What did happen is more interesting than a price rise — and it landed one week after we published.
What actually changed
Executive Decree No. 17 of 8 September 2026, published in Official Digital Gazette No. 30613, took effect on 16 September 2026. It replaced the framework set by Executive Decree No. 722 of 2020 and its amendments.
It is not an across-the-board increase. It is a split by property type.
| Route | Before 16 Sep 2026 | From 16 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| New, first-sale real estate | USD 300,000 | USD 300,000 — unchanged |
| Pre-construction (promise to purchase) | USD 300,000 | USD 300,000 — bank guarantee now mandatory if funds go straight to the developer |
| Resale (secondary market) | USD 300,000 | USD 500,000 |
| Panamanian securities | USD 500,000 | USD 500,000 — now split into three subcategories |
| Fixed-term deposit, private bank | USD 750,000 | USD 750,000 |
| Fixed-term deposit, state bank (Banco Nacional / Caja de Ahorros) | USD 750,000 | USD 500,000 |
So the number everyone was racing against — USD 300,000 — is still there. It only buys you a new property now.
The trap sitting in the word “new”
A property that has already been sold, leased or occupied is generally treated as a resale — even if nobody has really lived in it and it still smells of paint. An investor-owned unit being flipped two years after delivery is a resale. A unit that was briefly tenanted is a resale.
This is the part that will catch people, because it is invisible in a listing. The price tier now depends on the property’s history, not its condition, and that is a question you have to ask explicitly before you commit.
One route quietly got cheaper
Easy to miss in the coverage: the fixed-term deposit route at a state bank — Banco Nacional de Panamá or Caja de Ahorros — dropped from USD 750,000 to USD 500,000, held for at least five years. For someone who wanted a deposit rather than a property, Panama is now materially more accessible than it was before the reform.
If you were already mid-purchase
The decree carries transitional rules, and they are more generous than people assume:
- Applications filed before 16 September 2026 are assessed under the old rules.
- If you made a qualifying investment or signed a binding purchase agreement before 16 September but had not yet filed, you can still use the old rules — provided you file by 16 March 2027.
- After that date, the revised thresholds apply regardless of when the money was committed.
Where the 15 October story came from
The best reconstruction we can offer: Executive Decree No. 193 of 15 October 2024 amended the programme and set the USD 300,000 figure. Somewhere between that decree’s transitional wording and two years of blog posts copying one another, “15 October 2024” turned into “expires 15 October 2026” — and it was repeated hardest by people with an interest in you hurrying.
What it means against Paraguay
Paraguay’s Investor Pass opens at USD 200,000. Against Panama’s post-reform structure:
- Against USD 300,000 for a new build, Paraguay is about a third cheaper.
- Against USD 500,000 for a resale, Paraguay is two-fifths of the cost.
There is a second effect worth noting. Restricting the lower tier to new builds also narrows what you can buy at that price — it pushes you toward developer inventory and away from the established secondary market. Paraguay places no equivalent new-versus-resale distinction on its real-estate route, so the whole market counts toward the threshold.
Panama’s genuine advantages are untouched by any of this: a longer track record as a banking hub, a more widely recognised passport, a dollarised economy, and far better flight connections. We set those out in Paraguay vs. Panama, and for what a Paraguayan file costs end to end, see the full cost breakdown.