Greece Will Revoke Golden Visas for Short-Term Sublets and Hidden Rebates

Greece will strip residence permits from golden visa holders who sublet their qualifying property on short-term platforms or who take money back from the seller after signing, Migration and Asylum Minister Thanos Plevris told the Prodexpo 2026 real estate conference in Athens on 15 October. The enforcement rests on Article 100 of the Migration Code and on Circular 1/2026, which defines a prohibited short-term lease as any letting or subletting of under 60 days offering only accommodation and bed linen. Alongside revocation, a breach carries a separate 50,000 euro administrative fine on the owners or holders of the property.

What it means for a foreign buyer

If you hold a Greek golden visa property and it is listed on a short-term rental platform, the permit that property secured is now the thing at risk, not just the rental income. The 60-day test in Circular 1/2026 is mechanical: a letting or subletting shorter than that, supplying only accommodation and linen, is a prohibited short-term lease. Running it through a management company or a sub-lease to a third party does not insulate you, because Plevris named sub-leases specifically as the route the ministry intends to close. Delist the property or convert the arrangement to a long-term residential lease, and keep the lease agreement and the tax filings that evidence it, because that paperwork is what a regional migration office will ask for at renewal.

The rebate ground reaches backwards, and it reaches buyers who assumed the discount was the seller's problem. If any part of your purchase price came back to you after the contract was signed, as a cash refund, a credit, a rental guarantee or a lease that returns the money over time, the ministry's position is that the permit was obtained below the statutory minimum and can be revoked. Plevris gave the example of a 250,000 euro sale where the buyer recovers 100,000 euros through a lease. Article 100 already requires the full minimum price to be paid before filing, by traceable means into the seller's account at a Greek payment institution, with the notary certifying payment, so the bank trail that qualified you is the trail that will be audited. Cases are referred to the tax and law enforcement authorities and to the Hellenic Anti-Money Laundering Authority, so the exposure is not confined to the permit.

If you are buying now, treat any offer priced to clear the threshold "on paper" as a defect in the permit itself.

What changed

No threshold moved and no new law was tabled. What changed is that the ministry has stated it will revoke on two grounds, one of which was previously treated as a rental-compliance matter and the other of which has no statutory basis at all.

The short-term rental prohibition already existed in the Migration Code. Circular 1/2026 supplied the operative definition, importing the general Greek test of under 60 days with accommodation and linen only. The sanction is twofold: revocation or non-renewal of the investor permit, and a 50,000 euro fine on the property's owners or holders. A 2024 ministry circular had already instructed regional offices to apply both.

The rebate ground is newer and thinner. It appears in the 23rd clarification of Circular 1/2026, which states that permits already granted will be revoked "in accordance with the provisions in force" and "beyond the specific sanctions of Article 100". The statute itself does not address refunds made after the deal closes, and Article 100 contains no revocation power keyed to rebates.

The mechanism

The legal instrument behind the short-term rental ground is Article 100 of Law 5038/2023, the Migration Code, as amended by Law 5100/2024. That is primary legislation, and the 60-day definition sits in Circular 1/2026 beneath it.

The rebate ground sits entirely in that circular. A circular is an administrative interpretation issued by the ministry, not a gazetted statute, and it can be rewritten, widened or withdrawn without a parliamentary vote. That cuts two ways for a holder. The revocation power the ministry asserts over post-signing refunds is the weaker of the two legally, and the likeliest to be contested on appeal. It also means the next tightening can arrive as a clarification, with no consultation period and no notice. Plevris announced no new legislation at Prodexpo, which is why the circular matters.

Context

Greece restructured its golden visa thresholds in September 2024 into three tiers. Attica, Thessaloniki, Mykonos, Santorini and islands with more than 3,100 inhabitants require 800,000 euros. Other areas require 400,000 euros. The 250,000 euro entry point survives only for conversions of non-residential buildings to residential use and for listed buildings under restoration, which is the route Plevris said he wants investors to take.

Greece counted 34,278 active investor permits at the end of July, so enforcement at the margin reaches thousands of holders. Chinese nationals are the largest group, followed by Turkish, with Israeli and British investors also among the leading nationalities. Plevris argued the scheme is neither purely positive nor the principal cause of the Greek housing shortage, and said he does not accept that abolishing it would automatically add supply.