Foreign Buyer's Guide to USA Real Estate (2026): FIRPTA, LLC Structure, and the $56 Billion Market

Published on: May 17, 2026

Quick answer: Foreign nationals can buy almost any US property with no nationality restriction, no visa requirement, and no minimum investment, property ownership grants no immigration status. The catch is tax complexity: FIRPTA withholds 15% of the gross sale price (the buyer remits it to the IRS), rental income defaults to 30% flat withholding on gross unless you make the §871(d) election to be taxed on net, and foreign owners get only a $60,000 estate tax exemption versus the multi-million figure for citizens. The structural decisions that matter, ITIN, ownership entity (personal name, US LLC, or foreign-corporation blocker), and tax elections, must be made before signing the purchase contract, because getting them right in the first 60 days can be worth 20+ percentage points of effective tax over the holding period.

Foreign nationals purchased over $56 billion of US residential real estate between April 2024 and March 2025, according to the National Association of Realtors, a number that has held remarkably steady through interest rate cycles, election years, and policy shifts. The United States remains the world's most accessible, most liquid, and most regulated foreign property market simultaneously. There is no nationality restriction, no visa requirement, and no minimum investment. There is also FIRPTA, a 30% default rental income withholding, an estate tax with a $60,000 exemption that catches more foreign families than any other US tax provision, and a maze of state-level rules that vary dramatically.

This guide is for international investors who want to understand what they are actually buying into. It is not a sales brochure. The same $400,000 apartment in Miami can deliver wildly different after-tax returns depending on whether you structure it correctly before signing the purchase contract.

The headline rule: you can buy almost anything

Foreign nationals can legally buy and own US real estate without citizenship, residency, or a visa. At the federal level, property ownership rights are identical to those of US citizens. You can purchase:

  • Single-family homes
  • Condominiums
  • Multi-family properties (duplexes, triplexes, apartment buildings)
  • Commercial real estate
  • Vacant land
  • Agricultural land (with state-by-state restrictions, see below)

There is no Golden Visa. Property ownership does not grant a US visa, green card, or residency. The path most foreign investors confuse with property-based residency is the EB-5 program (a $800,000–

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