Blog · Residency

Does a 500,000 euro house still give you residency in Spain?

§ 1An old page, read in four checks

Here is an invented page of the kind that still turns up in a search. The headline says that a home above 500,000 euro gives you residence in Spain. The footer says 2023, a button offers a free eligibility call, and the text never names a law. Most of what it says was true when it was written, and all of it is out of date.

Four checks tell you how far to trust a page like that, and each takes about a minute.

1. The date. A page last touched before 3 April 2025 describes a rule that has since been repealed. On the day we wrote this note, 26 October 2026, a page untouched since that date was 571 days old, by our count.
2. The law. A page that says "the golden visa" without naming a law, an article and a date is describing a product. Ask for the text.
3. The tense. "You can apply" and "you could apply" are different sentences, and old pages often use the first one for the second.
4. The seller. A page that ends in a price list for legal packages has a reason to keep the old promise alive.

Each check has an answer in an official text, so the next sections give the answers with their dates.

§ 2What ended, and on which date

The rule ended inside a law about courts. Organic Law 1/2025 is dated 2 January 2025 and is titled, in Spanish, a law of measures on the efficiency of the public justice service. It has thirty-eight final provisions and fifteen transitional provisions, and the change to investor residence is one short amendment inside that long text.

The BOE published the law in its issue of 3 January 2025, and the BOE page for the law gives 3 April 2025 as its date of entry into force. The government press release of 2 April 2025 says the same thing the day before: the law enters into force "mañana, 3 de abril". The two sources agree. Between publication and entry into force there are 90 days, by our count.

That gap explains why pages disagree. Some give 3 January 2025 as the end of the golden visa, and that is the day the law appeared in the gazette. Pages written in the weeks between the two dates would say that the visa was ending, and the ones written afterwards say that it ended. If you meet a page with the earlier date, you know it counted from publication and not from effect.

We could not read the final provision that sets the entry into force, the last one in the law. The BOE page we could open is cut off before the final provisions, so the date rests on the BOE page header and the press release. We have not seen whether any other part of the law comes in on a different day. The BOE page also notes a correction of errors published on 11 January 2025, and we did not read it.

§ 3What the law took out

The amendment sits in the twenty-first final provision of the organic law, which modifies Law 14/2013, the entrepreneurs' law. The Ministry of Inclusion's page for investors quotes the operative sentence: "Se dejan sin contenido los artículos 63, 64, 65, 66 y 67". In plain English, articles 63 to 67 of that law no longer have content, and they were the articles on investors.

The government release describes the same change in its own words. It says the law repeals in full the visados de residencia para inversores, the investor residence visas, and it gives as its example property investments above 500,000 euro. The reason it gave was the right to housing, and it pointed to the European Commission's call in 2022 to end investor citizenship schemes.

We read the amendment on the ministry page and not in the BOE text, for the reason given above. The sentence is the ministry's quotation of the law, and a lawyer should check it against the gazette before anyone relies on it. The texts concern visas and permits. A purchase is a separate act, and our chapter on the end of the golden visa sets out what the repeal leaves as it was.

§ 4What holders and pending applicants keep

The same ministry page shows two transitional provisions that go with the amendment. The first is headed "Solicitudes presentadas con anterioridad a la entrada en vigor de la Ley Orgánica". It says that investors, and family members of investors, who applied before that date may receive their visa or authorisation under the rules in force on the date of the application.

The second is headed "Renovaciones de visados y autorizaciones para inversores por adquisición de bienes inmuebles". It says that valid visas and authorisations keep their validity for the time for which they were issued, and that renewals are processed under the rules in force on the date of the initial authorisation.

The numbering, and the ministry criteria

A caution on numbering. The ministry page calls these provisions first and second, while the BOE preamble counts fifteen transitional provisions for the whole law and the three we read concern courts. We could not match the ministry's numbers to the BOE text, so quote these two by their headings and not by number.

On 10 June 2025, which is 68 days after the entry into force by our count, the Secretaría de Estado de Migraciones issued criterios de gestión, management criteria on how its offices apply the change. Read together with the transitional provisions, they give this picture.

