While youāre absolutely right that it would be better if the investment happened after approval (like in Italy and Malta), I think youāre giving Portuguese politicians way too much credit. Hanlonās razor etc.
I think that the credit I have given to the portuguese politicians is fair. They cannot be that stupid not knowing that ARI backlog is severe. Iāve read many threads/posts in Facebook where people said that āportugal is like 3rd word countryā; āportugal is backwardā; āportugal is like stone-ageā. Actually no, Portugal is a country where its politicians do not want it to develop more. Instead, they only care about money coming into their pockets. No hope to reduce the backlogs as there does not exist any willing from the authority to do so. And if putting yourself into the position of the authority, why would you change anything if the ARI applicants keep increasing every year regardless of the backlogs?
You are not just living 2 learn anymore. You have already gained enlightenment. My salutations to the enlightened one!
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I certainly wouldnāt invest untilāat the VERY leastānormal (non-lawsuit) pre-approvals resumed.
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Looks like Spain GV may actually end in January 2025
āSpainās government has finally secured a legislative path to terminate its golden visa program, giving wealthy non-EU nationals until January 2025 to invest in Spanish property for residency rights.ā
Great! This will FOMO every disgruntled American into choosing Spain instead of adding to the already insanely long queues in Portugal and Greece.
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Does Greece have a similar backlog / clusterfāk to Portugal? Iāve never paid much attention to it living in PT but I am sort of curious to hear if the grass is equally brown.
From what I read, itās starting to back up, but still nothing compared to Portugal.
Chart hereā¦ story has gone behind paywall.
Only a 10th of PTās backlog? Or has AIMA made half their backlog ādisappearā lately? 
AIMA can present whatever data it wants to present. It wont be the first institution to fudge data either. That is precisely why a voice of customer forum like this needed.
PTās Golden Visa backlog is probably much smaller than 40,000. Itās the backlog of all visa types that adds up (or added up) to 400,000.
But itās hard to compare countries directly. If Greece is prioritizing GV and processing more than the 2 thousand per year that PT is processing, they can theoretically get through their backlog much faster.
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Also, I didnāt hear of Greece having any kind of āexpression of interestā policy that would clog their immigration service with other applicants.
40k does sound bad, but in that case, shouldnāt this website be full of sob stories from Greece Golden Visa applicants as well?
Not really, most of yāall probably found Nomad Gate when googling the Portuguese GV, which over time built up a strong community of PTGV applicants here.
We barely have any content about Greece and that content barely gets any traffic, so it makes sense that there arenāt many GRGV applicants venting their frustrations here.
survivorship bias 
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i believe that most americans choose PT GV over GR GV because of the passport. GR GV only yields a residency and most likely does not lead to passport (unless living there full time for years). GR residency only gives schengen access which americans already have. Hence there is no concrete reason seeing americans getting GR GV. A majority of members in this group is american. Hence we do not here any cry out about GR GV
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If an anecdote would help, I know two people who got Greek GVs (for different reasons, neither needed EU citizenship, just wanted residency). Both had fast turn arounds and were happy with the transaction. The most recent of these was about a year and a half ago, so it may have gotten worse. Unlike me who has been stuck for four years trying to get my Portuguese one with no end in sight.
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Perhaps itās time to build a following!
Me before applying for Portugal Golden Visa:
Me now:
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