Military Zones, Border Areas and Permit Regions: Where Foreign Buyers Still Cannot Buy

Published on: August 24, 2026

Last verified: 24 August 2026. These rules touch on national security and are amended without notice. Designated areas, eligible nationalities and procedures should be confirmed for the specific parcel through local counsel.

Quick answer: A national "yes, foreigners can buy" is frequently a "yes, except in these places". Turkey prohibits foreign acquisition inside military forbidden and security zones, checked at the Land Registry during transfer. Greece requires prior authorisation for third-country nationals in designated border areas, a list that includes the Dodecanese, Evros, Lesvos, Samos, Chios and, despite the name, Santorini and Skyros. Poland's border belt covers municipalities adjacent to the state border including the maritime border, which pulls the entire Baltic coast into the permit regime. India applies a citizenship overlay requiring central bank approval. The Philippines bans foreign land ownership constitutionally. Vietnam excludes projects in defence and security areas with no public map to consult. Make the consent a condition precedent and hold the deposit with a notary or in escrow.

Most guides to foreign property ownership answer the question at country level. Can a foreigner buy in Turkey? Yes. In Greece? Yes. In Poland? Broadly yes. Our own country-by-country restrictions table does exactly that, and for most purchases it is the right level of detail.

It is also the level at which a whole category of deal failure hides. Because a national "yes" is frequently a "yes, except in these places", and the excepted places are not obscure. They include Rhodes, Kos, Santorini, the entire Polish Baltic coast, and a substantial share of Turkey's border provinces and strategic coastline.

This is a different restriction from a coastal setback, which limits what anyone may build near the water regardless of nationality. That is covered in our guide to coastal ownership and setback laws. It is also different from the Mexican restricted zone, where the barrier is solved with a trust structure, as explained in our fideicomiso guide. What follows is about geography plus nationality: places where who you are, and where the plot is, together decide whether the transfer can be registered at all.

Four mechanisms, not one

Before the country detail, it helps to see that these restrictions come in four distinct shapes, because the shape determines whether the deal is impossible, slow, or merely conditional.

1. Absolute prohibition. The transfer cannot be registered, at any price, with any structure. Turkey's military forbidden zones function this way for foreign nationals.

2. Permit or authorisation. The purchase is lawful once a named authority consents. Greece's border areas and Poland's border belt work this way. The deal is not dead, but it acquires a timeline, an application, a discretionary decision and a possible refusal.

3. Nationality overlay. The same plot is available to some foreigners and not others. Greece separates EU and EFTA nationals from third-country nationals. India maintains a list of citizenships requiring central bank approval regardless of where the person lives.

4. Project-level exclusion. The restriction attaches not to a map you can consult but to whether a specific development has been approved for foreign sale. Vietnam operates this way, and it is the hardest of the four to verify independently.

Turkey: military forbidden zones and security zones

Turkey is open to nationals of most countries, and the framework sits in the Land Registry Law (Law No. 2644), principally Article 35 for individuals and Article 36 for legal entities, read together with the Presidential Decision that sets country eligibility.

Three national limits apply to foreign individuals. Eligibility depends on nationality. Total land holdings are capped, with a widely cited ceiling of 30 hectares per person nationally and provision for a higher figure with presidential authorisation. And there is an aggregate district-level ceiling, commonly stated as 10 per cent of the privately held land area within any given district.

Then there is the geographic restriction. Under the legislation on military forbidden zones and security zones (Law No. 2565), areas near borders, near military installations and in strategically sensitive locations are designated, and foreign nationals cannot acquire property inside them. In practice the check runs during the transfer process at the Land Registry Directorate, against maps held by the defence authorities.

Two consequences matter more than the rule itself.

First, the check happens late. Turkish ownership transfers at the moment the title deed is signed and registered. Everything protective happens before that. A private sale agreement, a paid deposit and a signed reservation form do not survive a negative zone result, so the contract needs to make the deposit refundable if the property turns out to be ineligible, and the funds need to sit somewhere you can recover them from.

Second, eligibility for purchase is not eligibility for residence or for letting. A property can be perfectly buyable and still sit in a district where residence permits are restricted, or where short-term letting is constrained. These are three separate enquiries with three separate answers.

Greece: the border areas regime, and why Santorini is on the list

Greece has the most extensive permit regime of the European markets that foreign buyers actually shop in, and the most commonly misunderstood.

The framework is Articles 24 to 26 of Law 1892/1990, as amended, notably by Law 3978/2011 and Law 4278/2014. In designated border areas (παραμεθόριες περιοχές), the acquisition of rights in rem, and of certain contractual rights including leases, by persons who are nationals of or seated outside the EU and EFTA is prohibited unless authorisation is obtained. The prohibition extends to acquiring shares in entities that own property in those areas, which closes the obvious corporate workaround.

