Golden Visa (property)

Moving to Greece: residency, tax and property

Greece has the lowest property-based entry threshold in this comparison, and the only one where filing itself confers lawful residence. The threshold is not uniform: since September 2024 it is €800,000 across Attica, Thessaloniki, Mykonos, Santorini and the larger islands, €400,000 elsewhere, and €250,000 only for converting or restoring a specific kind of building.

From: €400,000
First permit: Lawful residence on filing, card in months
Tax regime: Non-dom, €100,000 a year, separate €500,000 investment

The real number

What Greece actually costs

The threshold is the investment alone. Transfer taxes, professional and government fees and the first renewal are not optional — everyone pays them, every time.

Advertised: €400,000
Everything else: €35,000
Real, first year: €435,000

Sources Verified against primary sources on 23 August 2026 — statutes, ministry tariffs and official fee schedules. Figures are for ONE main applicant and cover entry and the first renewal; dependants are priced differently in every jurisdiction and are not included. Amounts in euro; the UAE threshold is AED 2,000,000 converted at 4.288 on the same date. See the working →

Who the Greece golden visa suits

Greece is the lowest property-based entry in this comparison and the only one where filing itself gives you something: the receipt issued on submission confers lawful residence and the rights of the permit while the application is decided. For somebody who needs to be legally in an EU country soon, that is worth more than a faster card.

It suits a buyer, not an investor looking for a return: the property may not be let short-term, and it must be a single property of at least 120 square metres of main space.

How the Greek threshold splits: €250,000, €400,000 and €800,000

The threshold is not one number. Since 1 September 2024 it is €800,000 across the whole of Attica, the regional unit of Thessaloniki, Mykonos, Santorini and every island with more than 3,100 inhabitants; €400,000 everywhere else; and €250,000 only as an exception — converting a building's main spaces to residential, converting an industrial building idle for five years, or fully restoring a listed building, with the work finished before the application is filed.

Short-term letting is prohibited outright. The fine is €50,000, and €150,000 where the property is used as a business seat or transferred in breach, with the permit revoked or not renewed on top.

What changed in Greek law, and when

Law 5100/2024 replaced a flat €250,000 with the three tiers above from 1 September 2024, with a transition for contracts completed by the end of that year. The old figure is still printed across most of this category, and it is the single most common error about Greece.

The other thing worth knowing changed nothing and is widely misunderstood: the property permit does not satisfy the €500,000 investment requirement of the non-dom regime. That waiver applies only to an investment-activity permit under a different law.

Renewing the Greek permit, naturalisation and the non-dom regime

The card takes months — the backlog stood at 13,499 pending files in November 2025, most of them in Attica — but the receipt covers you meanwhile. Naturalisation takes seven years of actual lawful residence plus a language, history and civics exam. The investor permit is a qualifying title for that clock, but it carries no minimum stay, so holding it without living in Greece accrues nothing.

The tax option is separate: €100,000 a year flat on foreign income under art. 5A, plus €20,000 per family member, capped at fifteen years and requiring its own €500,000 investment within three years.

Sources: art. 100 of Law 5038/2023 as amended by art. 64 of Law 5100/2024, and KYA 214926/2025; art. 5A of Law 4172/2013; the AADE transfer-tax schedule.

Buying property here — Buying property in Greece: the rules, the costs and the traps

Questions about Greece

What is a golden visa, exactly?: A residence permit granted because you placed a defined amount of money in the country — not because you have a job offer there, family there, or protection needs. That is the whole of the idea. It is not a passport and not a travel visa, and none of these five states calls it a golden visa in its own law: Portugal issues an ARI, Greece a residence permit for investment activity, Malta a permanent residence certificate, the UAE a ten-year golden residence. The marketing name is the market's, which is worth knowing before you read anyone else's page about it.
Where is the entry threshold lowest?: On the threshold alone, Greece — but only in a narrow case most buyers do not qualify for. Since 1 September 2024 Greece has three tiers: €800,000 across Attica, the Thessaloniki regional unit, Mykonos, Thira and islands above 3,100 people; €400,000 everywhere else; and €250,000 only by exception, for converting premises to residential use, rebuilding an industrial building idle five years, or fully restoring a listed one — with the works finished before you file. Otherwise: Malta €375,000 to buy or €14,000 a year to rent, the UAE AED 2,000,000 (about €490,000 at 4.08), Portugal €500,000 into a fund. For Cyprus we publish no figure: the threshold in its regulation 6(2) could not be established from any primary source.
Does the permit let me work anywhere in the EU?: No. An investment residence permit lets you live in the issuing country and travel freely in Schengen, but it carries no right to work in other EU states. Working in the issuing country itself is usually allowed; the conditions differ.
After how many years can I apply for citizenship?: Malta about five years by naturalisation, Greece seven, Cyprus eight, Portugal seven for EU and Portuguese-speaking nationals and ten for everyone else — that last figure changed in May 2026 and used to be five. The UAE has no citizenship route here at all. Everywhere the clock counts years of actual legal residence, not years of holding the status, so a permit that requires a few days a year accrues nothing on its own.
Do I have to live there to keep the status?: To keep the permit, almost nowhere: a few days a year is usually enough. For citizenship, yes — actual residence is required, and this is where expectations diverge most often.
Does buying property make me a tax resident?: No. Tax residence is decided by days of presence and centre of vital interests, not by ownership. Buying a house and remaining a tax resident of your own country is an ordinary situation.
What if the rules change after I apply?: Applications are normally assessed under the rules in force on the filing date, but there is no guarantee: Portugal and Greece have both changed terms with a short transition. That is the main argument against a long gap between deciding and filing.

