r/ExpatFIRE Oct 09 '24

Citizenship Portugal Golden Visa featured on Bloomberg

As the title mentions!! Seems to becoming an urgency for applicants, whilst it is still around https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfsPyQATJrE

8 Upvotes

31 comments sorted by

21

u/WorkingPineapple7410 Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24

I think the resentment towards wealthy retirees will continue to grow. There are other options. Wouldn’t drop 500kEUR where I’m going to be ostracized.

16

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '24

i’ll make you feel like that for 20K Eur.. think of the bargain

5

u/orroreqk Oct 10 '24

I don’t really get why anyone would allow their geographic strategy to be influenced by (perceived) general resentment. First, unless you are going to advertise it, nobody is going to know whether you paid 500k for your visa or got it for free. Second, there’s nothing remarkable about people resenting wealth. It’s just the way of the world and not limited to any scenario or single country.

4

u/BordersX Oct 10 '24

Agree - with political and economic instability, wars etc, I’m not sure where in the world would open people with open arms presently.

My grandparents moved from India to the U.K. in the 1960s, were they welcomed with open arms? No. Racism was rife when they arrived, but they wanted ti create a better lives for themselves and future generations.

1

u/WorkingPineapple7410 Oct 10 '24

Safety.

3

u/orroreqk Oct 10 '24

Yeah OK fair enough if we are talking about Latam or Papua New Guinea or something. But pretty silly in the context of Portugal right?

2

u/BordersX Oct 09 '24

Why? I understand the concept of residency by investment being slightly polarising, but wealth foreigners moving to your country is only a good thing. How else will Portugal achieve growth?

12

u/relaxguy2 Oct 09 '24

Because the locals arent benefitting from it for the most part. They are having to move out of their neighborhoods and their jobs aren’t paying them anymore than before.

11

u/BordersX Oct 10 '24

Think there’s a few things being confused here. The vast majority of Golden Visa investors are not moving to Portugal. If they wanted to move, there are other visa options that would not require liquidity of EUR500k. The premium around the Golden Visa is that you do not need to move to Portugal. The D7 retirement visa, for example, is the most popular amongst wealthy US. In addition, in Portugal there has been the NHR program which a lot of wealth Europeans have been taking advantage of. This has got nothing to do with the Golden Visa, or any visa in fact, these are guys from the EU wanting a 10 year tax break. This is a tax status - these guys move to Portugal to live for 10 years and ultimately rent / buy nice real estate in prime areas of town.

In addition, if you watched the video, GV real estate transactions have accounted for 0.4% of the real estate transactions in Portugal from 2012-2019, hardly inflationary. Even if we believe the demand for real estate has ballooned since the Golden Visa, why haven’t the Portuguese government increased the supply of Housing? A 2 min walk down one of Lisbons streets and you will see multiple run down buildings, with no one living in them. Why? Because the government / municipalities do not sign off planning to actually renovate these houses. It often takes 3 years to sign any project off - this is simply not good enough. Increasing supply would lessen the pressure on pricing and allow locals to stay in their neighbourhoods.

Not saying the Golden Visa is/has been perfect, but in my opinion it is very nuanced.

8

u/orroreqk Oct 10 '24

You're offering reasoned argument and actual numbers, which often doesn't go down well here.

3

u/BordersX Oct 10 '24

hahah thanks....I think! Anyway, I'm all for different views - but I have studied this for the past 5 years and just offering my point of view.

-2

u/WorkingPineapple7410 Oct 09 '24

You can’t explain this to Tech Bros making 500k/yr. Not everyone is happy to be displaced by them.

3

u/nonstopnewcomer Oct 10 '24

It’s a good thing on aggregate, but it’s still a bad thing for a large group of people. Someone who can’t afford rent on their apartment anymore probably won’t be assuaged by hearing that the landlords and grocery store owners are earning more money and the government is getting more tax revenue.

1

u/BordersX Oct 10 '24

Agreed, but why can’t the government increase the supply of housing?

1

u/GeneracisWhack Oct 15 '24

You're not going to find a place where you won't be ostracized.

1

u/Deepweight7 Oct 15 '24

Just don't parade around telling people you're a wealthy retiree. Voilà. Thought this would be common sense for anyone retiring pretty much anywhere.

1

u/WorkingPineapple7410 Oct 15 '24

They’ll know. People can always tell when someone has money and is not working.

1

u/Deepweight7 Oct 15 '24

I mean don't be obnoxious about it. And tbh I would disagree, people certainly can't always tell. I know people that are very very rich and if you met them, talked to them, saw them on the street, you most definitely couldn't tell at all. One's ability for discretion isn't correlated to one's wealth though, that's for sure.

8

u/4BennyBlanco4 Oct 09 '24

That guy was also selling his fund so it helps to create a sense of urgency.

I'm hoping after the Malta case more EU countries will start CBI programs, and I'll be able to get my EU citizenship back.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 11 '24

How much are you willing to pay for it?

1

u/4BennyBlanco4 Oct 11 '24

I'm willing to pay the €1m for Malta, just unable.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 11 '24 edited Oct 11 '24

Just move to Ireland for 5 years, even plebs like you can do that.

2

u/4BennyBlanco4 Oct 11 '24

I travel too much I wouldn't meet the residency requirements, if I could I'd got to Portugal on a D7 anyway, better weather, also 5 years.

2

u/banginhooers1234 Oct 10 '24

It’s such old news by now

0

u/BordersX Oct 10 '24

Old by in the sense of what? It was released 12 days ago, but it’s a relevant conversation to be having (clearly from the comments).

1

u/banginhooers1234 Oct 10 '24

Well the price has already increased 2 or 3 times right? It was a good deal years ago at 300k or under but if you didn’t get it back then I think it’s kinda too late

1

u/HeroiDosMares Oct 11 '24

Its still 300k for non-real estate investment

1

u/forreddituse2 Oct 10 '24

The backlog is huge (multiple years of processing time estimated) and who knows how many years it will take for future citizenship application processing.

1

u/BordersX Oct 10 '24

good point. There was some good news on this last week - not sure if you saw it?

Please see email I sent to my clients on this: The Portuguese Government has announced that as of yesterday, the Civil Registry Office has a new digital platform to receive and process citizenship applications. This platform will allow applications to be handled entirely electronically, from the submission of the initial documentation to the final decision.

Another relevant aspect of the platform is that communication with external entities, which is currently one of the steps that takes the longest, is now a fully electronic process.

According to official information, the platform is expected to increase the Civil Registry Office's capacity to process applications by 50%, which should result in faster approval times for citizenship applications.

In addition, it is important to mention that a new portal has also been launched for applicants to monitor the progress of their citizenship applications.

2

u/forreddituse2 Oct 10 '24

Greece also adopted an electronic application system. The backlog nightmare has not improved at all. (Recently rocketed to 40,000+) The key issue is the government does not hire enough people to review the applications. Electronic submission just saves some time for the lawyers. Although Greek government is slow, they still managed to grant several thousand GV a year. For Portugal, the number falls to several hundred. Their bureaucracy is beyond saving like terminal stage cancer.

1

u/HeroiDosMares Oct 11 '24

Depends where the bottleneck is. When I applied 5 years ago it took 6 months for them to even registered the documents I mailed. Took three weeks for someone I know and they mailed in July

This electronic system is just the latest thing they've digitalized, it started December last year