Greece’s Golden Visa program offering rich foreigners and their families 5-year residency permits and valuable European Union passports has lured mostly Chinese, Turkish, Russian, and Lebanese buyers.
They have to spend at least 500,000 euros ($545,743) in properties to be eligible in most cases after the threshold doubled in August because the investors were scooping up multiple units and putting them on short-term rental platforms.
That saw chunks of neighborhoods in Athens nearly emptied of long-term residents on leases in favor of users of programs like Airbnb who spend only a relatively few nights in apartments.
That has further depleted the supply and raised the demand at the same time, spiking rents and changing the characters of places where Greeks used to live, especially around the Acropolis and even the anarchist area of Exarchia.
The site Schengenvisainfo said that China and Turkey lead in the number of applications for Greece’s Golden Visa Program, with 6,405 and 618 nationals granted residency permits in 2021.
In February 2023, a total of 10,105 residence permits were issued to investors, along with 18,154 permits for their family members, with Russians and Lebanese next on the list of those getting them.
About 6,405 nationals from China and 618 nationals from Turkey were granted residency permits through the Golden Visa Program in 2021, based on the figures of the Ministry of Migration and Foreign Affairs of Greece, the site said.
Περισσότερα at thenationalherald.com
RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations, Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
Source: tornosnews.gr/en/