Home / Edition 1, Q3 2026
Edition 1 · Q3 2026
The Property Residency Index: Edition 1
Ten programmes grant residency in exchange for property. We measured all ten on seven published criteria. Qatar ranks first with 91 of 100. Panama is second, the UAE third. The scores matter less than what we found while checking them.
The ranking
| 1 | Qatar91/100 | What works: USD 200,000 entry with the lowest confirmed transfer cost in the set. Renewal is automatic, written into the law. Parents qualify. The threshold has not moved in six years. What to watch: 90 days of presence a year - the only top-three programme that asks you to actually be there. |
| 2 | Panama84/100 | What works: permanent residency from day one, about six weeks to a permit, and roughly 3.3% in costs on top of the property. Every rule change on record has made it easier, not harder. What to watch: your spouse and children qualify; your parents do not. |
| 3 | UAE - Dubai83/100 | What works: 15 days to a permit - the fastest measured. Zero days of required presence, broad family scope, and no rule has moved against buyers in our window. What to watch: the entry price sits near the top of the set, and there is no permanent status at any price - you renew for as long as you stay. |
| 4 | Oman78/100* | What works: a perfect family score, and every rule change on record has widened the route - including a new owner permit with no minimum price. What to watch: scored on five of seven criteria. No official source states the presence requirement or the full cost, and one operational partner reports 180 days a year. If that rule is real, this position does not hold. |
| 5 | Greece71/100 | What works: EUR 250,000 entry where the carve-out applies - the cheapest EU seat measured. Zero days of required presence, and the widest family scope of the EU programmes. What to watch: three severe rule changes since 2020 - the worst stability record of any programme still open. |
| 6 | Cyprus68/100 | What works: permanent status from day one, with near-zero required presence. What to watch: costs reach about 19% of the price once VAT is counted, and a bill to end the programme lapsed in April but can return. |
| 7 | Mauritius65/100† | What works: the permit is tied to ownership - keep the property, keep the status, with no renewal cycle to manage. What to watch: government charges now take roughly 20% of the price, round trip, since the duty doubled on 1 July 2026 - see the first finding below. |
| 8 | Malta63/100† | What works: permanent status, and the broadest family scope measured - four generations. What to watch: about 26% of the price is money you never see again - the most expensive seat measured - and the programme has repriced past buyers before. |
| 9 | Turkey47/100* | What works: the lowest entry price in the set. What to watch: scored on five of seven criteria. The permit runs 1 to 2 years, dependants are barely covered, and the threshold was raised between 2.7 and 4 times inside our measurement window. |
| 10 | Indonesia44/100† | What works: zero days of required presence - its one strong result. What to watch: USD 1,000,000 entry, an outlier in this set, with roughly 16.5% in costs on top and thin family coverage. |
Unmarked scores rest on all seven criteria. † six of seven (Mauritius, Malta, Indonesia). * five of seven, scored only on what could be verified (Oman, Turkey) - not directly comparable with full scores. Every figure sits on the programme's own page with its source and access date. Latvia and Hungary appear in Closed Routes.
Three findings
1. Mauritius doubled its duty and its own government did not say so
On 1 July 2026, Mauritius doubled the registration duty on these purchases. The government now takes roughly 20% of the purchase price, round trip. Sixteen days later, we checked the investment authority's own published documents. They still showed the old rate.
A buyer who trusted the official document on the official website would have budgeted wrong by roughly a tenth of the purchase price. Nothing was hidden. Nobody was misled deliberately. The document simply had not been updated. That is the ordinary condition of this category - and the reason this Index exists.
2. It was not an isolated case - it happened in three of ten
We did not go looking for this. It came out of routine checking. By the time Edition 1 froze, three of the ten programmes had an official source that was wrong, stale or unreachable when we checked it:
| Mauritius | The authority's own PDFs still showed the pre-1-July duty rate more than two weeks after it changed. |
| Latvia | Parliament adopted a new Immigration Law on 20 August 2026 removing the property route. Days later the national legislation portal was still serving the superseded law as the text in force. |
| Qatar | The government service portal returned an error on the relevant page and a maintenance notice across the domain. The rule was only confirmable because the law itself and the sector regulator publish independently. |
Three in ten is not an accusation of bad faith. It measures how much weight a single official page can carry - and the answer is less than buyers assume. So every figure in this Index carries its source and the date we read it. You can check for yourself whether the ground has moved since.
