Six doors in four years: how Europe closed residency by buying property, and where Cyprus stands

Four years ago the map looked different. In half a dozen EU states you could buy a home and receive, along with it, the right to live in the country; the differences came down to the price threshold and the length of the queue. By August 2026 not much of that map is left.

The timeline

February 2023 — Ireland. The investor programme closed to new applications. In its time it ran mostly on Chinese applicants and on donations, not on housing.

October 2023 — Portugal. Property was removed from the programme: the investor residence permit itself survived, but buying a flat stopped being a ground for it. The Portuguese route was the best known of the property routes, and it was the first of them to close.

January 2024 — the Netherlands. The scheme for wealthy foreigners was scrapped as ineffective: over its lifetime it had issued a few hundred permits.

September 2024 — Greece. Not a closure but a steep rise in the entry price. In Athens, Thessaloniki, Mykonos and Santorini the threshold went to €800,000; elsewhere to €400,000. Until then it had been €250,000, a figure that dated from the crisis years.

April 2025 — Spain. The golden visa was abolished outright, formally as part of a housing law: the government named investment demand pressing on prices in the big cities as the reason.

April 2025 — Malta. The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled Malta's citizenship-by-investment scheme contrary to EU law. That is no longer one country's decision but a precedent for all of them: Union citizenship cannot be sold for a payment.

Cyprus, for completeness, closed its own citizenship-by-investment programme in November 2020, well before this wave.

The latest: Latvia, in progress and not yet closed

On 11 June 2026 the Latvian parliament passed a new immigration law by 65 votes to 17. Two routes disappear from it: buying property (threshold €250,000) and a bank deposit (€280,000); a route through an investment fund appears instead (from €150,000 plus a €10,000 payment to the state budget). The route through investment in a company stays, but the permit under it shrinks from five years to two.

Then came something this timeline does not usually contain. On 19 June President Edgars Rinkēvičs did not sign the law and returned it to the Saeima for a second reading, specifically the investment provisions, asking whether access to residency through property should be kept for citizens of NATO, OECD and EU countries. Parliament's spring session had already closed, so a second vote will not happen before the autumn session of 2026.

This is exactly the case the article is about: a decision announced but not in force, and what a reader sees here in a month may differ from what is written now. Until then the old rule applies. The Cyprus property route is not touched by this story, since Latvia and Cyprus have different programmes and different regulators, but the lesson is the same: look at the status of the law, not at the headline about it.

What matters here, apart from the dates

The list reads like a series of unrelated national decisions, but it has one logic. None of these programmes closed because applicants ran out. They closed under two kinds of pressure: domestic, from housing prices in the capitals, and external, from Brussels asking where the money came from.

A practical point follows. The condition that applied when you started reading about a country is under no obligation to apply by the time you reach the contract. Greece more than tripled its threshold in a single decision. Between announcement and entry into force there are usually months, not years.

What it means for the housing market

Less than the headlines suggest. The demand that was driven by status has indeed gone, but it was always a small share of transactions. In Spain and Portugal the closures did not crash prices: the buyer who comes to live there did not go anywhere, and it is that buyer who holds the market up.

The side effect shows elsewhere. The corridor has narrowed for the buyer who chose a country by its programme rather than by the country. That buyer now heads for wherever the conditions have not yet been touched, and their arrival is a temporary factor in demand, not a sign that the place has become better.

Two things a British reader should keep apart

The first is travel. Since 2021 a UK passport holder counts days in the Schengen area against the 90-in-180 limit. Cyprus is in the EU but outside Schengen, so days on the island are counted separately: that arithmetic, and what a Council decision would change, is here.

The second is residency itself. For a British buyer settling in Paphos it is usually not tied to the home at all: it is a question about the person, and it is settled with an immigration lawyer, not with a seller.

And Cyprus

We do not sell status and do not build our case on it. A purchase by itself gives neither a residence permit nor permanent status. Some of the homes in the catalogue meet the conditions for a permanent-residence application. If that matters to you, say so: we will show you the conditions and refer you to a lawyer who does this every day.

The home we can tell you about ourselves: what is for sale now, with prices and how many are left.