Questions
Fifty-two questions, answered from the statute
Every answer here that states a figure carries a link to the law, tariff or authority page it was checked against, and the date it was read. Where no primary source publishes something — Malta's processing time, whether off-plan property qualifies in the UAE, two of Cyprus's figures — the answer says so instead of guessing, because a plausible answer is indistinguishable from a true one right up until it costs somebody money. Some of what follows is not flattering to the routes on this site, and some of it is not flattering to us.
The line under an answer links to the section of our sources page where that figure was checked, with the statute number, the article and the gazette date. An answer with no such line either states no figure, or is about how this site itself works.
Start here
What the thing actually is, before any number is worth reading.
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.
Residence permit, permanent residence, citizenship — what is the difference?
A residence permit lets you live in one country for a fixed term and has to be renewed; lose the ground it rests on and you lose it. Permanent residence removes the renewal but is still a permission the state grants. Citizenship is a passport, a vote, and a status a state cannot casually withdraw. All five routes here begin at the first of the three. Four of them have a path to the third — Portugal, Greece, Malta and Cyprus — and the UAE has none an investor can rely on: naturalisation there is by nomination and at discretion, not something a golden residence earns.
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Which of the five is right for me?
Nobody can answer that from a table, this site included — but three questions narrow it quickly. If the point is an EU passport, the deciding factor is how many years of real residence you will actually do, because that is what the clock counts and a permit needing a few days a year accrues nothing. If the point is a low price with almost no obligation afterwards, the UAE removes most of what the EU routes ask of you, and removes the passport along with it. If the point is buying property, Portugal is already out: property stopped qualifying there in 2023.
Checked against PortugalCitizenship
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.
Checked against Citizenship
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.
Cheapest, fastest, simplest
The questions people actually type. Every figure below links to the statute it came from.
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.
And where is it cheapest once every fee is counted?
The UAE, and the order changes from the previous answer — which is the point of asking both. On top of the investment: the UAE about €31,000 in government fees (AED 9,884.75 plus AED 5,774.50 per dependant, with the 4% registration and 2% agent commission named but not totalled, because no official page confirms them). Greece about €34,000 at the €400,000 tier and about €67,000 at €800,000. Portugal roughly €30,000–50,000 for one applicant and €65,000–90,000 for a family of three, once a lawyer and fund commissions are in. Malta about €126,000 above the price of the property, which is the highest here by a distance and is mostly the €60,000 administrative fee and the €37,000 contribution.
Where is the permit fastest in practice?
The UAE, and not narrowly: title deed to Emirates ID runs about two to four weeks, against published figures of 7–10 working days at the DLD and about 5 at GDRFA. Greece issues no permit on a deadline at all, but a βεβαίωση at filing already confers lawful residence and the permit's rights until a decision — in November 2025 there were 13,499 cases pending, 10,703 of them in Attica. Portugal is the slow one and the gap is not small: the statute allows 90 days, and in practice it runs one to three years, with roughly 30,000 cases pending at AIMA on 4 August 2026. For Malta we state nothing — no primary source publishes a processing time, so the widely quoted “4–6 months” is not something we will repeat.
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.
Checked against Citizenship
Which asks the least of me once I have it?
The UAE, on every measure that costs a person time. Golden residence holders are exempt from the 180-day absence rule that ordinarily voids a UAE residence visa — confirmed by both the federal portal and GDRFA — there is no personal income tax, and the permit runs ten years rather than needing renewal every two or five. The trade is that the property may not be disposed of during those ten years, and a lien is registered against it to make sure of it. Malta is at the other end: five years of holding the qualifying property, an agent you are required to use, and an Agency whose decisions are final and cannot be appealed.
Which of the five would you not recommend?
We do not sell any of them, so here is the plain version. Cyprus we would not choose today, and we say so by publishing no threshold for it: two of its three checked figures could not be established from any primary source, and a route whose price cannot be verified is a route you cannot compare. Malta is the most expensive by a wide margin and the only one of the five where a refusal cannot be appealed — its own regulation 19(1) says decisions are final. Portugal asks you to accept a wait the statute does not describe: 90 days on paper, one to three years in practice. None of that makes them wrong for a given person; it makes them the three where the brochure and the statute diverge most.
Money: thresholds and what it really costs
The threshold is the number in the brochure. The other number is the one people are not ready for.
