Roughly once a week someone asks us whether buying a €600,000 villa still comes with a residence permit. It doesn't, and hasn't since April 2025. But the question keeps coming, usually from people who read an article written in 2023, so here it is properly answered — including the part most of those articles leave out, which is what actually still works.
Spain's investor residence programme closed to new applicants on 3 April 2025. The law behind it is Ley Orgánica 1/2025, and it didn't just kill the property route — it ended the whole regime under Law 14/2013: the €2 million in public debt, the €1 million in shares, the €1 million bank deposit, the business project that had to be argued to be of general interest. Real estate was the headline, but nothing survived.
Applications filed before that date with a complete file, as a rule, stay valid and are processed under the framework that existed when they went in. If your file was still half-assembled on 2 April, that is a conversation to have with your lawyer rather than with a blog. Transitional rules decide cases like that, not us.
No. Permits granted under the old framework keep their renewal schedule. Your card has an expiry date on it, and you renew before that date the same way you always did. What's worth doing is checking that expiry now rather than in the month it lapses, because the renewal appointment system in Spain does not care about your travel plans.
It gives you a house. That's genuinely still a good thing, and in Barcelona and along the Maresme coast it remains a decent long-term asset. What it no longer gives you is a residence right. You can own Spanish property as a non-resident perfectly legally, with a NIE, a notary and a lawyer, and spend up to 90 days in the Schengen area in any 180 as a non-EU visitor. Buy in April, own for twenty years, still a tourist.
Worth knowing what buying costs while we're here. On a resale property in Catalonia, transfer tax runs from 10% and steps up through higher brackets on more expensive homes, plus notary, land registry and legal fees — typically another 1% to 2%. On a new build it's 10% VAT plus the regional stamp duty instead. Our guide to buying luxury property in Barcelona walks through the whole sequence, and the 2026 investment picture covers yields and what has changed in the market.
Three routes carry almost everyone now, and picking the wrong one is an expensive mistake because they are not interchangeable:
There's also the ordinary work and residence authorisation route if you're actually employed by a Spanish company, and family reunification for spouses and children of residents. Neither gets talked about much in the golden visa articles, which is a shame, because they cover a lot of people.
Yes, and it's a common sequence. You buy as a non-resident, then apply for one of the visas from your home country's Spanish consulate, then arrive, then swap the visa for a TIE card once you're here. What you should not do is buy while assuming the visa is a formality. The consulate decides that, on your income and paperwork, and it can take months.
Nothing on the table, and the direction of travel in Brussels has been against these schemes for years. If you're waiting for it to be reinstated before you buy, you're waiting for something nobody has promised you.
Treat the purchase and the residency as two separate projects with two separate checklists. The house is a property decision — location, condition, price, rental potential. The visa is an immigration decision — income, insurance, criminal record, timing. Mixing them is how people end up buying a villa in the wrong town because it was near the consulate they were thinking about.
If you want the rental side of the picture first, our note on renting without a Spanish bank account and the moving to Barcelona guide cover the boring logistics that actually decide whether the first year goes smoothly.
Tell us what you're looking for and how you plan to use the property. We'll show you what's available on the Barcelona and Maresme market, including the homes that never reach the portals, and be straight with you about the parts a lawyer needs to handle.
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