Spain's luxury property market to be 'unaffected' by end of golden visa
For over a decade, Spain's golden visa has granted residency to non-EU citizens who purchased a property worth over €500,000 or invested large sums of money in Spanish banks or companies.
However, the residency scheme for wealthy foreigners is due to come to an end on April 3rd 2025.
According to Spain's left-wing government, one of the main reasons for scrapping el visado de oro is that it will allegedly help to bring down property prices for ordinary Spaniards.
Affluent non-EU property buyers have also been targeted by Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez when recently announcing plans to either tax non-residents at a rate of 100 percent when purchasing homes, or completely ban from buying Spanish properties.
"This doesn't make much sense because foreign investors are competing for housing that's out of the reach of middle-class or low-income locals," immigration and property lawyer Maryem Essadik, CEO of Barcelona-based Marfour Law, told The Local Spain.
And it seems that even with regard to Spain's luxury property sector, the confirmed end of the golden visa scheme is doing little to dissuade rich foreign buyers.
Citing examples in both the Balearic Islands and Madrid, real estate experts believe that that cancelling this visa option won't improve either the availability of high-class properties or their prices.
These two regions are where most of Spain's luxury properties are bought, along with Valencia and the Costa del Sol.
"There is excess demand in the Balearic archipelago for the purchase of luxury and super-luxury housing," the president of the Official College of Real Estate Agents (APIS) of the Balearic Islands, José Miguel Artieda told Spanish newspaper El Confidencial.
According to the expert, the majority of buyers who want to purchase luxury properties in the Mediterranean islands are from the EU anyway, although they are starting to become more popular with Americans too.
However, Artieda stresses that most of the US buyers are not looking to get their hands on the last of the golden visas as they simply purchase these villas and mansions for vacations or as an investment.
Hans Lenz, president of the Balearic National and International Real Estate Association, ABINI, and director of Engel & Völkers Mallorca, agrees with the aforementioned point.
In 2013, luxury home buyers in the Balearics who were granted golden visas mainly came from Russia, China and the Middle East, he explained to El Confidencial. 'The houses they bought were not for their own use, but to put them directly for rent, as an investment'.
In this sense, it could be that Pedro Sánchez's claim that non-EU non-resident property buyers mainly purchase "to speculate" does have some truth to it - this being his reasoning for either taxing them or banning them from buying - but perhaps this applies more so vis-à-vis Spain's luxury property market than for conventional flats and homes.
Data from Spain's Ministry of Inclusion and Social Security shows that in 2024 a total of 353 golden visas were granted for properties in the Balearics, which is a relatively small number when compared to the 4,000 property transactions in the islands' luxury real estate market last year.
Lenz doesn't think that eliminating this small number of golden visa buyers will have any effect in a place where house prices have increased by 20 percent year on year, according to pisos.com.
Rafael Santana, director of K&N Elite Madrid, believes this is also the case in Madrid. 'We haven't seen an acceleration in home purchases due to the end of the golden visa and we do not believe in a slowdown starting in April either,' he told property portal Idealista.
Santana also pointed out that many buyers 'operate under companies and residence is not at the top of their priorities'. He added that Spain 'is an attractive country to invest in", suggesting that scrapping the golden visa will not change this fact.
In this sense, it could mean that restricting foreign companies from investing could likely have a greater impact on the market than limiting individuals, as the end of the golden visa and potential supertax or ban on non-EU non-residents fixates on.
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