Greece · Residency by investment
Greece Golden Visa: 800,000 euros in Athens, 400,000 in the rest of the country
Spain closed its program in 2025 and Portugal dropped property in 2023. Greece kept real estate and raised the price instead, and the tax on buying it is set to quintuple in July 2027.
Buy in and Greece hands you a five-year permit that covers your spouse, your children and both sets of parents. It never asks you to show up. Here's what the three price tiers require, what the purchase costs on top, and the tax change with a 2027 date on it.
Three prices and one zero
800,000 euros
Attica, Thessaloniki, the big islands
A single unit, 120 square meters of main space or more
400,000 euros
Everywhere else in Greece
Same single-unit and floor-area rules apply
250,000 euros
Conversions and listed buildings only
No size floor, but the work has to be done before you file
0 days
Time you owe Greece each year
Absence is no obstacle to renewal, says the statute
The tiers
Where you buy decides what you pay
Law 5100/2024 retired the flat 250,000 euro price in August 2024. A map replaced it.
The 800,000 euro zone
That's the whole Region of Attica, which quietly includes Piraeus, plus the Regional Unit of Thessaloniki, Mykonos, Santorini, and any island whose population tops 3,100. Crete, Corfu, Rhodes and Zakynthos all sit inside it. The money goes into a single unit carrying 120 square meters or more of main-use space. Parking and storage don't count toward that floor. Their price can count toward the money if they sit on the same deed.
The 400,000 euro half of the country
Everything else. Same single-unit rule, same floor-area test. That covers the Peloponnese, Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia outside Thessaloniki and the small islands.
The 250,000 door
Still open anywhere in Greece, for two things only: a commercial building you turn into housing, and a listed building you restore. The change of use has to be finished before you file, and no size floor applies. A property gets that rate once. The buyer after you pays the standard tier.
The rulebook is a circular, not a law
Much of what a Greek case officer applies in 2026 comes from Circular No. 1/2026, signed on April 22 by the Ministry of Migration and Asylum. Thirty-one pages, settling arguments that used to go differently office by office. Spouses and registered partners can meet one threshold through one jointly owned property. The 120 square meter test counts usable interior space. And the short-term rental ban doesn't reach back to homes bought under the old rules.
The 2027 number
A tax nobody has voted on yet
On 6 September 2026, at the Thessaloniki International Fair, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the transfer tax on homes bought by non-EU nationals would go from 3 percent to 15. Every golden visa buyer is, by definition, a non-EU national.
Run the arithmetic. An 800,000 euro Athens apartment carries about 24,700 euros of transfer tax today, once the municipal surcharge is counted. At the new rate it carries roughly 120,000 euros. A 400,000 euro purchase moves from about 12,400 to 60,000, and a 250,000 conversion from about 7,700 to 37,500.
Now, here's the part the headlines skip. No bill has been published and Parliament hasn't voted. The Prime Minister's speech pointed at January 1, 2027; the Ministry of National Economy and Finance later said July 1. As announced, it hits individuals instead of companies and homes, not offices or land, and it exempts EU citizens and long-term residents. The fund and deposit routes involve no transfer at all. A signed deed locks the current rate. A reservation or a paid deposit does not.
Greece Golden Visa
Grants residency through property investment, with access to the Schengen Zone. Family members can be included. Residency is renewable every five years as long as the investment is maintained.
- Government cost
- $250,000
- Processing time
- ~60 days
- Timeline
- 5 years (renewable)
- Difficulty
- Moderate
About that data card
That 250,000 carries a dollar sign, and it's neither dollars nor current. It's euros, and it's the price Greece charged before August 2024. Difficulty reads Easy because the label map buckets a 3 out of 10 that way, which files the route asking 800,000 euros beside the one asking 3,500 euros a month. Sixty days isn't a processing time anyone recognizes in 2026, either. We've filed corrections for all three.
The money
It has to be yours, and it has to be paid first
Borrowed money doesn't count toward the threshold. The qualifying amount moves from your own account, or from a company you own outright, into the seller's Greek account, and the deed records how it was paid. The property has to be clear of any mortgage or lien the day you file. That's the rule that kills a financed purchase. You can mortgage the place afterwards; plenty of buyers borrow at home against other assets instead.
Circular 1/2026 leaned hard on this. The ministry now asks whether the price on the deed matches the real transaction and whether the money traces back to you.