What does “on top” consist of?
Four things, in falling order of size: a purchase tax where property is involved, the state's own fees, a mandatory contribution where one exists, and professional fees. Greece takes 3.09% transfer tax — 3% plus a 3% municipal surcharge on the tax itself — and charges a €2,000 e-paravolo plus €16 for the card. Malta takes 5% stamp duty and then the largest fixed block on this site: €60,000 administration, €37,000 contribution, €2,000 NGO donation, €500 per card. Portugal charges €842.80 to consider a file, €8,418.90 to issue and €4,210.30 to renew, less 25% filed online. The UAE charges AED 9,884.75 in one window. Only professional fees are negotiable; none of the rest is.
Do your figures include lawyers' fees?
Only where we say so, and we say so because a fee nobody publishes cannot be checked. Government charges are named exactly, from the tariff. Professional fees are given as a range and marked as a range — Portugal's €30,000–50,000 for a single applicant is mostly lawyer and fund commissions, not state fees, which come to about €13,470 to the first renewal. Where a cost is market practice rather than an official tariff we name it and refuse to add it into a total: Dubai's 4% registration and 2% agent commission are real money and are not confirmed by any official page, so they sit outside the sum rather than inside it.
Is the threshold per person or per family?
The investment is per family — one qualifying investment covers everybody on the application, everywhere here. The fees are not, and that is where a family budget goes wrong. Portugal charges the full €8,418.90 issuing fee for each reunified family member, the same rate as the main applicant, which is why one applicant runs about €13,470 in state fees to the first renewal and a family of three runs about €40,400. Malta charges €7,500 per dependant but exempts the spouse, minor children and an adult child with a disability, so in practice it falls on adult dependent children and on parents or grandparents. The UAE charges AED 5,774.50 per dependant. Greece publishes no family-member fee in its procedural decision at all, so we state none.
Can I get the money back, and when?
Some of it, and later than most people assume — but the money and the status are two separate questions and only one of them has a fixed date. Portugal's fund subscription must be held five years and the fund itself decides liquidity. Malta requires the qualifying property for five years, after which any residential property in Malta or Gozo, owned or rented, will do. Greece sets no separate holding term at all: the permit renews only while you still own the property, so the term is however long you want the status. The UAE forbids disposing of the property for the whole ten years and registers a lien to enforce it. What never comes back anywhere: government fees, contributions, transfer taxes and the Maltese donation.
What happens to the figures if the exchange rate moves?
For the UAE the threshold does not move and the euro figure does, because the law is written in dirhams: AED 2,000,000 is the requirement, and the €490,000 beside it on this site is that amount at a rate of 4.08. If the rate moves, the euro number is wrong and the dirham number is not — so treat the dirham as the requirement and the euro as an illustration. The euro thresholds have their own kind of drift: Portugal's state fees are indexed automatically every 1 March under article 3 of the tariff, against the previous year's consumer price index excluding housing. Nobody publishes an announcement when that happens. The figures on this page are the ones in force after the 1 March 2026 step.
Property as a route
The route most people arrive expecting — and the one that has narrowed most in three years.
Can I get residency without buying property?
Yes, in four of the five. Portugal removed property from its Golden Visa in 2023 altogether — what is left is funds and job creation. Greece, Cyprus and Malta allow alternative routes, but their thresholds are usually higher.
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Where does property still work as a route?
Greece, Malta, the UAE and Cyprus — not Portugal, and not partly. Article 53 of Lei 56/2023 repealed both Portuguese property options outright, and article 3(5) goes further: it bars any investment aimed at real estate even indirectly, which closes the property-fund workaround people still ask about. Greece requires one single property of at least 120 m² of principal space, and several properties may no longer be added together to reach a threshold — they could before 2024, and guidance written earlier still says so. The UAE is the opposite: one or more properties may be combined to reach AED 2,000,000, confirmed by both the Land Department and GDRFA.
Can I let the property out?
In Greece, not short-term, and the sanction is heavier than usually reported: article 100 §7A bans sharing-economy letting and sub-letting, and a breach both revokes the permit and carries a €50,000 fine. Long-term letting is not banned there. On Malta the restriction comes from a different instrument — the ministerial permit a non-EU buyer needs for almost every purchase allows the property to be used as the buyer's own home only, so it may not be let at all, and that condition falls away inside a Special Designated Area. For the UAE we state nothing: no authority page addresses letting the qualifying property in either direction, and we will not fill that silence with what portals assume.
