Hungary · Residency by investment
Hungarian Investment Immigration Programme (Residency Bond Programme)
Ran from 2013; bond sales suspended from 31 March 2017 and the programme was wound down. The government said Hungary no longer had an economic need for it; the surrounding reporting documented corruption and opacity. Replaced in July 2024 by the Guest Investor Programme.
The single most instructive cautionary tale in European investment migration, and the direct reason the current programme is structured as a temporary permit rather than permanent residence. Anyone assessing Hungary's political risk over a ten-year horizon should read what happened here.
Qualifying routes
Initial price from 2013; raised to EUR 300,000 later in the programme. Sold exclusively through eight designated intermediaries, seven of them registered offshore.
The facts
- Minimum investment
- €300k
- Total landed cost
- EUR 250-300k bond plus roughly EUR 45-60k in non-refundable intermediary fees — the fees, not the bond, were the point
- Timeline
- 1–3 months — Notoriously fast; one sanctioned applicant was reported approved in ten days
- Physical presence
- None in practice
- Family
- spouseminor childrendependent parents
- Permanent residency
- Permanent residence was granted, unlike the current programme which grants only a temporary ten-year permit
- Citizenship
- 8 years of physical residence; almost no bondholders pursued it
- Language test
- Constitutional knowledge exam in Hungarian
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Closed to new applicants since 2017. Any advisor still marketing Hungarian 'residency bonds' is selling something that does not exist.
- Existing permits were reviewed retroactively and Hungary revoked a number of them, demonstrating that Hungarian investor status is not immune to later withdrawal.