Decongesting the Golden Visa application backlog

New imperishable capitalist residence permits done the Golden Visa programme soared 112% successful the archetypal 8 months of the year, compared with 2024, arsenic the process of decongesting the thousands of pending applications accumulated implicit the past two years progresses.

According to information from the Migration and Asylum Ministry, by the extremity of August, 5,555 caller residence permits had been issued, compared to 2,623 permits issued successful the aforesaid play successful 2024.

Of course, aft the concern frenzy of 2023 and 2024, the volume of pending applications remains very large, arsenic they magnitude to 11,692, a fig that will statesman to gradually diminution successful the coming months. Already successful caller months, there has been a important diminution successful the fig of caller applications for residence permits, peaking successful August this year, when lone 288 applications were submitted, a fig that was 43% little than the 504 applications successful the corresponding period past year. A 23.75% driblet successful the fig of caller applications was besides recorded successful July (549 compared to 720 applications successful July 2024).

Overall, successful the archetypal 8 months of this year, there has been a marginal summation successful caller applications, with 5,333 compared to 5,290, which is owed to the information that 2,072 applications were submitted successful the archetypal two months of the year. This is due to the fact that there was an end-of-February deadline to motion the last existent property acquisition and merchantability contracts based connected the erstwhile authorities of the programme – i.e. with the little concern limits (500,000 euros for Athens, the bluish and southern suburbs, and €250,000 for the remainder of Attica).

Based connected the applicable data, from the start of the programme until August this year, 17,724 imperishable capitalist permits had been granted and different 6,158 renewals (after the extremity of the archetypal 5 years) – i.e. a total of 23,882 permits – while different 11,692 applications are pending, which, if approved, will summation the total fig of permits to 35,574. This fig corresponds to a minimum concern successful the existent property marketplace of €8.89 billion.

Today, the bulk of caller applications interest residences extracurricular Attica (e.g. non-island vacation properties), but besides purchases of residences that person resulted from a alteration of use.