Can I buy off-plan?
We do not know, and neither does anyone else publishing an answer. This is the clearest example on the site of what our method actually costs. For the UAE we checked the Land Department, GDRFA, the federal identity authority and the federal portal again on 25 August 2026: not one mentions off-plan or under-construction property in either direction. Portals answer this question confidently; no primary source supports either answer, so ours is that no primary source publishes it. For Greece the statute is also silent, but two conditions bear against it — a measurable 120 m² and full ownership with the price paid before filing. That is a question for written confirmation from the Ministry, not for a website.
Can I buy with a mortgage?
In the UAE yes, explicitly: both the Land Department and GDRFA accept a mortgaged property, with a letter from the bank confirming it does not object and stating the amount paid and the balance. No minimum paid-down share applies on the AED 2,000,000 investor route — that requirement belongs to the separate retirement route. In Greece the statute says less than agencies do: article 100 §5 regulates the channel a payment must take, a bank account or payment provider operating in Greece, and says nothing about where the money comes from or about borrowing. For Malta and Portugal no provision addresses financing at all, so we state nothing rather than infer.
The other routes
Portugal has five that are not property. Almost nobody writing about Portugal lists more than one.
What is the fund route, and how does it differ from property?
You subscribe €500,000 to a Portuguese collective investment vehicle that is not a property fund, hold it at least five years, and at least 60% of it must sit in companies seated in Portugal. The differences that matter are three. You own units, not a thing — there is nothing to visit, insure or repair. You cannot decide when to exit; the fund's own terms do, which is why “five years” is a floor and not a plan. And the value can fall, which property can also do but feels different when it is a line on a statement. In exchange there is no transfer tax, no notary and no 120 m² to measure.
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What routes exist besides property and funds?
In Portugal, four more, and they are the least-written-about part of the whole comparison. Ten jobs created — eight in a low-density area — with no capital threshold at all. €500,000 into research, or €400,000 in a low-density area. €250,000 into cultural heritage, or €220,000 in a low-density area. €500,000 into a company that creates five permanent jobs. The route people still ask for, the €1.5 million capital transfer, no longer exists: it was repealed along with the property options in 2023. The jobs route is the one worth a second look — it is the only entry on this site with no money threshold written into it.
Checked against Portugal
Is a bank deposit enough anywhere?
No — not in any of the five, as a route in its own right. Portugal's capital-transfer option, the closest thing that ever existed to “park money and get a permit”, was repealed in 2023. What does exist, and gets confused with it, is a wealth test: Malta asks the main applicant to show assets of €500,000 of which €150,000 is financial, or €650,000 of which €75,000 is. That is a condition you satisfy alongside the investment, not instead of it — money you prove you have, not money you hand over.
Checked against Malta
Which route leaves the fewest obligations afterwards?
Portugal's jobs route, on paper, because it has no capital to keep tied up — but it substitutes an obligation that is harder, not easier: ten actual jobs that have to keep existing through every renewal. Of the routes that involve money rather than employment, the UAE's asks least during the ten years and most at the end of them, since the property may not be disposed of at all and a lien is registered to make sure. The honest ranking is not between routes but between kinds of burden: capital locked up, a thing to maintain, or people employed. Pick the one you would not resent in year four.
Family
Where the published rules and the statutes diverge most — particularly on children.
Who counts as family?
A spouse and dependent children everywhere; parents in four of the five, and grandparents in one. Portugal takes the spouse, minor or incapacitated children, adopted minors, adult unmarried dependent children who are studying, direct first-degree ascendants of either spouse if dependent, and minor siblings under guardianship. Greece takes the spouse or civil partner, unmarried children under 21 of either spouse, the direct ascendants of both spouses, and adult children lacking legal capacity. Malta goes furthest: it takes a parent or grandparent of the applicant or the spouse, if principally dependent. The UAE takes spouse, children and parents. Everywhere the dependency has to be shown, not asserted.
Up to what age do children qualify?