3. The most basic question is unanswerable for two programmes
Eight of the ten programmes require zero days of physical presence. Qatar requires 90 days a year - confirmed this month from the law itself. For Turkey and Oman, no official source answers the question at all. In Oman's case, the programme's operational partner says 180 days a year. The ministry, the portal and every professional summary are silent.
"How long must I live there" is the first question anyone asks. For two of ten programmes, no authority answers it. That is itself the finding. We publish it as unresolved rather than guessing.
How the scoring works
Seven criteria, each scored 0 to 10, combined into one score out of 100:
| Criterion | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Capital threshold | 20 | The minimum qualifying investment, normalised across the set. |
| Family scope | 20 | Who comes with you - spouse, children and their age treatment, parents, and whether on equal terms. |
| True total cost | 15 | Government take on top of the headline threshold, as a percentage of price. |
| Presence requirement | 15 | Days per year you must physically be there. Zero scores 10. |
| Time to permit | 10 | Calendar days from application to permit, labelled statutory, advertised or reported. |
| Term and permanence | 10 | Length of the grant, the renewal burden, and whether any path beyond it exists. |
| Rule stability | 10 | Severe events between 2020 and 2026 - closures, revocations, threshold hikes, retroactive repricing. |
The weights are a judgement, and we publish them rather than bury them. Entry price and family scope count double speed or term, because those are the two things buyers actually decide between. If you disagree with the weighting, every underlying fact is on the programme's page - you can re-score any programme yourself. That is the design. Full methodology.
The ranking is the summary, not the product. The product is the verified fact on each programme's page, with its source and access date. The ranking is built on top of those facts, and if the two ever disagree, the facts win.
Currency is fixed to one date. Thresholds are converted at the euro-dollar rate of 21 August 2026. We re-ran the scores at July's rate as a check: the three euro thresholds move by about 2.6%, and no position in the table changes. The closest gap - Panama and the UAE, one point apart - is between two dollar-pegged programmes, which currency movement cannot separate.
What changed while we were checking
Latvia closed. On 20 August 2026 the Saeima voted 60 to 26 for a new Immigration Law. Property is no longer a ground for a residence permit. The President had proposed keeping the route for NATO, OECD and EEA nationals; that compromise was put to the floor and lost. So did an attempt to reinstate a five-year permit at EUR 300,000. A fund route replaced it, which is not property-linked, so it sits outside what this Index measures. Latvia moves to Closed Routes and the scored set is ten rather than eleven.
Cyprus survived. The bill to end the programme never became law. Parliament dissolved before it reached the floor, and it is not on the new parliament's agenda. We record it as lapsed, not defeated, because no source states the outcome in terms. The party that tabled it came back as the second largest. The risk is live, not gone, and Cyprus keeps its stability penalty.
Qatar's presence rule held. This was the most consequential fact in the edition: the top programme's only real weakness rested on an archived 2023 page. It is now confirmed from Cabinet Decision 28 of 2020 itself, shown as in force on the state legal portal, and corroborated by the property regulator for both investment tiers. The newest amendment, from May 2026, leaves the clause untouched.
Edition 2 - Q4 2026
The next edition re-runs every criterion and adds programmes as they qualify for measurement. Standing watch items: whether Cyprus's termination bill is re-tabled in the September session, whether Oman's presence requirement is ever stated officially, and whether Latvia's fund route settles into something this Index should track. Methodology is public and fixed between editions.
Basis and sources
Edition 1 rests on an adversarial verification pass completed 17 July 2026 over approximately 100 load-bearing cells, in which four claims were refuted and corrected, followed by freeze checks on 22 August 2026 covering Cyprus, Latvia and Qatar. Every programme profile carries its own numbered primary sources with access dates: Qatar, Panama, UAE, Oman, Greece, Cyprus, Mauritius, Malta, Turkey, Indonesia.
The Property Residency Index is an independent research publication. Index data and rankings are never for sale, and no programme, government or intermediary pays for inclusion or position. This is general information, not legal, tax or immigration advice - confirm the current position with the relevant authority before acting on any figure here.
Ask us about a programme
Tell us which programmes you're comparing, or what's unclear. We reply by email with what the published rules say, what we could not verify, and where each figure comes from, usually within a working day. We don't sell programmes or property; the form is here so you can ask.
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