By Elena Clavarino at Air Mail: With a Trump presidential victory looking surer by the day, U.S. citizens are buying into golden-visa programs—immigration schemes where individuals can obtain residency in a country by making significant investments into that country’s economy—in Greece, Portugal, and Spain. (Spain and Portugal have recently removed real estate from their qualifying criteria for the program due to skyrocketing rental prices in urban areas, while the Netherlands discontinued its golden-visa program last year after its high price point made it unpopular.)
Stateside, Americans are increasingly moving between states in search of lower taxes. One hundred thousand people moved out of California to Texas in 2022 alone, with Austin’s “Silicon Hills” now an enviable tech hub to rival Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, across the country, half a million New Yorkers have left the state, mostly migrating to Florida. The atmosphere is often fraught as a result—competition among the rich there is so fierce that being a member of a golf club can cost you upward of seven figures. (In April, the New York Post called it a “luxury golf arms race.”)
Suddenly, it feels like the entire 1 percent is planning an imminent move. Are we experiencing a great migration of the rich?
The numbers would suggest so. In 2013, Henley & Partners reported that the migration of high-net-worth individuals had risen to 51,000 people per year. This year, that figure is expected to reach 128,000.
And it isn’t just in the West. Asia’s and the Middle East’s rich are moving to the U.A.E., a desert tax haven where residents pay no income tax, en masse.
Last year alone, 4,500 millionaires relocated there. And the country is practically built to accommodate them—there are more than 150 international schools and countless sparkling new apartments in skyscrapers overlooking the Persian Gulf. Last year, the lyrics of Russia’s No. 1 hit song read, “I’m in Dubai, I’m chilling…. Yeah, I’m rich, and I don’t hide it.”
Istanbul, known for its low corporate- and property-tax rates, has been attracting wealthy Russians and entrepreneurs from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, too, but also Indians, who began charting their escape route when Narendra Modi raised taxes for citizens earning more than $119,000 a year, and today take over sumptuous palaces and throw parties on the Bosphorus.
A few miles west, with turmoil in the Middle East, many wealthy Lebanese and Egyptians are buying up homes on the Athens Riviera, where decrepit villas once belonging to the likes of Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis are being demolished to make room for high-rise apartments. “They love the weather, the lifestyle, the safety that Greece can offer,” Minas Dimos, the owner of Plasis, a real-estate-and-development company in the area, told the Financial Times.
More here.