It depends what you mean by an age, and in Portugal the honest answer is that there is not one. Article 99 of the Portuguese act contains no age figure at all — not 18, not 21, not the 26 that agencies routinely publish. The test is unmarried, dependent, and studying. Greece does set a number: under 21. Malta sets none for an adult child either, only that they be unmarried, not economically active and principally dependent. The UAE is the one place with a hard cap and it is asymmetric: sons up to 25, unmarried daughters with no age limit at all.
What happens when a child no longer qualifies?
Greece is the only one of the four that writes it down, and its answer is the most generous: at 21 the child receives an independent three-year permit, renewable once for another three, after which the statute says plainly that no further renewal is allowed and a change of category is needed. Malta removes that person alone — the certificate is returned within a month and reissued corrected, and the rest of the family is untouched — but offers no independent status to the child. Portugal has no rule that turning any age ends anything; what ends is the ground for the next renewal, unless an autonomous title has already accrued. For the UAE, nothing: no authority page states what happens when a sponsored son passes 25, and we will not invent it.
Can I include my parents?
In all four we checked, and in two of them the in-laws too. Greece includes the direct ascendants of both spouses, in the statute's own plural. Malta includes a parent or grandparent of the applicant or the spouse, on proof of principal dependency, and charges €7,500 for each. Portugal includes direct first-degree ascendants of the resident or spouse if dependent, at the full €8,418.90 issuing fee each. The UAE includes parents, and here the authority contradicts the market: the Land Department's own tariff carries a line for a parents' residence permit for ten years at AED 5,774.50 — the same ten-year term as the investor's, not the one-year renewable arrangement usually described.
Does my spouse have to invest too?
No, anywhere here. One qualifying investment covers the whole application; the spouse joins as a family member, on a permit that begins and ends with the main applicant's. Greece and Malta say so in structure rather than in a single sentence — family reunification is a separate legal basis attaching to the resident, not a test each person passes. Greece additionally allows spouses to hold the qualifying property jointly, which is an option and not a requirement, and is sometimes reported as though it were the latter. What the spouse does pay is fees: full rate in Portugal, exempt in Malta, AED 5,774.50 in the UAE.
Process and timelines
Where published timelines and real ones part company, and what happens if the answer is no.
Why do published timelines differ so much from real ones?
Because the published number is usually the statutory deadline and the real one is the queue. Portugal is the clearest case on this site: article 82(5) allows 90 days for a decision, and in practice filing to biometrics runs 6–24 months and biometrics to card another 6–18, with roughly 30,000 cases pending at AIMA on 4 August 2026. Both numbers are true and only one describes your year. Greece removes the sting differently — its statute sets no issuing deadline at all, but the confirmation issued when you file already confers lawful residence and the permit's rights until a decision comes, which is why a long Greek wait costs less than a long Portuguese one.
How many times do I have to travel there?
At least once, everywhere, and the reason is always the same: biometrics cannot be given by proxy. Greece lets a lawyer file before you ever enter the country, on a power of attorney executed at a Greek consulate or abroad with an apostille — but the biometric step still needs you. Malta requires the main applicant and every dependant to travel after the Letter of Final Approval, with infants up to two exempt. The UAE puts the medical examination inside the application itself: its own published steps are attend a service centre, submit and pay, take the medical, receive the permit by email. Portugal we do not state, because the authority's own procedural pages were unreachable when we checked.
What happens if I am refused?
It depends where, and the spread is the widest of any question here. Greece has a real appeal: two months from service of the decision, a €50 filing fee, a decision within 30 days. Malta has none at all — regulation 19(1) states that any decision of the Agency is made at its absolute discretion, is final, and is not subject to appeal, and the Agency's own FAQ repeats it in plain words. Portugal requires a refusal to be notified with its grounds and to state the right of judicial challenge and its deadline, but the deadline itself sits in general administrative law rather than in the immigration act, and we have not verified that figure to a primary source, so we do not print one. For the UAE no authority describes a refusal procedure at all — only a general complaints channel.
Can I apply myself, without an adviser?
On Malta, no — and it is the only one of the five where that is a legal requirement rather than a practical one. Regulation 4(1) states that an individual making any application under the programme shall use the services of an agent, and the agent must be licensed; since the 2025 amendment they are licensed directly by the Agency. Everywhere else the choice is yours, and the practical answer differs from the legal one: a file that sits in a queue for two years is a file somebody has to chase.
