🇬🇧Foreign Real Estate Purchase for Non-Residents: Rules, Taxes, Structures

Concept

Buying an apartment in London, a villa in Tuscany, and a condo in Singapore are three different legal worlds. In some places, a non-resident won't be asked a single question; in others, you'll need permission from a land commission; and in some, the entry tax is comparable to the price of the apartment itself. The main surprises usually lie not in property rights themselves, but around them: payment routes, annual non-resident taxes, inheritance under the law of the property's country.

This hub is a map of the eleven jurisdictions non-resident buyers most often consider: United Kingdom (London), Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Singapore, Bulgaria, Austria, the UAE, Greece, and Cyprus. For each country, there's a separate breakdown: who can buy, what's needed for the transaction, entry and ownership taxes, what status the purchase grants, and which structuring techniques actually work.

Three rules of the 2026 market: Europe's mass property-for-residency programs have wound down, but the route survives in four of the eleven jurisdictions; entry tax for non-residents ranges from 2% to 60%+; the most common deal-breaker is not the law, but the payment route and source of funds.

Map: Eleven Jurisdictions

Country Breakdowns London and England · Italy · France · Portugal · Spain · Singapore · Bulgaria · Austria · UAE · Greece · Cyprus

Summary picture as of July 2026 — entry tax for non-residents, restrictions, and what status the purchase grants:

The pattern is simple: the more liquid the market, the freer the entry and the higher the taxes (London, Singapore). The stricter the housing protection policy, the more administrative filters (Austria, partly Spain and Portugal). The UAE stands apart: cheap entry, zero ongoing taxes, and a purchase that converts directly into status. Together with Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus, those are the four of the eleven where real estate produces residency.

What's Needed Before the Transaction

Almost everywhere, the first step is not choosing the property, but obtaining a local tax number: NIE in Spain, NIF in Portugal (for non-residents from third countries — together with a tax representative), codice fiscale in Italy. In the UK and Singapore, nothing is needed for the purchase itself — numbers appear later when tax arises. Bulgaria requires BULSTAT registration after the transaction, Austria — permission before it.

The second universal block is source of funds. The bank, notary, and agent check the origin of money, each according to their own rules, and the package should be assembled before making a deposit: tax returns for 2–3 years, asset sale agreements, dividend resolutions, statements showing accumulation. The longer and clearer the chain, the faster the transaction.

The third block is presence. In all eleven jurisdictions, the transaction can be closed remotely by power of attorney: apostilled notarial POA plus sworn translation. Apostille on Russian documents is placed in Russia (Ministry of Justice), not at the consulate.

Payment Route: Sanctions Layer

For a buyer with a Russian passport, the main question in an EU transaction is not "can I buy," but "how to pay." There is no ban on purchasing real estate in the EU for Russian citizens: it was discussed since 2022 but never entered any sanctions package (individual countries — Finland, Latvia — introduced national bans; none in our list have such bans). A different restriction applies — Article 5b of Regulation 833/2014: an EU bank cannot hold more than €100,000 in accounts of a Russian citizen or Russian resident. Exception — EU/EEA/Switzerland citizens and residence permit holders in these countries: they are completely excluded from the ban.

Therefore, transactions are structured around the payment route: money comes from the buyer's account in the EU/EEA (if there's a residence permit), from a friendly jurisdiction, or through notarial escrow — the European Commission explicitly states that payment of the price through a notary's account is not prohibited in itself, but should not circumvent 5b. In the UK, a similar threshold — £50,000 for Russian citizens living in Russia (UK visa holders are excluded).

From the Russian side, the road has cleared: since December 8, 2025, the Central Bank removed the $1 million per month limit on transfers abroad for Russian citizens. The restriction is now not legal, but infrastructural — a SWIFT payment in EUR/USD from a non-sanctioned Russian bank can be made, but the European receiving bank will likely reject it for compliance reasons. The practical standard is to pay from a foreign account that has been reported to the Federal Tax Service. Where part of the price is funded with debt, another layer appears — a non-resident mortgage with its own LTVs, rates and document pack, and the bank's approval timeline usually runs longer than the notary's.