Greece: guides and research

Property transfer tax in Greece for foreign buyers: 3.09%, the value it is charged on, and the relief you cannot use
Three things about Greek property transfer tax are stated wrongly almost everywhere. The rate is 3.09% rather than 3%, because the municipal surcharge is charged on the tax and not on the price. The tax falls on the assessed value from the register, which is not what you paid. And the first-home exemption requires residence in Greece, so the buyer who most often reads about it is the one who cannot use it.
Best country to move to from the USA: the income each route asks for, and the two clocks that follow
The first page of results for this question is Reddit, a moving company, an expat tax service and three YouTube videos. Between them they will rank the weather. None of them states the number that decides whether an American is eligible at all: the monthly income each route requires, which differs between two neighbouring EU countries by a factor of nearly four.
Short-term rental rules in five jurisdictions: what a listing must show in 2026
Every jurisdiction this site covers now answers the same question in its own way: before a property can be advertised for short stays, it must carry a number issued by the state. Dubai calls it a holiday home permit, Portugal a registration in the RNAL, Greece an AMA, Cyprus a registration number, Malta a licence. From 20 May 2026 an EU regulation makes the number itself part of the listing across the four European jurisdictions, and makes the platform check it. This is what each one requires, who issues it, what it costs and what happens to the owner who skips it.
Living in Greece from the UK
Every guide to this move answers the Brexit question and stops. The instrument that decides a British person's tax position in Greece is older than that by two generations: a convention signed on 25 June 1953, in force since January 1954, with no protocol since. It has no tie-breaker for dual residence and no article on dividends at all. This page sets out what it does say, with the dates each document was read.
Living in Greece as an American: the 1950 tax treaty and the social security agreement
The first page of results for this question is Reddit three times, three YouTube videos, a Facebook group and a shipping company. Between them they will tell you what the light is like on Crete. None of them mentions the two instruments that actually govern an American's position in Greece: a tax convention signed in 1950 that has never been rewritten, and a social security agreement that decides which country you pay into.
Greek citizenship law: three periods, not one, and almost nobody prints the other two
Search for how long naturalisation takes in Greece and every page says seven years. The Code says three, seven or twelve, and which one applies to you turns on two things: your nationality, and whether your residence title appears on a closed list in article 5(1)(ε). The investor permit is on that list. Many others are not, and that is a five-year difference nobody is telling you about.
Greece golden visa process in 2026: the fifty days, the apostille, and three routes the market fuses
Search interest in the Greek golden visa process has risen more sharply than in any other query on this subject, and the reason is a real one: a law passed in February 2026 rebuilt the country's admission routes. What the market then wrote about that law is wrong in a specific and correctable way. The 250,000 euro startup golden visa is not invented — it is fourteen months older than the law it is credited to. And the provision the February law actually added is an employment visa that ends the day the job does.
Golden passport: what a golden visa actually leads to, and how long it really takes
Golden passport is a phrase with no legal referent anywhere in these four jurisdictions. What each of them actually offers is a residence permit and a clock, and the clocks do not count what most people think they count. Three separate periods get collapsed into one in almost every comparison table: the permit's own renewal conditions, the presence test for long-term residence, and the naturalisation period. They are different lengths, they count different things, and only one of them ends in a passport.

We write when a rule changes in one of the five jurisdictions

Not a newsletter. A short email when a threshold, a tax or a requirement in one of these jurisdictions becomes something else — with the statute and the date. There will not be many: across 2026 there have been fewer than ten such changes across five countries. The confirmation brings the four routes compared on one printable sheet.

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