94% of Golden visas in Portugal issued for property investment

Portugal golden visa scheme officially known as ARI (Authorisation for Residency in Investment activity) came into existence in Oct 8 2012. Since then the scheme has brought  3.5 billion euros of real estate investment alone.  Portugal’s golden visa investment totalled 52.8 million euros in June 2018 in June, up 34.6 percent from the previous year reported Xinhuanet.com.

As of 30 June 2018 , 6017 residence permits (94.4%) issued for property buyers. Only 341 residence permits issued for capital transfer, according to SEF office.  Chinese and Brazilians bring the investment to Portugal.

Foreigners are required to invest atleast 350K euros buying a property in Portugal. In Lisbon this requirement is 500K euros. The property must be held for five years.

According to SEF, investors of golden visa scheme are entitled to:

• Residence visa waiver for entering Portugal;
• Living and working in Portugal, on condition that they stay in Portugal for a period of 7 or more days, in the first year, and 14 or more days, in the subsequent years;
• Visa exemption for travelling within the Schengen Area;
• Family reunification
• Applying for permanent residence (pursuant to the Aliens Act – Act number 23/2007 of 4 July with the current wording );
• Applying for Portuguese citizenship, by naturalization, provided all other requirements set out by the Nationality Act are fulfilled (Act number 37/81 of 3 October, as amended);

Almost one in four properties sold were bought by foreigners, particularly French and Brazilian nationals, were responsible for many of the 150,000 property purchases registered in this country in 2017.

Further, about one in ten golden visa applications are rejected by SEF Portugal, which makes refusal rate 10%. Further, statistics reveal each golden visa applicant brings average two family members to Portugal through the golden visa scheme.

House sales

House sales in Portugal accelerated for the fifth consecutive year House Price Index (HPI) rose 12.2% in Q1 2018. Houses sales in Q1 2018 alone  exceeded the 5.4 billion euros, 25.7% more than in the first quarter of 2017, according to Statistics Portugal.

Lisbon alone contributed to 2.2 billion euros in Q1 2018.

A total of 40,716 dwellings were traded in the first three months of 2018, 15.7% more than the number of transactions recorded for the same period in 2017.

The below graph shows volume of transactions million (left) in terms of thousands of euros. Lisbon alone accounted for more than 50% of all the regions combined.

Housing prices