What Purchase Grants: Residency

The era of "apartment = golden visa" is over. Portugal removed real estate from the golden visa back in October 2023, Spain completely abolished the program on April 3, 2025, the UK closed the investor visa in 2022. In Italy, France, Austria, and Singapore, real estate never granted status.

What remains. In Europe, three routes still lead directly to status — each with its own threshold, property and conditions:

Beyond these three routes and the UAE, real estate on its own grants no status — though it can support one.

Real estate also works as support for "passive" visas: Spanish NLV (from €2,400/month income), Portuguese D7 (from €920/month), French visiteur, Italian residenza elettiva (from ~€31,000/year) — everywhere your own property covers the housing requirement and strengthens the dossier, but doesn't replace income. For all other scenarios, the Schengen 90/180 regime works — since 2025, Bulgaria is also in Schengen, and its days count toward the general limit.

Ownership Structures

There's no universal answer to "register through a company or personally" — the logic is opposite across countries.

Wrapper helps: in France, SCI solves inheritance issues and gradual gifting of shares to children (€100,000 per child every 15 years tax-free); in Bulgaria, a local EOOD is the only legal way for a non-EU citizen to own land under a house; in the UK, a company is justified for a rental portfolio (interest deduction, corporate rate).

Wrapper harms — and the price of entry through a company differs in every jurisdiction:

Everywhere, add beneficial owner registers: the UK Register of Overseas Entities is public, and in the EU access is restored for "legitimate interest." In England the register is more than a disclosure duty. Under the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 the registrar enters a restriction on the title of an overseas entity registered as proprietor of a qualifying estate acquired on or after 1 January 1999 — Land Registration Act 2002, Schedule 4A, paragraph 3, inserted by Schedule 3 of the 2022 Act — and that restriction blocks registration of a transfer, lease or charge unless the entity is registered or exempt. A wrapper that stops filing cannot sell.

For a Russian tax resident, any foreign company for property is also a CFC: notifications, reporting, and if profit exceeds the threshold — tax.

Ownership, Exit, Inheritance

The annual burden for a non-resident is built from four layers, each running at its own rate:

Three of the four layers arrive whether the owner lives in the property or leaves it empty.

Exit and Inheritance

On exit, the range is equally wide:

The spread runs from zero to 30%, and almost everywhere the holding period, not the rate alone, sets the price of exit.

Inheritance is a separate discipline: real estate almost always follows the law of the country where it's located, with local forced heirship and local tax — from zero in Austria to 40% IHT in the UK and 45% in direct line in France. How to plan for this — in the breakdown of foreign real estate succession and succession planning hub.

Two judgments on the same discrimination. The non-resident inheritance figure is not always the one that has to be paid. In Welte v Finanzamt Velbert (Court of Justice, Third Chamber, Case C-181/12, judgment of 17 October 2013) a Swiss resident inherited German land from his Swiss-resident wife and was allowed a tax-free allowance of €2,000 where a resident couple would have had €500,000; the Court held that Articles 56 and 58 EC — now Articles 63 and 65 TFEU — precluded the smaller allowance, and that the free movement of capital applied even though both the deceased and the heir lived outside the EU. The following year the same reasoning reached a Member State head-on: in Commission v Spain (Court of Justice, Second Chamber, Case C-127/12, judgment of 3 September 2014) Spain answered under Article 63 TFEU and Article 40 of the EEA Agreement for inheritance and gift tax that differed according to whether the parties were resident and where the immovable property was situated. What follows for a reader is narrow but useful: where the property is in the EU and the harsher figure is applied only because the owner or the heir is non-resident, that difference is a question of EU law rather than a fixed cost of the file. The comparative rates across systems are mapped in inheritance tax by country.

