Americans applying for work visas

This year application numbers for Portugal Golden Visas from US citizens overtook applications from Chinese nationals.

However, Americans are now applying for other visa regimes enabling them to live and work in Portugal.
Now most Americans are arriving on the back of the D7 visa which gives Authorisation for Residency to pensioners, those in receipt of passive incomes, and citizens who want to work in Portugal.
This means that the possible termination of the Golden Visa programme announced last week by the Prime Minister, António Costa, may not make a great difference to relocaters from the US who will likely buy a property for €500,000 or over regardless since they need somewhere to live.
The D7 visa “grants residency in Portugal via proof of income in line with the reality of US incomes, says Patrícia Clímaco, CEO of Castelhana.
Ricardo Sousa, CEO of Century 21, agrees, saying that the majority of their US clients are seeking the D7 visa.
Patrícia Barão who heads real estate consultant JLL’s residential department says that “most American purchases are “not on the back of the Golden Visa programme”, while data from Confidencial Imobiliário (CI) on the purchase of housing within the Lisbon ARU (Urban Rehabilitation Area) confirms this trend.
In the first six months of 2022, US citizens spent €48.3 million on property purchases in Lisbon, (the statistics exclude Parque das Nações, Laranjeiras and Alta do Lisboa), a period when the city was no longer eligible for property purchases through the scheme from 1 January.
In the first half of 2022, the Americans were responsible for 90 purchases and 12% of all overseas residential property buys.
Ricardo Guimarães of CI told Dinheiro Vivo: “Americans are not investing in Lisbon because of the Golden Visa, even though there are benefits from doing do ( even if they still could through the programme’s property option).
“Lisbon is in vogue right now and is a very attractive market because of the lifestyle and price of real estate”.