EU and EFTA nationals are treated as domestic buyers in these areas. Third-country nationals, which since 2021 includes British buyers, need prior authorisation.

The designated areas are broader than the phrase "border" suggests. The list commonly cited from the legislation covers the prefectures of the Dodecanese (which is where Rhodes and Kos sit), Evros, Thesprotia, Kastoria, Kilkis, Lesvos, Xanthi, Preveza, Rodopi, Samos, Florina and Chios, together with named former provinces in Drama, Ioannina, Pella and Serres, certain small islands, and, notably, Santorini and Skyros. Santorini is nowhere near a land border. It is on the list anyway, which is the clearest possible demonstration that "border area" here is a legal designation rather than a geographical description.

The procedure: an application to the competent Decentralised Administration, stating the intended use of the property, examined by a special committee. It is a substantive review with a security dimension, not a rubber stamp, and it can be handled by a lawyer under power of attorney without the applicant travelling. Practitioners describe timelines ranging from a couple of months to considerably longer, and approval for ordinary residential use is common but not automatic.

The failure mode to avoid is sequencing. If you sign, pay and then discover the property sits in a designated area, you are relying on an application you have not yet made. If you are pursuing a Greek residence permit through investment, add a further layer: a purchase that cannot be registered cannot support the permit application either. Note separately that Greek golden visa properties are now barred from short-term letting, with a substantial fine and revocation for breach, which is a different restriction but lands on the same buyer.

Our Athens neighbourhood guide and Cyclades guide cover those markets in detail. Attica and most of the Cyclades sit outside the designated areas, which is part of why they dominate foreign buyer flow.

Poland: the border belt catches the entire coast

Poland's rules come from the Act of 24 March 1920 on the acquisition of real estate by foreigners, and the headline is genuinely liberal. Citizens of the EU, the EEA and Switzerland are broadly exempt from the permit requirement. Non-EEA buyers need a permit from the Ministry of the Interior and Administration (MSWiA), issued with the non-objection of the Ministry of National Defence, and the applicant must show what the legislation calls ties with Poland.

Crucially, there is an exemption that covers most urban purchases: a self-contained residential unit, meaning an apartment with its own land register entry, can be bought by a non-EEA national without a permit. There is no cap on how many, and no foreign quota per building. Our Poland guide covers this two-tier system.

Then comes the exception that overrides all of it. The exemptions do not apply to real estate located in the border zone (strefa nadgraniczna), nor to agricultural land exceeding one hectare. In those two categories a permit is required even from an EU citizen.

And the border zone is larger than most buyers assume. It comprises the areas of municipalities adjacent to the state border. Poland's borders include its maritime border, so the coastal belt falls inside the zone. Polish practitioners routinely point out that a non-EEA buyer cannot acquire an apartment in Szczecin, Świnoujście, Koszalin or Gdańsk without a permit, even though the same buyer could buy an identical apartment in Warsaw or Kraków without one.

For anyone shopping the Polish coast, that reverses the entire calculus. Two useful mechanics: the ministry can issue a promesa, a binding promise to issue the final permit, valid for a year, which lets you sign a preliminary contract with real security; and the authorities apply a look-through to corporate structures, so buying through a Polish company controlled by foreigners does not remove the requirement.

India: a citizenship list, not a map

India inverts the usual structure. The primary restriction is not geographic but based on residence status and citizenship, under the Foreign Exchange Management Act framework and the regulations on acquisition and transfer of immovable property.

The general position: a foreign national who is a person resident outside India, and who is neither a Non-Resident Indian nor an Overseas Citizen of India, cannot acquire immovable property in India. NRIs and OCIs can acquire residential and commercial property, but not agricultural land, plantation property or farmhouses. A foreign national who becomes a person resident in India, tested on days of presence and intention, sits in a different and more permissive position.

Over the top of that sits a citizenship overlay. Citizens of a named list, which the regulations set out as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, China, Iran, Hong Kong, Macau, Nepal, Bhutan and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, cannot acquire immovable property, other than a lease not exceeding five years, without the prior approval of the Reserve Bank of India. This applies by reference to citizenship rather than residence, so it can bite on someone living and working in India, and the Supreme Court has treated the approval requirement as mandatory rather than procedural.

Separately, and this is the part that maps onto the theme of this article, India has cantonments: military administrative areas governed under the Cantonments Act with their own boards, their own building regulations and their own land classifications, alongside broader restrictions on defence land. Add state-level land ceiling legislation and, in some states, restrictions on who may acquire agricultural land at all. The practical lesson for India is that the enquiry runs across three levels: central exchange-control approval, state land law, and local administration.

The Philippines: a constitutional ban, and a longer lease

The Philippine restriction is constitutional rather than administrative. Article XII, Section 7 of the 1987 Constitution reserves ownership of private land to Filipino citizens and to corporations at least 60 per cent Filipino-owned. There is no zone in which a foreign individual may own land, and no permit that changes it.