Three Questions That Never Answer Each Other

Underneath the eleven country maps sits one repeating model, and its first discipline is to keep three questions apart. May this buyer acquire? is eligibility — a rule about the person and the asset (a non-EU national and Austrian land, a foreigner and a Singapore landed house). What right does the purchase create, and how does it become good against the world? is title and registration — a rule about the thing. Does owning it grant a status? is immigration benefit — a rule about the state's migration policy. A buyer can be fully eligible, hold perfect title, and receive no residence right at all; a purchase can grant a visa while the title carries a charge that outranks the owner. Each is decided by a different authority under a different body of law, and confusing them is the single most expensive mistake in the file.

Where eligibility itself is tested. Inside the EU, an eligibility rule that filters by residence is not always the last word. In SEGRO Kft and Horváth (Court of Justice, Grand Chamber, Joined Cases C-52/16 and C-113/16, judgment of 6 March 2018) Hungary had extinguished by operation of law, and without compensation, registered usufruct rights over agricultural land wherever the holder could not show a close family tie to the landowner — a filter that in practice cleared holders from other Member States off the register. The Court held the measure a restriction on the free movement of capital contrary to Article 63 TFEU that no overriding reason in the public interest justified. The reach of that holding is wider than it first looks for a third-country buyer: Article 63(1) TFEU prohibits restrictions on capital movements between Member States and between Member States and third countries, so a non-EU owner can invoke it too — subject to the standstill in Article 64(1), which preserves restrictions already in existence on 31 December 1993 in respect of direct investment "including in real estate". The practical instruction is therefore to date the restriction: a permit regime that has stood since before 1994 is a fact of life, while one introduced later and aimed at foreign holders is at least arguable.

The rest of this page follows a single object through its whole life — acquisition, registration, financing, holding and use, family and succession, dispute, and exit — because the form of ownership chosen on day one silently decides the answer at every later stage. Country pages carry the local numbers; this is the model they share.

Title and Registration: When a Contract Becomes a Right

Signing a purchase contract and owning a property good against everyone else are two different moments, and the gap between them is filled by the register. How wide that gap is depends on the system.

In Spain, ownership passes by título y modo — a valid contract plus delivery, formalised in an escritura pública before a notary. Entry in the Registro de la Propiedad is not what makes you owner, but it is what makes your ownership safe: under the principio de fe pública registral a good-faith buyer for value who registers is protected "even if the registered owner who transferred the right was not the true owner", and unregistered interests do not bind someone who relied on the register. Priority runs from the asiento de presentación, so the order of lodging, not the order of signing, decides who wins. The nota simple is the public extract that lists the cargas — mortgages, easements, embargoes — sitting on the title.

In England and Wales, registration is constitutive. Under the Land Registration Act 2002 a transfer of a qualifying estate, a gift, or a first legal mortgage triggers compulsory registration, and if the application is not made within two months "the transaction becomes void as regards the transfer, grant or creation of a legal estate" — the seller holds the legal estate on a bare trust for the buyer until it is cured. Here the register is not evidence of the right; it is the right.

In France, the sale binds the parties on signature of the acte de vente before the notaire, but it is only opposable aux tiers — enforceable against third parties — once published at the service de la publicité foncière. Until then a second buyer or a creditor who registers first can prevail.

Three registers, one lesson: whoever relies on the deed alone relies on the wrong document. Who owns, who is owed, and what may block a sale are answered on the register — and in every system priority is a race to lodge, not a race to sign.

Encumbrances: What the Buyer Inherits with the Walls

A property carries its burdens, not its owner's. Whatever is registered against the title — a lender's charge, a right of way or servidumbre, a co-owner's or tenant's right, a tax lien or embargo, a pre-emption right, a heritage or planning restriction — passes to the next buyer regardless of who created it, until it is discharged and removed. Diligence therefore reads the title, not the seller's assurances: the nota simple in Spain, the état hypothécaire in France, the official copy of the register in England.

