Baltic States: Best Countries to Live, Work and Invest (Residence Permits, Cost of Living)
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00:00 Intro
01:20 Baltic States: Overview
So what are and where are the Baltic States? The Baltic States or simply the Baltics are three countries in Northeastern Europe, some may call it Northern Europe, some may call it Eastern Europe, but Northeast is probably the option with less controversy.
And these countries are Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
02:25 Cost of Living
We are going to start with the cost of living. Since the three countries use the same currency, it is actually pretty easy to identify differences in their cost of living, even though they are not extremely high.
If we take the cost of living data of all three Baltic States, we can clearly see that Estonia is the most expensive of them all.
Estonia made efficient government reforms before Latvia and Lithuania did them, and also managed to attract a huge number of foreign investors and companies.
Currently, Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is the most expensive city in the Baltic States.
Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania has consumer prices slightly lower than Riga, the capital of Latvia.
03:27 Salaries
When talking about cost of living, we must talk about salaries, because they determine the purchasing power for residents to have access to local products and services.
And here once again we have Estonia at the top, for similar reasons that also push the cost of living up, these very same reasons also push salaries up high in the most Northern of the Baltic States.
Tallinn is the city with the highest salaries in the Baltic region. Average net salaries as of today hover around 1250 EUR per month. In Vilnius, average net salaries are around 1000 to 1100 euros per month. Riga comes last in terms of salaries, with an average of 900 euros per month.
Cities in the Baltic States which are not capitals tend to have salaries significantly lower than in the capitals.
04:17 Real Estate
The next topic is pretty tied to salaries and cost of living: we’re going to talk about Real Estate.
Real estate in the Baltics has a similar trend in all of the 3 countries. The capital cities have quite high prices, some medium cities like Kaunas and Tartu have moderate prices, and everywhere else prices are extremely low.
Tallinn and Vilnius come at the top here, with prices per square meter at around 3k euro in the center of these cities. Riga is definitely cheaper, and you can find a lot of central area properties with prices at 2000 euros per square and even below that.
This causes a lot of real estate in these areas to have virtually no value. It is quite common to find apartments or houses in the countryside of Latvia or Lithuania selling for 10000 euros or less.
05:18 Transportation
Now we come to the next part of our video which is transportation. The transportation infrastructure in the Baltics is quite unique. Since these countries are some of the most sparsely populated in Europe, do not expect to find metro stations in any of the Baltic countries.
If you are flying into the Baltic States, the city with the best connections is Riga, since is the main hub for airBaltic, Latvia’s flag carrier.
06:22 Visa and Residence Permits
Now we are going to talk about visa and residence permits. In terms of visas, these countries are very similar, since they are all in the Schengen area. But in terms of residence permits, this is one of the aspects in which the three countries have the sharpest differences.
Latvia is the best country in the Baltic region to get a residence permit if you are a non-EU citizen. There are residence permits for freelancers, residence permits for company owners, residence permits if you buy real estate, and even a residence permit if you just park some money in a Latvian bank interest free.
In Estonia, there are already significantly less options. It is possible to get a residence permit in Estonia as a self-employed person or by opening a company, so there are still good options. Estonia also has a visa for digital nomads, but since it is not renewable I wouldn’t call it an excellent deal.
Lithuania is the country with the least options in terms of residence permits for non-EU citizens. To open a company and get a residence permit, you need to hire at least one Lithuanian or EU national.
Safety
Now we are going to briefly talk about safety. The three Baltic states are quite safe and also quite comparable.
Climate
COLD
Language
Now let’s talk about the languages of the Baltic region. Each country has its own national and official language. In Estonia, Estonian, in Latvia, Latvian, and in Lithuania, Lithuanian.
Verdict
