Welcome to the fifth issue of Follow the Housing newsletter!
Do you have a couple of millions or billions of euros to spare? Have you considered investing in a new citizenship?
Just like a luxury villa or an expensive car, (some) European Union citizenships and residency rights can be bought. In 2019, the European Commission warned against the risks of handing out 'golden visas' to wealthy foreigners, noting that it could increase the risk of corruption and money laundering if the organised crime groups end up infiltrating the European countries.
However, organised crime and corruption are not the only risks that come with wealthy investors buying property in a country. For instance, Portugal is one of the EU countries which has granted the most golden visas - more than 22,000 residence permits sold since 2012, as noted by Euractive, in an article published in March 2020. Such investments have contributed to skyrocketing house prices and rents for local residents in Lisbon and Porto.
In this newsletter, we are focusing on the phenomenon of golden visasand their impact on housing. We have compiled a list of academia and media reports from different countries, which is by no means exhaustive, so please let us know if you have other content to share with us!
Over the next three months, we'll run numerous sessions that can help you hone your investigative, cross-border and data skills, and it is still not too late to join us!
You can register here: https://dataharvest.eu/register/
Countries with golden visa schemes allow foreign investors in real estate to jump the queue and secure residency and citizenship. This has inflated housing costs for local residents: "The Golden Ticket - Citizenship for Sale" (PUSHBACK talks podcast, Fredrik Gertten and Leilani Farha)
Your Place or Mine?_ Housing questions that need answers
Does your country have a program through which one can obtain citizenship or a residency permit if they invest in the property? What nationalities are the most represented among the golden visa beneficiaries?
In which ways does the golden visa program affect the housing market in your country?
Do you have more similar examples or a link to a useful data set? Let us know and we'll share it with our mailing list and feature it in the Arena Housing Knowledge Base!
Let Me Show You Around_Welcome to our Knowledge Base
The Arena Housing Knowledge Base has a section dedicated to "Access to housing” that has a number of data sources and data sets. Although we don't have an extensive list of articles related to golden visas (yet), many articles featured in this section explore different aspects of EU-members' housing markets, which you might find useful for your research.
Something to Write Home About__Tell us what's going on
Send us tips, help us improve our work and share interesting stuff with us!
Reach out to:
Jose, Project Director (jose@journalismarena.eu)
Jelena, Community Coordinator (jelena@journalismarena.eu)
This time, we wanted to share with you an article we received via Twitter.
The Times (British, not NYT) published a story looking into London properties of Vladimir Peftiev, one of the richest men in Belarus and the former head of an arms company. The Belarussian businessman is believed to have links to President Lukashenko, and he has bought London property worth millions of pounds through a web of offshore companies. He has 12 flats in West London owned by wife & daughters worth £18m.
It is not a story about golden visas per se, but it raises questions about beneficial ownership checks in the UK (and beyond) real estate and how they actually work (or not).