Two English devices show how registers police the title directly. A notice protects the priority of a third-party interest "against that of a subsequent registrable disposition for value" — though it does not prove the interest is valid. A restriction goes further and "prohibits the making of an entry in respect of a disposition" unless a condition is met — a co-owner's consent, a court order, a lender's certificate — so it can freeze a sale at the registry gate. A buyer who ignores a restriction cannot complete; a buyer who clears the wrong one completes subject to a charge that survives the sale.

Off-Plan: Buying What Does Not Yet Exist

Everything above assumes a building that exists. A large share of non-resident purchases — most of the Dubai market, much of new-build Spain, Cyprus and Greece — is off-plan: the buyer pays in instalments for a thing the register cannot yet describe, so the protection has to be manufactured. Three devices do that work, and a market usually leans on one of them.

An interim register. Dubai keeps a second register for units that do not yet exist. Under Law No. (13) of 2008 Regulating the Interim Property Register, every disposition of an off-plan unit must be entered in that register, and any sale or other legal disposition that transfers or restricts ownership or ancillary rights "will be void unless entered in that Register" (Article 3). Article 4 bars a developer from selling off-plan at all until it owns the project land, holds the required approvals and has had the project entered as under development. The money side sits in Law No. (8) of 2007 on Escrow Accounts for Real Estate Development: instalments go to an account held by an approved account trustee and are released against construction progress rather than into the developer's own treasury.

A ring-fenced payment plus a guarantee. Spain answers with money rules instead of a register. Under the disposición adicional primera of Ley 38/1999 de Ordenación de la Edificación, as replaced by Ley 20/2015, every sum a buyer pays on account from the building licence onwards must be secured by an insurance policy (seguro de caución) or a bank guarantee (aval solidario) and paid into a special account held "with separation from any other class of funds belonging to the developer". Article 19 of the same law adds the ten-year cover for structural defects, at 100% of the material cost of the works.

A registrable contract. Cyprus turns the contract itself into a real right. Under the Sale of Immovable Property (Specific Performance) Law 81(I)/2011 the buyer deposits the contract of sale at the Department of Lands and Surveys within six months of signing; the deposit creates a charge in rem whose priority runs from the date of deposit, and it lets the buyer ask the court to order registration in their own name. Missing the six months does not void the contract but costs a 10% surcharge on transfer fees. Where the developer had already mortgaged the land, the buyer may pay the proportionate share of the mortgage debt straight to the lender and, if the lender will not release, seek specific performance over that earlier charge.

The Closing Table: When the Buyer Answers for the Seller's Tax

A buyer expects to pay entry tax on their own purchase. In several of the systems on this page the buyer is also made the collector of the seller's tax — and where the buyer does not collect, it is often the property, not the seller, that the tax authority comes after.

Spain is the clearest case. Under article 25.2 of the non-resident income tax act (Real Decreto Legislativo 5/2004, TRLIRNR) and article 14 of its implementing regulation (RD 1776/2004), a buyer acquiring property from a non-resident must retain 3% of the agreed consideration and pay it in on Modelo 211 within one month of the transfer, as a payment on account of the seller's tax. If it is not paid in, the property itself "quedará afecto al pago del importe que resulte menor entre dicha retención y el impuesto correspondiente" — the asset stands charged with the lesser of the withholding and the tax. That is an encumbrance the buyer manufactured by not withholding, and it sits on the buyer's own title.

The United States goes further and makes the buyer personally liable. Under FIRPTA — Internal Revenue Code sections 897 and 1445 — a transferee acquiring a US real property interest from a foreign person must withhold 15% of the amount realised, and the transferee "may be held liable for the tax" if it does not. Withholding falls away only where the amount realised is $300,000 or less and the buyer has definite plans to reside there for at least half the days the property is used. The US is also the sharpest reminder that a purchase decided on migration grounds can be an estate-tax event: US real estate is a US-situs asset, and the estate of a non-resident who is not a US citizen must file Form 706-NA once US-situs assets exceed $60,000, with a maximum unified credit of $13,000, unless a death tax treaty says otherwise. That asymmetry, and how treaties move it, is the subject of US estate tax for non-residents.