The criteria are guidance to the ministry's offices. They are not the statute, and a later version could replace them. We found no later version, and we have not looked at what any individual office does with them.

§ 5The routes that remain

A purchase now sits outside every residence route, and a home is at most evidence of where you will live. The route that fits people who want to live in Spain on their own means without working is the non-lucrative visa, the visado de residencia no lucrativa. The consulate page we read states means of 400% of the IPREM for the main applicant and 100% of the IPREM for each family member in their care, and health insurance from an insurer authorised in Spain. It adds that the visa is not a work permit. The page gives the means as a multiple of an indicator and prints no euro amount, so look up the current value of that indicator before you plan. The non-lucrative visa requirements are set out in their own chapter, with the records and the one-year validity.

Work, study and family routes depend on an offer, a course or a relative, and none of their conditions involves a home. The ministry's criteria send family cases to the general immigration regulation, which we did not read. The routes that remain after the golden visa are compared side by side in another chapter, and how owning a home relates to residence explains why the purchase and the permit are separate decisions.

Your passport changes the starting point. If you hold a US passport, visas and stays for American owners covers the short-stay rule and the visa that fits. If you hold a UK passport, residence for British citizens after Brexit separates people who moved before the Brexit date from people who are moving now.

§ 6Can a golden visa holder sell the home?

This is the second search people run, and the official texts we read answer it only in part.

Here is what they say, in order. The permit keeps its validity for the time for which it was issued. A renewal is admitted if the first authorisation met every requirement for being granted. The criteria also have a part on conversions of investments: from a real estate investment to any other kind, respecting the minimum amounts, residence is kept and, where it applies, the renewal is granted. From another kind of investment into real estate, it is not admitted.

Here is what they do not say. The criteria give no minimum amounts. The text we read does not say whether the home must be kept until a renewal, or for how long. No sentence we read deals with a sale that is not a conversion, such as a holder who sells and does not reinvest.

So the reading has to stay narrow. Nothing we read forbids a sale, since the repeal concerns visas and a sale is a property act. Nothing we read protects it either. The transitional provision sends a renewal to the rules in force on the date of the first authorisation, and we have not read those rules in an official text. They are the ones that decide what your file needed, including anything about holding the property.

The order of events is the part to plan. Take an invented holder whose card expires in March 2027. A sale in December 2026 leaves about three months before the renewal falls due, and a sale after the renewal leaves none. The texts speak to renewal and to conversion, and none speaks to the stretch between a sale and a renewal. What holders and applicants should do with their papers lists the documents to keep and the dates to write down before any decision about the property. The tax and registry steps of a sale are separate again, and they sit outside this note.

§ 7What we could not read

• The operative text in the BOE: the amendment to Law 14/2013, the transitional provisions and the final provision on entry into force. The page we could open stops among the early articles of a very long law.
• The correction of errors published after the law.
• The old articles of Law 14/2013 on investors, including the conditions, the durations and the minimum amounts for the other kinds of investment.
• The general immigration regulation that the ministry's criteria use as a supplement.
• Any criteria or notes issued after the ministry's criteria of 10 June 2025.

§ 8Questions to put to an immigration lawyer

Choose a lawyer who acts for you alone, send the papers first and ask for the answers in writing, with the provision cited.

• Under which provision and on which date was my visa or authorisation granted, and which rules does my renewal use?
• Does my file require the home to be kept until the renewal, and at what value?
• If I sell, how do the ministry's criteria on conversions apply to my case, and which minimum amount do they mean?
• If I applied before the repeal took effect, at what stage is my file and which rules govern it?
• If family members are on my permit, what is their position at my renewal?
• Has the ministry issued anything since its criteria of 10 June 2025 that changes the answers?

Dotted underline marks an illustrative figure. It shows how a calculation works and is not a quote, a rate or a forecast.

Legal note. How the process works in general. It is not legal advice, and it never replaces an independent Spanish lawyer acting for you.