What is available: condominium units, under the Condominium Act (Republic Act No. 4726), where a foreigner can hold the Condominium Certificate of Title in their own name provided the project stays within the 40 per cent foreign ownership limit. And long-term leases of land. Here there is a genuine 2025 development: Republic Act No. 12252, signed in September 2025, extended long-term land leases available to foreign investors for qualifying projects from the previous 50 plus 25 year structure to up to 99 years.

Two overlays sit above all of that: land within military reservations and base conversion areas has its own regime, and ancestral domain recognised under the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act cannot be dealt with as ordinary private land.

Vietnam: the restriction you cannot look up on a map

Vietnam is the clearest example of project-level exclusion. Foreign individuals may buy housing only within commercial housing projects that have been approved for sale to foreign buyers, and within the statutory quotas set by the Housing Law 2023 and Decree 95/2024. On top of the quota, projects located in areas designated for national defence and security are excluded from foreign sale regardless of whether quota remains.

There is no public map you can consult from abroad. Confirmation comes from the provincial authorities and from the project's own approval documentation, which is why written confirmation of both project eligibility and current quota, dated close to registration, is the single most important document in a Vietnamese purchase. Our guides to Vietnam for foreign investors and to Da Nang, Hoi An and Nha Trang go into the quota mechanics.

Elsewhere, briefly

The list is illustrative rather than complete, and each entry has conditions and exceptions that need local confirmation.

How to run the check before you pay anything

1. Get the parcel identifier, not the address. Every one of these enquiries runs on the cadastral or land register reference. An address is not enough to get a reliable answer.
2. Ask the question in the right order. Is the property in a restricted or designated area? If yes, is it prohibition or permit? If permit, who decides, on what criteria, and how long does it take? What is the refusal rate and what happens to the deposit?
3. Ask about the structure as well as the person. Several regimes look through companies. Some, including Greece's, extend to share transfers and to leases, not just purchases.
4. Check whether the restriction also affects the exit. A restricted-area property has a smaller buyer pool on resale, which is a pricing fact, not just a paperwork fact.
5. Make the consent a condition precedent. The contract should be conditional on the permit or clearance being obtained, with a defined deadline and a full refund if it is not.
6. Hold the deposit somewhere neutral. A notary client account or escrow, not the agent's account. Our guide on paying for property abroad safely covers the mechanics.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use a local company to get around a border-area restriction?
Usually not, and attempting it creates a second problem on top of the first. Greece's regime expressly covers legal entities and share structures in designated areas. Poland applies a look-through to foreign-controlled Polish companies. Where a nominee arrangement is used to disguise the real owner, the exposure moves from a failed registration to a potential offence. See our guide to nominee ownership.

Does holding a residence permit exempt me?
Rarely, and never automatically. In Poland a residence permit helps establish the ties with Poland that support a permit application, but it does not remove the requirement. India's citizenship overlay applies to some people who are resident in India. Treat residence status as a factor in the application, not a substitute for it.

Are these lists published?
Partly. Greece's designated areas derive from published legislation. Poland's border zone is defined by separate regulations. Turkey's military zone maps are held by the defence authorities and are checked internally at transfer rather than published for buyers to search. Vietnam's project eligibility is confirmed case by case. The practical answer is that in some jurisdictions you can verify this yourself and in others you can only ask the authority through local counsel.

I already signed and paid a deposit. What now?
Get the enquiry run immediately, read your contract for the refund position on failure of registration, and take local advice before making any further payment. The outcome usually turns on what the contract says about conditions precedent and on where the money is being held.

Does any of this affect what I can build if I do buy?
Yes, and it is a separate enquiry. Proximity to a military installation, a border or a protected site frequently carries construction and even survey restrictions independent of nationality. Run the planning check as well, using the framework in our guide to checking zoning before you buy.

Keep reading on JanusHermes

The question to ask is never only "can foreigners buy here". It is "can someone of my nationality register a transfer of this parcel, and if consent is needed, who grants it and what happens to my money if they refuse". Ask it before the deposit leaves your account. JanusHermes lists property from local agencies in 11 languages, with the local agency's own contact details on every listing.

Related reading: foreign ownership restrictions by country, why countries ban foreign property buyers, coastal ownership and setback laws, checking zoning before you buy and land registries and cadastres for foreign buyers.

This article is general information about restricted-area and permit regimes affecting foreign property buyers, current as at August 2026. It is not legal advice. These rules touch on national security and are amended without notice; designated areas, eligible nationalities, thresholds and procedures all change. Nothing here should be relied on for a specific transaction. Always obtain written advice from a qualified lawyer in the jurisdiction concerned before committing funds, and confirm the position for the specific parcel and for your own nationality.