France puts a person, not a percentage, between the seller and the treasury. The non-resident's gain is levied under CGI article 244 bis A and settled through the notaire at signing; a seller resident outside the EU or EEA must in addition appoint an accredited tax representative — représentant fiscal accrédité, CGI article 244 bis A and article 171 quater of Annex II — who is jointly liable for the levy. The appointment is automatically excused only where the price is €150,000 or less, or where the gain is wholly exempt by length of ownership under CGI article 150 VC.

England and Wales contrast by putting the whole duty on the seller. There is no buyer withholding: the non-resident seller files a UK property return and pays the tax within 60 days of completion. The buyer collects nothing and carries nothing.

Read this table as a liability map rather than a tax table: the question is not what the rate is, but whose problem it becomes if it goes unpaid. In Spain the answer is the thing, in the United States the buyer, in France the appointed representative, in England the seller alone. It is also why a price agreed "net to the seller" is not the same number in each column, and why a percentage once withheld has to be reconciled against the seller's real liability rather than simply kept. How the gain itself is computed, and how holding periods change it, sits with capital gains tax.

Financing and Security: a Right Over the Thing, Not the Person

Nothing in the lender's security answers who owns the property or who was allowed to buy it. A mortgage or charge is a real right the lender registers against the title; it rides with the asset through later sales until it is repaid and released. Keeping this separate from ownership is the acceptance test of the whole file.

Creation and priority again turn on the register. In Spain the hipoteca is inscripción constitutiva: under Civil Code article 1875 and Mortgage Law article 145 the mortgage "must be registered to be validly constituted" — before registration the charge does not legally exist. In France a hypothèque — including the hypothèque légale spéciale du prêteur de deniers (the old privilège de prêteur de deniers) that secures the money actually lent for the price — needs a notarial act and inscription at the service de la publicité foncière, and since the ordonnance in force from 1 January 2022 it "ranks from the date of its registration", no longer retroactively from the sale. In England a legal charge is registered against the title and a first legal mortgage of unregistered land itself compels first registration. In each case a second charge ranks behind the first by date of entry, which is why an existing mortgage must be discharged, subordinated, or expressly taken subject to before a fresh loan is drawn.

Because the right is over the thing and not the person, the two questions come apart in practice. An eligible buyer with clean title can still be refused a loan on non-resident terms — different loan-to-value, rate and document pack, and an approval timeline usually longer than the notary's; that is the subject of a non-resident mortgage. Conversely a buyer can fund the purchase without charging the property at all — a Lombard or portfolio loan secured on a securities account leaves the title unencumbered, at the price of margin risk elsewhere. How a secured lender takes, ranks and enforces collateral is a discipline of its own, and its cross-border enforcement — where the asset sits, where the security is registered, and which insolvency process governs — decides whether priority actually converts into money.

Company or Personal Name: the Same Questions, Different Answers

The country notes above show wrappers that help (a French SCI for gradual gifting, a Bulgarian EOOD as the only lawful way for a non-EU national to hold land under a house) and wrappers that punish (a flat 17% SDLT plus ATED on London residential property, 65% ABSD in Singapore, penalty rates for blacklisted companies in Spain and Portugal). The point is not that one is better — it is that the same axes give opposite answers by country and by purpose. Set them side by side on identical axes before deciding.

The comparison rarely produces a universal winner. A wrapper that saves inheritance friction in France manufactures an annual ATED bill in London and a CFC file at home; personal ownership that is cheap to enter can be the hardest to pass on. The benefit-in-kind on corporate assets is the axis buyers most often forget: the moment a company that owns the villa lets its beneficial owner stay there, the stay itself can become taxable income.

