What Rights Do I Have in a Country Where I Own Property?

There are four different rights behind a foreign property, and a deed only gives you one of them.

Here they are.

The right to enter.

The right to stay.

The right to live there.

The right to remain.

Before 2020 almost nobody separated those. You had the deed, you had the keys, you assumed you could come and go.

Then entry rules changed overnight and people found out which of the four they actually held.

Usually just the first one, on a tourist stamp somebody else controls.

I’ve spent more than twenty years in real estate and global mobility, so I don’t only ask whether a property is a good buy. I ask which of those four rights the family holds. And which ones they’d want if next year looked nothing like this one.

Residency gives you the middle two. Citizenship gives you all four.

Count your four rights before you count your square footage. Or send me the country and I’ll tell you which ones you have.

Related

• Does Owning Property in Another Country Give Me the Right to Enter It?
• What Is Residency by Investment?
• What Are the Tax and Residency Consequences of Buying a Home Abroad?