EuropeIntel & Data

Portugal Golden Visa 2022 Results: Most Approvals Since 2018, Americans Top Investor Nationality


Portugal’s SEF today released the final monthly statistical report for 2022 on the country’s golden visa program. December saw 151 main applicant approvals, the result of EUR 79.16 million of investments, making it the best month for the program since June 2020.

For the year as a whole, the program recorded 1,281 approvals, the highest such number since 2018 and a 48% improvement on 2021.

While the Subparagraph 3 investment option (conventional real estate investment) once more accounted for the largest share of approvals in 2022, the share of investors who qualified by this path dipped to a record low of 41.6%.

Because the minimum investment requirement for that category is generally higher than for renovation-slated real estate (Subp. 4), ordinary real estate investment still accounted for the lion's share of investments. Renovation properties, however, constituted 37.2% of approved applications and 26% of investments in euro terms. The fund investment option saw its share of the program expand sharply in 2022, making up 18.4% of approvals and 13% of total investment.

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The number of applications approved under the fund investment category tripled in 2022, reaching 235 approvals (up from 81 in 2021). Those approvals translated into a tripling of investment under the category, from EUR 28.6m in 2021 to EUR 86.3m last year.

As we predicted early in the year, Americans became the top applicant nationality in 2022, logging 216 approved main applicants (up from just 102 in 2021), just ahead of the Chinese, who posted 213 approvals.

In aggregate, since the program's beginning in November 2012, 11,535 main applicants have received their golden visas. The vast majority have qualified through the conventional real estate route, though this share is dropping sharply (and will continue to do so as more applicants gain approval under the new rules).

In the first ten years of operations, the program has raised a cumulative EUR 6.8 billion in investments alone.