Holding and Use: Living In It, Letting It Out

The annual cost of the same object depends on how it is used, and the rules split cleanly. Ownership itself can be taxed even when the property is empty — Spain's imputed income on a vacant home, France's IFI on high-value property. Letting adds income tax by the country of the property, from 10% in Bulgaria to 24% of gross rent for non-EU owners in Spain, and often a licensing or short-let regime: some residency-linked purchases forbid short-term letting outright (the Greek golden-visa property cannot be let short-term). And personal use inside a wrapper reopens the benefit-in-kind question above. Eligibility appears here too: the right to own is not the right to let — a residence-conditioned purchase can carry a use restriction that a straightforward purchase does not.

One Object Through Its Life

Worked lifecycle (illustrative figures, fictional). A non-resident couple buy a €1.2m apartment in Spain. Acquisition: they clear eligibility (no permit needed for urban housing), pay ITP, sign the escritura and register — the nota simple now shows them as owners. Financing: a bank lends €600k; the hipoteca is inscripción constitutiva and takes first rank on registration. Use: they live in it two years, then let it, paying non-resident income tax on the rent. Rupture: they divorce. A court with divorce jurisdiction can order the flat sold or transferred, but that order still has to be registered against the Spanish title, and the bank's first-ranking hipoteca is untouched by the divorce. Exit: on sale the €600k charge is discharged and removed first, non-resident capital-gains tax (19%) and the municipal plusvalía are settled, and net proceeds are split per the matrimonial regime. Had the couple bought through a company, the divorce would have divided shares, the sale might have been a share deal, and a benefit-in-kind and CFC history would sit behind it — the same lifecycle, different owners of each answer.

Family, Succession and Disputes: Who Answers Each Fork

The lifecycle's hardest turns are owned by other pages, and pointing to the right one is half the answer. On marriage breakdown, what each spouse gets from the property depends first on the matrimonial property regime, then on which court has divorce jurisdiction and how it divides the property; the lex situs still governs the real right, so a foreign order changes the register only once recognised and recorded locally.

On death, real estate almost always follows the law of its location, with local forced heirship and inheritance tax from zero (Austria) to 40% (UK) or 45% in the direct line (France) — plan it through foreign real estate succession, a choice of law under Regulation 650/2012, and the wider succession planning map.

On a dispute — a boundary, a defective title, a lender enforcing a charge, a co-owner blocking a sale — the questions of which forum decides and whether its judgment can be enforced where the asset sits are their own discipline; a tax dispute over the ownership taxes above runs through tax disputes instead. The recurring trap: a right won in one country is not self-executing in another until it is recognised and re-registered against the local title.

The Lifecycle Map: Which Page Owns Each Stage

The eleven country pages above answer by place; this reads the same purchase by stage, so you can jump straight to the page that owns each question. Each stage is decided by a different authority, and none of them answers for the others.

Common Mistakes

Buying "for residency" based on 2019 memory

The buyer expects a golden visa that no longer exists. Check the program status as of the transaction date, not from five-year-old articles: of the eleven jurisdictions, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus and the UAE grant direct status.

Deposit before payment route

Advance paid, but money for completion cannot go through: the seller's bank has a 5b limit, the buyer has no EU account. Money route is agreed before signing, otherwise the deposit is forfeited.

Company "for confidentiality"

There's no anonymity anymore — beneficial owner registers disclose the owner, and the wrapper triggers penalty rates: ATED in London, 65% ABSD in Singapore, 3% in Spain. A company is a tool for a specific purpose, not the default.

Forgotten ownership taxes

Spanish imputed income tax, French IFI, London ATED come every year regardless of whether you live in the apartment or not. Calculate the cost of ownership for 10 years ahead, not just entry.

Transaction without checking purchase eligibility

Land in Bulgaria, any property in Austria without Grundverkehrskommission approval, landed house in Singapore without LDAU — such transactions are void or remain unexecuted. First clearance, then contract.

Inheritance "later"

The form of ownership chosen at purchase determines the inheritance scenario for decades. Changing the structure later means a second entry tax; choice of law under Regulation 650/2012 and will are executed together with the transaction.