Checked against Malta
Living there and taxes
Two questions people merge into one, and a relief that does not apply to the permit most readers hold.
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 special tax regimes exist, and do I qualify?
Three, and the most advertised one has a condition that removes most readers of this page. Greece's non-dom regime charges €100,000 a year on foreign income plus €20,000 per family member for up to fifteen years — but it requires a €500,000 investment within three years, and the golden visa does not count towards it: the relief attaches to a different permit entirely, the investment-activity permit under the old article 16. Portugal's IFICI gives 20% on Portuguese employment and business income from a qualifying activity for ten years, with registration due by 15 January of the year after residency, and it excludes pensions and blacklisted-jurisdiction income, taxing those at 35%. Malta's is the remittance basis: foreign income is taxed when brought in.
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.
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Will my own country still tax me?
Almost certainly, until you stop being its tax resident — and getting a permit elsewhere does not by itself do that. Two countries can both consider you resident in the same year, which is what double-taxation treaties exist to resolve, usually by a sequence of tests: permanent home, then centre of vital interests, then habitual abode, then nationality. Some countries also charge an exit tax on unrealised gains when residence ends. None of this is a reason not to proceed; it is a reason to ask your own accountant before, rather than after. This is one of the few questions on this page where the answer that matters is not in any of the five statutes.
The path to citizenship
The reason most people are here, and the part that changed most recently.
Do the golden-visa years count towards citizenship?
In Greece yes, with a wrinkle worth knowing about. The Ministry of the Interior's own codified Citizenship Code lists the investment-activity residence permit among the categories that count as qualifying lawful residence — but the cross-reference still points at article 16 of Law 4251/2014, a law repealed and replaced in 2023. It is a gap in the state's own legislative housekeeping rather than an exclusion on the merits, and it is the kind of thing worth having in writing before relying on it. Everywhere the years counted are years of actual residence, not years of holding a card: a status requiring a few days a year accrues nothing on its own.
Checked against CitizenshipGreece
Do I need the language, and at what level?
Yes everywhere it leads to a passport, and the levels differ more than the marketing suggests. Greece is the hardest: B1 Greek plus history, geography, culture and institutions, in one exam, passed at 70% overall with at least 66% on the language section. Portugal's nationality act asks only for “sufficient knowledge, proven by test or certificate” — the A2 level everyone quotes is not in that act at all but in the implementing decree, and nationals of Portuguese-speaking countries are presumed to satisfy it. Malta asks for adequate knowledge of Maltese or English, with no level named in the statute. That last one is a real advantage and it is rarely presented as one.
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Can I keep my current passport?
Yes in all four that grant citizenship, though by three different mechanisms. Portugal simply disregards the others: where someone holds two or more nationalities and one is Portuguese, only the Portuguese one has effect under Portuguese law, and no renunciation is asked for. Malta says it outright — it is lawful to be a citizen of Malta and of another country at the same time. Greece is the conditional one: Greek nationality is lost on voluntarily acquiring a foreign one only with ministerial permission, so passive dual nationality triggers no automatic loss. The UAE permits a naturalised citizen to retain the original nationality, on condition of notifying the state. The question that actually decides this is what your own country allows.
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Is citizenship by investment available in any of these five?
No. Not any more, and the change is recent enough that it is still being sold. Malta was the one, and Act XXI of 2025 abolished it; what remains there is naturalisation on the basis of merit, which is a different instrument with a different threshold and is not a purchase. Cyprus ended its own scheme earlier. The UAE naturalises by nomination, at discretion, through the courts of the rulers and the cabinet — that is not a route an investor can plan around, whatever the brochure implies. If somebody offers you a passport for money in any of these five today, that is the single most useful signal you will get about them.
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What can go wrong
Three programmes changed under people already in the queue, in three years. Here is what that looked like.
What if the rules change after I apply?
Has that actually happened?
Four times in three years, across three of the five — Portugal twice. In 2023 Portugal removed property from its Golden Visa outright and repealed the €1.5 million capital transfer with it. In September 2024 Greece replaced one €250,000 threshold with three tiers reaching €800,000, and stopped allowing several properties to be added together. In 2025 Malta abolished citizenship by investment. In May 2026 Portugal raised the years to citizenship from five to seven or ten, which changed the arithmetic for everybody already holding a permit and counting. None of these were rumours; each is a numbered statute with a gazette date, and each is on our sources page.
