The Spanish Government is to end the so-called Golden Visa scheme on April 3.
The Golden Visa was introduced in 2013 and allows anyone of good character outside the EU to apply for residency in Spain and gain unrestricted access to the Schengen area of Europe. The only requirement is an investment of at least €500,000 in Spain.
This includes a simple investment in property. However, this investment can’t be via a mortgage, so you’d need to pay €500,000 without leveraging a mortgage loan to do so.
A Golden Visa provides the same rights to the applicant’s partner/spouse and any dependent children under 18 years of age. The initial residency is for two years, which can then be extended by a further five years if all the original conditions are still met. You can then apply for permanent residency and thereafter citizenship.
After that point, no new visa applications will be accepted, however applications which have been submitted but not approved will continue to be processed. This is a relief to many people who are currently in the application process, and gives people three months to purchase a property, or make the required minimum investment of €500,000, and get their applications in.
Experts say that anyone investing in property to get the Golden Visa before the application deadline, needs to move quickly to choose and purchase the property.
The purchase must be finalised before the Golden Visa application can be submitted, and you will typically need six to eight weeks from choosing the property and making an offer to completing on the sale. This means that you need to aim to find the property and put an offer in this month.
This news is certainly encouraging anyone who has been considering this visa to get moving and accelerate their search. Since the announcement we’ve been inundated with fresh enquiries with budget levels between 500,000 and one million, which would qualify for the Golden Visa. January is typically a quiet month, which takes time to get moving, but we’ve already seen a 20-30% uplift in leads in January.
If you’re still hoping to take advantage of the Golden Visa, my advice is to get on with it!
Find a specialist that can help you with submitting the visa and start gathering the paperwork you need and filling in the forms. Also, get serious with your property search and try and make an offer before the end of the month, to ensure you don’t get caught out by the deadline.
However, it’s important to note, that the end of the Golden Visa is not the end of non-EU citizens living in Spain, as there are several other alternatives. You can be in Spain 90 days out of every 180 days, just on a tourist visa. Or if you want to make the permanent move, you can choose between the lucrative and the non-lucrative visa options or even the digital nomad visa if you are working remotely for a company outside of Spain.
Sean Woolley is the Founder and Director of leading real estate agency Cloud Nine Spain.Â