It’s time to look for an alternative destination.
Were you dreaming of moving to Spain on a golden visa?
If so, I sincerely hope you’re in Spain, living it up, because if not, it’s time to pivot to plan B, as Spain has officially killed its golden visa.
It had a nice twelve-year run, and for a time, it and its Iberian Peninsula neighbor Portugal were some of the leading European destinations for golden visas. They offered relatively affordable opportunities for individuals looking to leave the United States (as well as the U.K. and Canada). Now, the buy-in real estate requirement of €500K in Spain wasn’t exactly cheap, but with the cost of living significantly lower than that in the U.S., it provided a desirable opportunity for tens of thousands of expats and emigrants.
But those days are over. As of April 3, Spain has discontinued its golden visa program.
The current Spanish government, in an attempt to look tough in the mindset of a housing crisis, has swung its weight around without doing much to fix the problem. With it’s anti-tourism mindset, the powers that be have focused its aggression on long-term visa holders, shifting the housing market blame onto long-stay digital nomad visa holders, visitors, and golden visa recipients.
While the Spanish government says its goal is to address rental price increases, the reality is that the ending of the golden visa program will have little to no impact on the housing situation.
Between 2013 and 2023, a total of 14,576 golden visas were issued. With a real estate minimum of €500K, the properties purchased on these visas far exceeded what the average Spaniard could afford, so removing these homes would, at most, only impact high-income-earning residents. According to Idealista, there are currently over 45,000 homes for sale in Spain with at least a €1 million asking price. This means even if every single one of the 1,450 annual homes sold to golden visa holders went for over a million euros, it would make up just three percent of the high-cost properties.
If you were to take a wider view of the housing situation, Statista reported nearly 584,000 residential real…