Panama Raises Investor Visa Property Minimum to $500,000 for Resale Purchases

Panama has raised the property investment minimum for its Qualified Investor residency from US$300,000 to US$500,000 for resale purchases, keeping the US$300,000 figure only for the first sale of new, unoccupied construction. The change arrives through Executive Decree No. 17, signed on 8 September 2026 and published in Official Gazette Digital No. 30613, effective 16 September 2026.

What changed

The old framework set a single US$300,000 real estate threshold for every applicant, whatever the property. Decree 17 splits it in two.

A purchase of a new and unoccupied unit acquired directly from the promoter, developer or its successor still qualifies at US$300,000. Every other property purchase, meaning anything bought on the resale market, now requires US$500,000. The first-sale status is not taken on the seller's word: it is verified through Public Registry certification together with construction and occupancy permits.

The decree repriced the non-property routes at the same time. The securities route requires an aggregate US$500,000 placed through a licensed Panamanian broker and held for a minimum of five years. The fixed-term bank deposit route now splits by institution, at US$500,000 for a deposit held directly and solely at Banco Nacional de Panamá or Caja de Ahorros de Panamá, against US$750,000 at a private licensed bank, also for five years.

Decree 17 replaces Executive Decree No. 722 of 2020 and its 2022 and 2024 amendments, which had governed the programme since it opened.

The mechanism

Two provisions decide who is affected and who is not.

Article 19 preserves prior requirements for applications presented before the decree took effect, without prejudice to more favourable procedural rules. A file lodged before 16 September is assessed against the old US$300,000 single threshold. A file lodged after it is not.

Article 14 routes naturalisation requests through the National Investment Directorate of the Ministry of Commerce and Industries, which must certify the investment. The decree creates no accelerated or automatic path to Panamanian nationality, and applicants should read the certification requirement as an administrative gate rather than a shortcut.

Separately, the decree opens a twelve-month window for holders of the prior "own economic solvency" category to convert to Qualified Investor status, provided they meet the current thresholds.

What it means for a foreign buyer

The programme has not closed, but the cheapest entry point has been narrowed to a specific kind of asset. A buyer who wanted a titled resale apartment in Panama City or a finished house in Coronado at the US$300,000 minimum no longer has that option. To stay at US$300,000 the purchase has to be the first transfer of a new unit from the developer, which in practice means buying into new inventory or off-plan stock rather than the existing market.

That changes the risk profile of the qualifying purchase rather than just its price. A first-sale purchase carries developer delivery risk, and the residency application depends on a Public Registry certification and occupancy permits that only exist once the unit is built and registered. Verifying a developer's completion record before committing is now part of the residency decision, not just the property decision.

Buyers unwilling to take delivery risk face a US$200,000 step up to reach the resale threshold, which for many candidates moves the decision from a qualifying purchase to a straightforward property purchase without the residency benefit.

Context

Panama's Qualified Investor programme grants permanent residency on a short processing timeline and has been one of the lowest-priced property-linked residency routes in the Americas since Decree 722 created it in 2020. It sits alongside the Friendly Nations Visa, which has its own property route and its own separate thresholds, so an applicant priced out of one is not automatically priced out of the other.

Panama places no nationality restriction on titled property ownership, and the underlying purchase mechanics are unchanged by this decree. What changed is the price of the residency that a purchase can buy, and which kind of property counts.

As recently as 13 September the US$300,000 minimum was still in force with no deadline attached to it, because the decree then governing the programme set none. Publication of Decree 17 on 16 September supplied the deadline and made it immediate. The higher threshold took effect on promulgation, with no grace period for buyers already under contract on a resale property.