Hong Kong is the city that has the most number of billionaires in the world. The recent protests and political instability in Hong Kong has driven many rich investors seek alternative residence in Europe, Canada and Australia. Many immigration companies have reported a significant spike in inquiries from Hong Kongers for golden visa schemes in Portugal and Greece.
According to the latest golden visa report we received from Greek migration office, since the start of golden visa scheme, up until August 2019, only five investors from Hong Kong have received permanent residence permits for real estate investment. Most of these investors are above age of 50, and these three invested in Athens, and others in Kalamata and Chania.
This goes on to show Greek golden visa program is still not popular with Hong Kongers, whilst extremely popular with mainland chinese.
As of Aug 2019, Greece has issued over 5,500 golden visas to property investors, of which 3,379 visas went to chinese investors.
European golden visa schemes face stiff competition with US, Canada and Australia attracting multi-millionaires.
Here is a quick summary of Hong Kongers acquiring golden visas in other countries.
- Only 200 HK nationals obtained EB-5 visas in 2018 (2.1% of visas used)
- Only 3.2% of Australia SIV visas went to HK nationals, while 88% went to Chinese
- Only 169 HK nationals acquired UK tier1 investor visas investing £2m as of June 2019
