the UAE's ten-year golden visa offers a low-tax base, and Andorra a low-tax Pyrenees residence. If you were counting on Spain, note its golden visa closed in 2025 — see the Spanish golden visa alternatives.
How to judge them
Because these are residences, not passports, the comparison turns on different axes than citizenship: the investment and its recoverability, the physical-presence requirement (from near-zero in Greece to a genuine annual stay elsewhere), the regional access it unlocks, and — if a passport is the eventual aim — how far it is from naturalisation. Weigh them side by side on our golden visa comparison.
Tax: residence is not automatic tax residency
A recurring myth is that a golden visa relocates your tax. It does not, by itself. Holding a residence permit is not the same as being tax-resident, and leaving your current tax residency is rarely automatic — the tax outcome follows where you genuinely live and meet the residency tests, not the permit in a drawer. Read second citizenship and taxes for how this actually works.
The path to a passport
Most golden visas can, in principle, lead to naturalisation after years of genuine residence — but on each country's timeline and conditions, including language and integration tests, not automatically. Treat citizenship as a possible long-term outcome of really living there, not a feature of the visa you buy. If speed to a passport matters more than living in the country, the honest answer is a citizenship programme, not a golden visa.
Before you commit
Golden visas suit someone who wants the right to live somewhere — an EU foothold, a low-tax base — more than an immediate passport. Decide on your priority (presence, tax, path to citizenship), confirm the current investment, presence rules and fees with the country's authority, and use only reputable, licensed advisers (risks, scams and vetting an agent). Rank what fits you with our program finder, and see how we verify every figure on our methodology page.
See also
Frequently asked questions
Can I still get a Portuguese golden visa by buying property?
How long until I can apply for citizenship?
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