Greece has become the new golden visa haven in Europe with staggering amount of residence permits issued every year for property investment.
The Greek golden visa (GGV) scheme remains the most popular residence by investment scheme in Europe. For a property investment of 250,000 Greece issues permanent residence permits to investors and all their family members.
New data published by Enterprise Greece and Migration office reveals shocking number of golden visas issued for 2020. As you can see, the number of residence permits issued in just two months upto Feb 2020, surpasses that of the entire volume of permits for 2019. That is 6,692 golden visas issued to investors up in Jan-Feb 2020 alone.
Looking more closely on the numbers, for 2019, Greece issued golden visas on average of 556 permits for investors every month. For 2020, this average number is already six times more.
We believe the sudden increase in volume corresponds to the 2019 pending applications approved in 2020
Please note the the statistical data provided by Enterprise Greece above correspond to/reflect the valid residence permits at the moment of their extraction from the database of the Ministry of Migration and Asylum.Therefore, at any subsequent data extraction, the number of valid residence permits per month or per year may increase, given the fact that pending applications are examined by the competent services during the period between two consecutive data extraction dates and relevant new residence permits are issued, with an effective date retroactively corresponding to the date of submission of the application by the interested party.
| ΥΕΑR | INVESTOR RESIDENCE PERMITS |
| 2014 | 364 |
| 2015 | 784 |
| 2016 | 1271 |
| 2017 | 2230 |
| 2018 | 4069 |
| 2019 | 6681 |
| Feb. 2020 | 6692 |
| Total | 22,091 |
The total residence permits issued to investors since the inception of GV scheme surpasses 22,000. Assuming each investor invested €250,000 per golden visa, this brings the total investment to €5.5 billion euros invested under GGV scheme far exceeding the investments raised by Portugal.
Portugal on the other hand in Jan 2020, issued only 81 golden visas to mostly chinese and russians. Portugal reported collecting €5 billion in investments under ARI/Golden visa scheme as of Jan 2020,
