New Law - Spanish Government To Grant Residency with a updated Price €500,000 Property

The new price of Spanish Residency is €500,000 or €2000,000.

The long wait is over. Now you can get automatic Spanish residency, as a foreigner if you buy a property worth a minimum of half a million Euros.or buy Spanish debt for two million Euros or more.

The Spanish Government was left reeling following heavy critizism by the European Union when they published an automatic house-for-residency programme last November. The reason? The very low property price threshold set by the impending law of €160,000.

Now, that value has been set at €500,000 and it appears that this time it is going to happen, according to El Economista.

The draft proposal establishes that the family will also be eligible and the residency will be indefinite for as long as the investment is maintained.

An additional possibility contemplated by the law establishes that a minimum investment of €1,000,000 and 2 workers will give the right to automatic residency, or €500,000 if the investment is kept yearly.  There is also the possibility to combine different types of investments to attain the half  million mark.

According to the sources, the residency programme will not be retrospective, “as demanded by the Russians”.

Finally, the draft leaves out the right to Spanish State medical cover and education, social beneftis and, rather strangely, the freedom to travel around the Schengen countries (which would breach EU laws on the matter).

The Spanish Government has officialy released its plan to bring Spain out of the recession by offering residency to non-EU citizens who buy property worth over €160,000. The specific conditions are yet to be legislated on but the Secretary of Commerce, Jaime García-Legaz, has indicated that the property value is “balanced” and will not give rise to a massive demand for residency permits. He also said that the proposition is directed at the Chinese and Russian markets.

Three things we would like to comment on:

If this is to happen, Spain risks being again a victim of its own success because the demand for property in Spain can be unprecedented, far more than in the boom years.

China and Russia will only be tip of the iceberg as their citizens currently find less problems in obtaining tourist visas than citizens of countries like say Iran, Pakistan, Egypt etc.

If this proposition is finally approved, raising property taxes may not be a bad idea altogether.

We can hope is that Spain will now be able to learn from its previous mistakes and manage the potential masses of property buyers more intelligently by implementing rigid controls on property developers – banning the dodgy ones of course-, real estate agencies and other connected professionals.

The latest move by the Spanish Government has been to announce that, after much consideration, they will grant residency to families buying a property worth €500,000 and above, as was approved on Friday the 24th of May. But beware, this pre-law has not been been published in the official gazzete (www.boe.es) so even after this press release, professionals in the sector need to be cautious because as of yet, buying a property over 500,000 (cash-no mortgage) will yet not secure residency, and it is not going to be retrospectively applied!

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