First you'll need a Greek tax number, an AFM, and a Greek bank account. A lawyer holding power of attorney can run nearly all of it while you stay home, and you fly in once for biometrics. Add roughly 6 to 9 percent of the price for transfer tax, notary, lawyer, registry and an agent. None of that counts toward the threshold itself. Government fees are small beside it: 2,000 euros from the main applicant, about 150 from each adult relative, 16 a card, nothing for children under 18.
One investment, three generations
A spouse or partner
Same-sex marriage has been legal in Greece since February 2024, and a registered partnership counts too.
Children under 21
Their permits run alongside yours and can usually stretch toward 24 while they stay dependent.
Parents, on both sides
Yours and your spouse's, with no extra investment and no dependency test to clear.
The limits
What it still won't get you
A job in Greece
The permit carries no right to work for a Greek employer or to trade as a sole proprietor. You can own companies, hold shares, take dividends and sit on a board without an executive role. You can't be the company's legal representative or do its work.
Rental income from tourists
Renting the qualifying property through a booking platform is banned. The penalty is a 50,000 euro fine and a revoked permit, and subletting is out too. Long-term letting is fine, and Greece taxes that rent whether or not you live there.
A Greek passport
Renewals ignore absence, so the permit survives on a once-a-year visit. Naturalization doesn't. It wants seven years of residence at 183 days or more a year, then an exam on Greek at B1 plus the country's history, geography and institutions. Stay away and none of those years count.
Bring in help before the money moves
Arton Capital
Golden Visas
Arton runs investor-residency files across several countries and lists Greece among them. Worth a call for the unglamorous part: the source-of-wealth file, and what the ministry's 2026 push on traceable payments means for it.
Moneycorp
Currency Exchange
This is one large transfer rather than a monthly habit, and it has to arrive from your own account with a paper trail behind it. Kelly Cutchin's team prices the euro leg and can hold a rate ahead of the deed date.
Beacon Global Advisors
Financial Planning
Owning Greek property changes nothing about your U.S. filing, and a flat Greek lump-sum tax is an awkward fit with the foreign tax credit. Beacon handles cross-border money for Americans. Ask them before you elect anything.
The questions that come up first
Can I get a mortgage to buy a Greek Golden Visa property?
Not for the qualifying amount. Greece wants the threshold paid in full from your own funds before the application goes in, and the property must be clear of any mortgage that day. You can borrow against it once the permit issues, and many investors take a loan at home instead.
Do I have to live in Greece to keep the permit?
No. Greek law states that absence from the country is no obstacle to renewal, so the permit rolls over on a five-year cycle while you still hold the investment. The cost of that freedom is citizenship: naturalization counts days you were physically in Greece, and a once-a-year visitor accrues none of them.
What is the minimum investment for a Greek Golden Visa right now?
It turns on where you buy. In Attica, the Thessaloniki regional unit and on any island above 3,100 people, an ordinary home has to cost 800,000 euros. Across the rest of Greece the figure is 400,000. Either way it has to be one unit of 120 square meters or more. Conversions and listed-building restorations stay at 250,000.
Will the 15 percent property tax apply to me?
Only if you buy after it becomes law. Greece announced a rise from 3 percent to 15 for non-EU individuals buying homes, and the Finance Ministry has pointed at 1 July 2027. Nothing has been published or voted on, and elections are due that spring. Only a completed transfer fixes today's rate, not a reservation.
How long does the application take in 2026?
A well-prepared file has been running four to six months, down from nine to twelve in 2024. Attica is the slow exception at twelve to sixteen months. You can stay in Greece on the submission receipt while the card is produced, and since February the five-year term starts when that card is issued rather than when you filed.
Does buying in make me a Greek taxpayer?
Not on its own. Tax residency follows where you live, and crossing 183 days in Greece triggers it. Rent from a Greek property is taxed there regardless. If you do move, Greece offers a flat 100,000 euros a year on foreign income to people who invest 500,000 euros or more and weren't tax resident there for seven of the previous eight years.
Can my parents get residency too?
Yes, and so can your spouse's parents. One investment covers a spouse or registered partner, unmarried children under 21 and the parents on both sides, with no dependency test. Of the 79,056 permits Greece had issued through December 2025, 51,270 went to family members rather than investors.
You can buy a residence permit. You can't buy the fit.
A few questions about your budget, your timing and who's coming, and you'll see which countries actually suit you.
Why not you?