Georgia · Residency by investment
Temporary and Permanent Residence Permits on the Basis of Investment or Property Ownership
Reformed with effect from 1 March 2026: the property threshold for a one-year temporary residence permit rose from USD 100,000 (in place since 2019) to USD 150,000. The USD 300,000 investment route to a five-year permit is unchanged. The threshold is measured on the combined market value of all properties owned, assessed by accredited appraisers, not on a single purchase.
Cheap, fast, no presence requirement, and it supplies the residence-permit limb of the HNWI tax residency test — usually the actual reason a UHNW family buys it. Judged as an immigration product it is weak; judged as the cheapest credible anchor into a territorial tax system, it is efficient.
Qualifying routes
1-year renewable; raised from USD 100k on 1 March 2026; aggregate value across properties permitted
5-year permit for investor, spouse and minor children; real estate or business; leads to indefinite residence after 5 years of maintained ownership
The facts
- Minimum investment
- $150k
- Total landed cost
- USD 150k or 300k investment plus roughly USD 3–7k in appraisal, legal, translation and government fees for a family. Georgian property transaction costs are low — there is no significant transfer tax — a genuine advantage over Türkiye.
- Timeline
- 1–3 months — Public Service Hall adjudication is fast by regional standards; 30 days is typical for a complete file.
- Physical presence
- No minimum stay to hold or renew a property-based permit. Naturalisation, by contrast, demands near-continuous presence.
- Family
- spouseminor children
- Permanent residency
- Permit for indefinite stay after 5 years of maintained ownership on the USD 300k investment route
- Citizenship
- 10 years of continuous residence, in practice unavailable to most because dual citizenship is not permitted
- Language test
- Georgian language, plus history and law examinations
- Dual citizenship
- Not permitted — you would have to renounce
- Requirements
- property valued by an accredited appraiser at USD 150k (1-year) or USD 300k (5-year), registered in the Public Registryclean criminal recordproof of legal source of fundsvalid health insuranceapplication through the Public Service Development Agency
- THE THRESHOLD JUST MOVED AND MAY MOVE AGAIN. USD 100k held from 2019 to 1 March 2026, then rose 50% to USD 150k with limited notice. The government's stated rationale — an imbalance between foreign entries and formal registrations — implies further tightening.
- CITIZENSHIP IS EFFECTIVELY OFF THE TABLE. Georgia does not permit dual citizenship except by Presidential grant on state-interest grounds. A naturalising applicant must renounce their existing nationality. Ten years of residence, a language, history and law exam, then surrender your existing passport — this is not a citizenship route for a UHNW family and should not be sold as one.
- 'CONTINUOUS RESIDENCE' FOR NATURALISATION MEANS UNDER 90 DAYS ABROAD PER YEAR — incompatible with the no-presence proposition that draws people to Georgia in the first place. The two Georgian value propositions, zero presence and eventual citizenship, are mutually exclusive.
- GEORGIAN PROPERTY IS A THIN MARKET. Lari-denominated, concentrated in central Tbilisi and Batumi, heavily exposed to a construction pipeline built for a Russian-relocation demand shock that has since faded. Exit liquidity at USD 300k is not assured.
- From 1 January 2026 all foreign nationals entering Georgia must hold travel medical insurance covering the full stay with minimum cover of GEL 30,000 (Decree No. 602 of 26 December 2025).
- OCCUPATION AND POLITICAL RISK. Roughly 20% of Georgia's territory is under Russian occupation, and EU accession is effectively frozen. This is a frontier jurisdiction with frontier risk, whatever its tax code says.