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Mauritius - Residence Permit by Property Acquisition

A permit with no renewal cycle at all - it simply remains in force while you own - now carrying the set's second-highest transaction cost, after a registration-duty doubling the regulator's own guideline documents have not caught up with. Verified against the Economic Development Board's guidelines, the Finance Act 2025 and the June 2026 Budget; every claim below carries its source, access date and status.

The threshold

The residence permit under the Immigration Act is granted on acquisition of residential property of at least USD 375,000 (or its equivalent in freely convertible currency, roughly MUR 17.7 million at the mid-July 2026 rate) under an EDB-approved scheme - IRS, RES, PDS, the Smart City Scheme or the Invest Hotel Scheme - or a qualifying G+2 apartment, meaning a building of at least two floors above ground. Confirmed - three separate EDB guideline documents state the threshold in near-identical language: the PDS Guidelines (December 2024 edition), the IRS/RES/PDS buyers guidelines, and the G+2 apartments guidelines, each accessed 15 July 2026.

G+2 apartments carry a lower entry point for the right to buy - MUR 6,000,000, about USD 127,000 - but the residence permit itself still requires an acquisition of not less than USD 375,000; buying below that line gets the apartment, not the permit. Serviced land under PDS does not qualify until construction of a residential property is complete. Payment mechanics tightened from 13 December 2024: funds must arrive from abroad in hard currency, 85% of the purchase price must be paid to the promoter in Mauritian rupees (G+2 is exempt from this rule), and purchases below USD 750,000 must be funded entirely from the buyer's own funds transferred from abroad, with no local loan. Confirmed - EDB FAQ, February 2025 (accessed 2026-07-15).

The duty doubling

Registration duty on acquisition and land transfer tax on resale both doubled from 5% to 10% for non-citizens, for deeds registered on or after 1 July 2026 - already in force at the research date. At the USD 375,000 threshold that is USD 37,500 in duty on the way in, up from USD 18,750 under the old rate. There is no grandfathering: the new rate catches deeds registered after 1 July 2026 even where the promise of sale or reservation agreement was signed beforehand. Sell the same property on to another non-citizen and the 10% land transfer tax applies again - a round-trip government take of roughly 20% of value. Confirmed - KPMG Mauritius Tax Alert Issue 95 (September 2025), on the Finance Act 2025 (Act No. 18 of 2025), corroborated by EY's Finance Act 2025 alert and by PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries (last reviewed 15 June 2026); all accessed 2026-07-15, re-verified 2026-07-17.

The regulator has not caught up with its own change. As of 17 July 2026 - sixteen days after the 10% regime took effect - all three rate-bearing EDB guideline PDFs (the PDS Guidelines, the G+2 apartments guidelines, and the IRS/RES/PDS buyers guidelines) still published the old 5% tables, confirmed by a live re-fetch of each document. An applicant reading the primary source the EDB itself publishes would still see the superseded rate. Stale source

One scope question is unresolved. EY's reading of Finance Act 2025 section 49(c)(i) states the Integrated Resort Scheme is explicitly excluded from the 10% duty; KPMG's scheme list also omits IRS. A consulate-hosted briefing and broker summaries, by contrast, describe the duty as applying to all schemes including IRS. Whether IRS resales are recaptured under the separate "authorised transfer" catch-all in section 3(3) of the Non-Citizens (Property Restrictions) Act is not settled in the primary record - carried as open, to be resolved against Act No. 18 of 2025 sections 29 and 49, or an MRA practice note, at Edition 2. Registration duty itself must be paid in USD or another hard convertible currency. Confirmed (payment-currency rule) - EDB FAQ, February 2025.

Other costs

Beyond duty, the EDB charges a non-refundable processing fee of MUR 25,000 (about USD 529) per residential unit for the acquisition application. Confirmed - PDS Guidelines, December 2024 (accessed 2026-07-15). Notary fees follow a statutory sliding scale of roughly 0.5% to 2% Reported - market practice, not checked against the Notaries Act this pass. The residence-permit application carries no fee stated directly in the EDB guidelines, but a USD 50 application fee for the residence permit under the Immigration Act appears in the fee schedule referenced by the 2026-27 Budget Annex, which also extends the same fee to spouses of Mauritian citizens; the full consolidated fee schedule has not been fetched.

