Golden Visa (property)
Moving to the UAE: residency, tax and property
The fastest route on this list and the only one outside the EU. No personal income tax, a threshold set in dirhams that may be met by one property or several, and a ten-year permit the Land Department turns round in seven to ten working days. There is no path from it to citizenship: naturalisation in the UAE is discretionary and by nomination.
- From
- AED 2,000,000
- First permit
- 7–10 working days published, 2–4 weeks end to end
- Tax regime
- No personal income tax
The real number
What UAE 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
- €466,000
- Everything else
- €31,000
- Real, first year
- €497,000
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 UAE golden visa suits
The UAE is the fastest route here by a wide margin and the only one outside the EU. The Land Department publishes seven to ten working days for the visa itself, and title deed to Emirates ID realistically runs two to four weeks rather than the months every European option takes.
It suits somebody whose priority is a tax position and speed. It does not suit anybody who wants a European passport eventually: naturalisation in the UAE is discretionary and by nomination, and owning property never triggers it.
What the AED 2,000,000 threshold in the UAE consists of
AED 2,000,000, and it does not have to be one property — the immigration authority accepts one or more units totalling the threshold. A mortgaged property qualifies with a no-objection letter from the bank stating what has been paid and what is outstanding. A jointly held share qualifies if the share itself reaches the threshold.
Off-plan is not claimed here, and the omission is deliberate: no official page supports it, and the property-owner visa page requires a completed building.
The figure is in dirhams, so it moves. At 4.288 to the euro on 23 August 2026 it is about €466,000 — the same threshold was €490,000 on this site until the rate was rechecked, which is what a currency conversion does when nobody dates it.
What changed in the UAE rules, and when
Less than anywhere else in this comparison, which is itself the point: the threshold and the ten-year term have been stable while three of the four European routes were rewritten. What did change is the tax landscape around it — corporate tax at 9% from June 2023 and a 15% domestic minimum top-up for large multinationals from January 2025 — and neither touches an individual's salary or investment income.
Renewing the UAE golden visa, and the absence of income tax
Ten years, renewable. There is still no personal income tax; u.ae states it plainly. VAT is 5%, and the real transaction costs are the Land Department transfer fee of 4% plus an agency commission of about 2% — both market practice rather than figures we could confirm from a published tariff, and flagged as such wherever they appear on this site.
Government fees for the visa itself come to AED 9,884.75: the medical, the Emirates ID, the residency stamp, the Land Department charge and admin, plus AED 5,774.50 for each dependant.
Sources: the Dubai Land Department's investor golden visa service; the GDRFA and ICP golden residency pages; u.ae on taxation.
Buying property here — Buying property in Dubai: freehold areas, fees and the short-let tax trap
Questions about UAE
- 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.
- Is the UAE really tax-free?
- There is no personal income tax, which is the part everyone repeats and it is true. What is left out is that this does not make every kind of income untaxed. Letting a property short-term requires a permit, and holding that permit changes the character of the income: rental receipts that sat outside corporate tax become business income that does not. There is also no annual property tax, which is unusual enough to be worth saying, and a 4% registration fee at purchase, which is market fact rather than an official published tariff and which we therefore name without adding to a total.
UAE: guides and research
- 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.
- UAE tax residency certificate for individuals: who qualifies, which one to ask for and what it costs
A UAE tax residency certificate is issued by the Federal Tax Authority to a person who meets one of three tests in Cabinet Decision No. 85 of 2022: 183 days, 90 days with a residence permit and a home or a job, or a centre of life in the UAE. There are two kinds, one for a named double tax treaty and one for other purposes, and they are not interchangeable. Below: how the days are counted, which documents go with which test, the EmaraTax steps, the fees and the timing, each with the decision or guide section that sets it.
- Dubai in 2026: what changed on 28 February, and what the British government actually says now
Search demand for moving to Dubai from Britain fell by four fifths between February and April 2026 and has not recovered. This page records what happened, quotes what the British government's travel advice says today and when it last changed, and does not tell you whether to go. That last part is deliberate: nobody writing a relocation page is in a position to make that call for you, and several are making it anyway by saying nothing.
- Moving to Dubai from the UK
Two tests decide a British citizen's tax position after this move, and neither is administered in Dubai. The first is the UK statutory residence test, which decides whether you have left the UK tax net at all. The second is article 4 of the UK-UAE convention of 2016, whose tie-breaker looks at a home available to you in Britain before it ever looks at your passport. This page sets out both, with the dates each instrument was read.
- 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.
- How a golden visa application works: who files it, what the state charges, and what stops it
Every golden visa guide answers the same question, which is how much. Almost none answers the one that decides whether your file moves: who is allowed to submit it, whether the money has to be in place before you apply or after, and what an administration does with a file when something is missing. Those answers are published — in national procedure registries, agency FAQs and legal notices — and they differ enough between jurisdictions that a process described in general is a process described wrongly.
- UAE golden visa rules in 2026: what changed, and which instrument says so
Two Dubai rules changed in 2026 and thousands of people are applying under them. Neither has been published as an instrument — the report every other page relies on says so in terms, and we walked the registers to check. Meanwhile pages updated in July and August are still selling a threshold that was repealed in April. Every figure below carries the article that sets it, or a statement that none does.
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