Did purchases by foreign non-residents fall after Spain ended its golden visa? Evidence from MIVAU's quarterly transactions, 2007–2026

The rule. Spain's residence permits for investors (the "golden visa", arts. 63–67 of Ley 14/2013) ended on 3 April 2025. Ley Orgánica 1/2025, final provision 21: «Se dejan sin contenido los artículos 63, 64, 65, 66 y 67».

• Applications filed before that date are decided under the old rules.
• Permits already granted keep their validity.
• The route most used was buying property worth €500,000 or more.
• The Prime Minister announced the end on 8 April 2024.

The data. The Ministry of Housing's (MIVAU) open quarterly count of home purchases by the buyer's residence and nationality, for 52 provinces, 2007Q1–2026Q2, built from notarial deeds. The outcome is purchases by foreign non-residents. The windows are four quarters each:

• B, the year before the announcement (2023Q2–2024Q1);
• A, the year from announcement to repeal (2024Q2–2025Q1);
• P, the year after the repeal (2025Q2–2026Q1).

The end of the golden visa coincided with a fall in foreign non-resident purchases in Madrid and Barcelona. The tests fixed in advance do not support attributing it to the repeal.

What the tests fixed in advance show.

• Spain. Foreign non-resident purchases fell 9.8% from B to P.
• The Government's six provinces. The Council of Ministers placed 90% of the permits in Barcelona, Madrid, Málaga, Alicante, Baleares and Valencia. Together they fell 9.3%, against 11.0% in the other 46 provinces. Across 19 units, the six-province contrast is null: +0.02 log points, permutation p = 0.84.
• Exposure. The planned exposure was a province's share of foreign non-resident buyers in 2019–2023. It has the wrong sign: provinces with a larger share fell less, +0.05 log points per 10 percentage points of share, permutation p = 0.13. Their share of homes sold for €600,000 or more does not predict the fall either.

What the data show for Madrid and Barcelona (exploratory: chosen after a pilot showed they fell most).

• Size. Foreign non-resident purchases went from 2,651 in B to 1,699 in P, −35.9%, against −8.5% in the rest of Spain: −30.0% relative to the rest. Madrid fell 36.3% and Barcelona 35.7%. Valencia, also one of the six, fell 26.9%. Málaga fell 5.5% and Alicante 5.2%.
• Only these buyers. In the same two provinces, against the rest of Spain, purchases by foreign residents rose 4.6%, by Spanish non-residents 13.0%, and all purchases moved −1.3%.
• Against history. Over the 58 planned placebo dates the relative fall has p = 0.051, and over a spaced subset of 15 dates p = 0.125. Placebo windows overlap. With fully non-overlapping windows there are only five dates, so no p below about 0.17 is attainable; the real fall is the most extreme of those five. Excluding pandemic windows, a choice made after seeing the data, gives p = 0.024.
• The baseline year was high. Madrid's 614 purchases in P are about its 2019 count (609).
• Against 2018–2019, the two cities' share of Spain's foreign non-resident purchases is 22% lower (Madrid −13%, Barcelona −26%); against B it is 29% lower.
• In the event study, their deviations in 2020–2022 (−0.28 to −0.53 log points) are as large as the post-repeal ones (−0.22 to −0.45).
• Timing. The two cities' level relative to the rest fell 42.7% from 2025Q1 to 2025Q2, the largest such fall since 2007. Two other readings fit that quarter:
• it is also the quarter of the euro's largest quarterly rise of the sample against the dollar (+7.7%) and the yuan (+7.1%);
• a deadline makes buyers bring purchases forward, so a sharp drop just after it cannot tell "the rush ended" from "demand fell". Portugal shows the pattern: when it closed Lisbon, Porto and the coast to its real-estate route on 1 January 2022, purchases by buyers domiciled outside the EU spiked in 2021Q4, fell 0.49 log points against EU buyers in 2022Q1, and grew again in 2022 and 2023.
• The rush. Madrid rose 38.7% in A and the two cities 24.8%, against 6.1% in the rest. The relative rise (+17.7%) is unremarkable against history (p = 0.34).

Other changes at the same time.

• The tax announcement. On 13 January 2025 the Government announced a tax of «hasta el 100%» on non-EU non-resident buyers. It never became law (no rule in the BOE to 4 October 2026, and none in the housing decree-law of 29 September 2026). It reached the same buyers one quarter before the repeal and cannot be separated from it.
• Currency. A regression in levels gives a −10% relative change from the euro's rise, but it is close to spurious (Durbin–Watson 0.49). Regressions in differences give about zero. The currency effect cannot be bounded with these data.
• The general market did not fall: Spanish residents and all buyers in the two cities moved like the rest.
• Regional tax. Madrid's transfer tax has been 6% since 2014. Catalonia raised it on second-hand homes over €600,000, for all buyers, from 27 June 2025 (decree-law published 26 March 2025).
• EU and non-EU buyers. MIVAU does not separate them. The Notariado and the Registradores publish national EU/non-EU figures in press releases, but their sites restrict reuse, and we did not use them.

Prior work. The press has already reported the rush and the fall from notarial and registry data, in April and May 2026, including EU/non-EU splits. Academic work measured the introduction of the schemes, not their end. What this study adds is narrow:

• an open, reproducible, province-level analysis from open data, with placebo buyer groups and placebo dates;
• an out-of-sample test pre-registered before MIVAU publishes 2026Q3 on 16 December 2026 (PREDICTIONS.md).