Term: no renewal cycle

The permit carries no fixed term. Per the EDB's own wording, it "remains in force until such time the non-citizen shall hold the residential property under the scheme" - or, for corporate, trust or gerant-held property, until the person nominated by the entity informs the EDB to terminate the residency. There is no renewal cycle and no re-qualification: the permit simply continues for as long as ownership continues, and lapses on disposal of the property. Confirmed - identical wording appears in the PDS Guidelines (December 2024) and the G+2 apartments guidelines, both accessed 2026-07-15, re-verified 2026-07-17.

The separate path to a 20-year Permanent Residence Permit got harder under the same reform: the minimum period holding a Residence Permit or Occupation Permit before applying for PRP was extended from three years to five. Confirmed - KPMG Tax Alert 95 (accessed 2026-07-15). There is no citizenship path from the property-acquisition permit itself; naturalization requires a separate, longer residence history and is not scored here.

Family

Dependants covered: the spouse or common-law partner, children (including stepchildren and lawfully adopted children) under 24, or over 24 if in full-time education, plus one wholly dependent next-of-kin. There is no hard age cutoff for a dependant still in education, and the next-of-kin slot has no clear equivalent among most schemes the Index has reviewed - together they make this one of the widest dependant definitions in the scored set. Dependants apply on the same property qualification as the main applicant, with no additional investment required. Confirmed - PDS Guidelines, December 2024 (accessed 2026-07-15).

Common-law partners are recognized for the residence permit itself, by certificat de concubinage or affidavit, but joint acquisition by unmarried partners is separately barred for G+2 apartments - no application is considered if the apartment is being acquired jointly by common-law partners. Confirmed - apartments guidelines (accessed 2026-07-15). Whether the next-of-kin slot extends to parents in practice is not stated in the guideline wording, which is broad but names no explicit parents clause.

Presence

None. No minimum-stay condition attaches to the property residence permit in any of the three EDB guideline documents; validity is tied to ownership, not physical presence in Mauritius. Confirmed by absence - PDS Guidelines, the IRS/RES/PDS buyers guidelines and the G+2 apartments guidelines, all accessed 2026-07-15. The renewal trap here runs through ownership rather than a clock: sell the property and the permit lapses, as set out above, rather than expiring on a missed presence count. Tax residence, the standard 183-day test, is a separate and optional status, out of scope for this permit.

Where you can buy: the June 2026 closure

The routes: IRS, RES, PDS, the Smart City Scheme, the Invest Hotel Scheme, and G+2 apartments. The June 2026 Budget closed one of them to new entrants: no new leases authorising sale of G+2 apartments on State Lands or Pas Géométriques to foreigners will be issued going forward. Existing approved leases and current owners are grandfathered. Closed to new sales - Budget Speech 2026-2027, paragraphs 180-182 (accessed 2026-07-17), corroborated by ENSafrica's budget summary.

The same Budget added a new 10% special vendor levy on sales of those state-land G+2 apartments, with an exemption for already-signed notarial reservation contracts. Confirmed - primary Budget Speech and Annex, accessed 2026-07-17. The G+2 route on private land is unaffected and remains open. The Budget Annex contains no measure touching the USD 375,000 threshold, the scheme residence permits generally, or the Finance Act 2025 duty rates - the closure and the levy are narrowly scoped to state land.

Rule stability: churn beneath a stable headline number

The headline threshold has held since August 2020, when the Finance (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2020 cut it from USD 500,000 to USD 375,000 and opened the G+2 route - and it has not moved since. But the terms around it have churned hard in 2024-2026: payment-currency rules tightened in December 2024; a parallel non-scheme purchase route at USD 500,000-plus opened in December 2023 and was then repealed by the 2025 reforms; Smart City incentives were trimmed in June 2025; registration duty and land transfer tax doubled and the PRP qualifying period lengthened from three to five years under the Finance Act 2025; and the G+2 route was narrowed on state land by the June 2026 Budget. A proposed resale tax - the higher of 10% of value or 30% of resale profit - was announced in the 2025-26 Budget Speech and then not implemented in the Finance Act, a near-miss that is itself a volatility signal. Confirmed - each item sourced individually in Sources below.

Nationality access

No published nationality restrictions: EDB eligibility runs to "any non-citizen" plus corporate vehicles, and no guideline document bans purchase or residency by nationality. Confirmed by absence - primary guideline documents, accessed 2026-07-15. Standard KYC and morality-certificate screening applies to every applicant aged 18 or over, alongside mandatory bank-reference checks. Confirmed - PDS and apartments guidelines. One practical friction, not a stated restriction: funds must arrive from abroad through banking channels in hard convertible currency, a real obstacle for applicants from sanctioned jurisdictions even though no explicit nationality ban is published.