Overnight on September 16, a $300,000 resale condo stopped qualifying for Panama’s Qualified Investor Visa. The same $300,000 still works if the building is brand new. We break down Executive Decree 17, the six-month grandfather window, why Friendly Nations at $200,000 is now the obvious fallback, and the two-year trade-off nobody mentions.
Kent’s residency path runs through the Qualified Investor Visa — Brian’s already secured through Pensionado. Here’s the $300,000 real estate route, the deadline that hits in nine weeks, and the marriage-recognition problem almost no other site mentions.
Friendly Nations isn’t the fast, cheap program it used to be — it’s a two-year provisional stage now, and the dependent-spouse shortcut that makes it cheap for straight couples doesn’t reliably work for married gay couples. Here’s what actually changes, and what a same-sex couple should budget for instead.
Most Americans receiving Social Security need exactly two documents before they even book their flight to Panama — and both can be generated online. Here’s what the full Pensionado visa process actually looks like, including how it works for gay couples, straight couples adding dependents, and applicants from countries outside the U.S.