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Portugal Golden Visa Approval 2022!

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Clients have been asking when will they get their pre-approval, and biometric appointment.

The latest update is that those clients who submitted in the beginning of December are getting pre-approved.  

SEF has been working continuously (albeit slowly).  The prove is the monthly approvals of Golden Visa.  SEF releases this information on their website every month.  

In this newsletter, we want to give you a snapshot on the Golden Visa trend.  

Please note that this statistic is the final approval of Golden Visa (after your biometrics), and so you are probably seeing the trend of the second half of 2020 to first half of 2021.

Portugal Golden Visa Approval

From January – Aug 2022, the top nationalities of Golden Visa investors are

  • United States – 135
  • China – 134
  • Brazil – 64
  • India – 44
  • Turkey – 32

The top routes of investment are:

  • Property – 637 
  • Fund – 146
  • Capital transfer – 18

Findings:

  • US citizens have surpass Chinese to the number one position of Golden Visa investors (note again the statistics we are looking into are those applications made from late 2020 – early 2021).  We shall be seeing this trend continues well into 2022, with even a much stronger prominence of US citizens.
  • the Fund route is catching up, to represent around 20% of the investment, while property remains to be the most popular options.  From our experience, we should be seeing a surge on fund investment (from those applicants in the second half of 2021).  This will show in the statistics that will be releasing later this year to or beginning of 2023!

 Portugal Golden Visa approvals in 2022 so far

We have charted the SEF approvals by months below:

Approval rate is speeding up (good news!) compared to last year.  From January to August 2022, SEF has already approved more than 800 cases, where only 865 cases were approved in the whole year of 2021!

| The Golden Portugal

10 Years of Portugal Golden Visa

Overall, from 2012 to August 2022, there are over 11,060 main applications approved together with over 18,000 family members.

Let’s take a look at the yearly approval numbers in Portugal Golden Visa for the past 10 years. 

| The Golden Portugal

The average number of approvals (disregarding the first 2 years when the program was just launched) was above 1,200 approvals.  However, we are seeing the number of approvals have been decreasing since 2018 with a significant drop in 2021 (due to Covid), causing the back log and the immensely long wait time nowadays.

The good news is that SEF is getting more resources.  According to the news, SEF has increase 116 post across its 26 offices across the country, starting from September 12, 2022.

We hope this will bring down both the pre-approval and the biometric waiting time.

The Portugal Golden Visa is getting ever more popular

There are recent changes to other countries’ immigration by investment program lately.  All programs are tightening their regulations.  

  • Greece: Golden visa minimum investment threshold increases from 250k to 500k (effective by January 2023)
  • Turkey: Golden visa minimum investment threshold increases from 250k to 400k
  • UK: Tier 1 investment visa has ended

Although we don’t see them as direct competition to Portugal Golden Visa (we have many Turkish citizens applying the Portugal Golden Visa, and the same can be said for Greece and British), we still anticipate the Portugal Golden Visa will become even more popular.  

For one reason, there is a clear trend is that the direction of the laws for this type of program will only get restrictive. It is time to take actions, without delay, to enjoy the benefits and the peace of mind that a second passport would bring.  

 

While Portugal still has one of the most affordable and best route to a EU citizenship/ permanent residency.  It should not be taken as granted and seen in a way that it will stay like this forever. 

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