Checked against PortugalGreeceMaltaCitizenship
Can I sell and keep the permit?
Not while you still need the permit, and the mechanisms differ in a way that matters. Greece is explicit: on resale the seller's permit is revoked at the same moment the buyer becomes eligible for one of their own. Portugal is gentler than it is usually described — early divestment is not among the grounds for cancelling a permit at all; what happens is that the next two-yearly renewal fails, because renewal requires proving the investment is still there. Malta allows the qualifying property to be swapped for another with the Agency's consent, but a breach can end the certificate for the applicant and every dependant at once. The UAE simply forbids disposal for ten years and registers a lien so that you cannot.
What if the investment loses value?
The status usually survives; the money does not come back. The thresholds are tested at the moment of investment, not marked to market each year, so a property that has fallen or a fund that has dropped does not by itself cost you the permit — what costs you the permit is not having the asset at all. The real exposure is different and less discussed: you cannot sell into a falling market without losing the status, which is precisely the moment you would want to. That constraint is the price of the route, and it is worth pricing before rather than after. Nobody in this market publishes a guarantee against it, and anyone who implies one is selling.
How do I tell a serious adviser from a bad one?
Four tests, and they cost you nothing to run. Ask for the article — a serious adviser names the statute and the paragraph; a bad one names a brochure. Ask what has changed in the last year; anyone still quoting Portugal's five years to citizenship, or a single €250,000 Greek threshold, has not read anything since 2023. Ask what they do not know: a person who has no unverified answers is not being careful, they are guessing confidently. And ask who pays them, and how much, before anything else. On Malta a licensed agent is compulsory by regulation, so at least the licence can be checked; everywhere else nothing stops anyone from calling themselves one.
About this site
Who is behind the figures, how the money works, and what we refuse to publish.
Where do your figures come from?
From the statute, the ministry tariff or the official fee schedule each one is supposed to rest on, read back one at a time on 23 August 2026, with every citation published on our sources page: law number, article, gazette issue and date. Thirty-three checks. Fourteen came back wrong and were corrected. Four could not be established from any primary source and are therefore published as figures nowhere on this site. Where the only readable copy of a text is a legal database rather than the gazette itself, the source is labelled a reproduction rather than official, because the difference matters on a page whose whole argument is primary sources.
How often do you recheck them?
Not on a schedule, and we would rather say that than claim one. Everything was checked in a single sitting on 23 August 2026, and that date is printed at the top of the sources page precisely so you can judge how stale it is without asking us. Competitors in this market publish methodology sentences — one promises to recheck every programme against its regulator every 30 to 120 days — and there is no way for you to verify any of them. We could write the same sentence in a minute and it would be worth exactly as much. When a rolling recheck exists here, it will be visible as dated entries rather than as a promise.
How do you make money?
By passing enquiries to law firms and relocation advisers in these jurisdictions, who pay us for the introduction. That is the whole model, and it has an obvious bias built into it: we earn when you contact somebody, so we have an incentive to make every route look worth pursuing. The defence against that is the one thing we can actually show you — that the figures are checked against the statute and published with their citations, including the fourteen that came back wrong and the four we cannot verify at all. You are entitled to weigh what we say knowing how we are paid, which is why this answer is on the page rather than in a footer.
Do you sell any of these programmes yourselves?
No. We are not a licensed agent anywhere, we do not file applications, we do not sell property, funds or advice, and we hold no mandate from any government or developer. This is the structural reason a comparison here can say things a country-specific agency cannot — that Malta is the most expensive of the five and allows no appeal, that Cyprus we would not choose today, that Portugal's real waiting time bears no relation to its statutory one. An agency that sells one of these five is not free to write that sentence, however honest the people are.
What do you deliberately not publish?
Four figures, and naming them is the point of this answer. Malta's processing time — no primary source publishes one, so the widely quoted four to six months appears nowhere on this site. Whether off-plan property qualifies in the UAE — rechecked across four authorities on 25 August 2026, still nothing in either direction. And two Cypriot figures: the threshold in its regulation 6(2) and the reduced VAT rate with its limits. Each of those is a question we get asked and could answer plausibly in one sentence. A plausible answer is what everyone else publishes, and it is indistinguishable from a true one right up until it costs somebody money.