Long stays and moving here: who it genuinely works for, how people stay legally, why you rent for a year before buying anything, and the six mistakes that send people home.
A holiday and a life here are not the same place
A holiday here and a life here share a coastline and almost nothing else. The things people fall in love with on holiday — being a guest, the sea being the entire day, everything already arranged — are exactly the things that stop being available once you are the one arguing with a landlord, queueing at a government office and working through a fourth consecutive week above forty degrees. That is not an argument against moving; plenty of people are extremely happy here, and some of them arrived by accident and stayed a decade. It is the frame that makes everything below useful, and it is the one thing nobody selling an apartment will say to you.
What works: The strongest case of the five. Foreign income against local costs is a large gap, the time zone works for both Europe and the Gulf, mobile data is good and cheap, and the day has a shape — work, then a house reef twenty minutes away — that is hard to arrange anywhere in Europe at the same cost.
What ends it: Connectivity is fine until it is not, and a video call that drops in the middle of a client meeting is a different problem from a dropped Netflix stream. Anyone whose income depends on it needs a fixed line plus a mobile fallback, and needs to have tested both before giving up the flat at home.
What works: This coast has one of the highest concentrations of dive centres in the world and instructors do get hired, year-round, with real seasons rather than a four-month summer. If the goal is to dive every day and be paid something for it, the job exists here in a way it does not in most places.
What ends it: The pay is local pay, and that is the part people plan around badly. A holiday budget funded from savings is not the same life as a wage in Egyptian pounds, particularly in a currency that has lost a great deal of its value against the euro in recent years. This works as a chosen life and fails as a financial plan.
What works: Warm winters, a low cost base, unhurried days, and genuinely good private clinics in the resort towns for the ordinary things. A pension paid in euros or sterling goes a long way here, and the social side is easier than people expect — there are established communities in every town on this coast.
What ends it: Healthcare for the serious things. Routine care here is good and quick; anything complex means Cairo or a flight home, and the answer to that has to be an insurance policy that will actually pay, arranged before it is needed rather than after. Age limits and pre-existing conditions are where those policies get difficult.
What works: An outdoor childhood, a short commute to everything, and a level of everyday safety for children that surprises people coming from European cities. Younger children do well here.
What ends it: Schooling is the whole question, and it should be answered before anything else — which schools, which curriculum, whether they have places, and what happens at the age your child will be in five years. Get this settled first; every other decision is downstream of it, and it is the most common reason families here leave.
What works: The coast runs on small businesses — dive centres, restaurants, agencies, rentals — and foreign owners are common and unremarkable. There is a real market, and the directory on this site exists because of how many of them there are.
What ends it: Company formation, licensing and the local-partner question are specialist matters that change, and the failure mode is a handshake arrangement with no legal standing. Anybody doing this needs an Egyptian lawyer and an accountant they chose themselves, not ones introduced by the person selling them the opportunity.
Nothing on this page is legal, immigration, tax or financial advice. Visa categories, residence rules and the law on foreign property ownership in Egypt have each changed more than once in recent years, and a page reviewed twice a year is the wrong place to learn the current position. What follows is the shape of each route and the questions that decide it. For anything binding, use the Egyptian consulate in your country, a lawyer you found independently, and your own government’s travel advice.
Most people arrive on a tourist visa, which is short and extendable in-country at a passport office. This is a perfectly normal way to spend a season here and thousands of people do it. What it is not is a status — you cannot work on it, you cannot easily open a bank account on it, and it does not accumulate into anything. Check the current durations and the extension process with the Egyptian consulate before you plan around them.
The practice of leaving the country briefly and re-entering to reset a tourist stay is well established here and it works until it does not. It depends entirely on discretion at a border, it has tightened before, and the people it fails are the ones who have already given up the flat at home and enrolled the children. Treat it as a stopgap between two proper statuses, never as the status itself.
A residence permit here generally follows something else: employment with a company that sponsors you, marriage to an Egyptian national, study, or property ownership above a threshold. Each has its own paperwork, its own renewal cycle and its own list of documents that must be issued, translated and stamped in a particular order. All of them are administratively slow rather than difficult. Start earlier than you think you need to.
Residence and the right to work are not the same permission, and the second is the harder one. An employer sponsoring a work permit is doing real administrative work on your behalf, which is why the good employers here ask for a commitment in return. Remote work for a foreign employer sits in a different category again, and how it is treated is exactly the kind of question to put to a professional rather than to a forum.
Foreign income against local costs is a large gap and it is why this coast works for remote workers and pensioners. Local wages against the same costs is an entirely different arithmetic. Almost every argument about whether Egypt is cheap is really two people standing in different economies. Decide which one your income sits in before you decide anything else.
The Egyptian pound has devalued substantially and repeatedly against the euro and the dollar in the last decade. If you earn abroad, that has quietly made your life here cheaper each time. If you earn in pounds, it has done the opposite, and it is the single largest financial fact of living here. Anybody moving on local pay should think about what another move of that size would mean for them, because it has happened more than once.
Opening an Egyptian account generally requires a residence permit or an employer behind you, which is one of the practical reasons the tourist route has a ceiling. Foreign-currency accounts exist and are worth asking about if your income arrives in euros. Until then, most long-stayers run on a foreign card and cash withdrawals — see the money page for why to always be charged in Egyptian pounds and to decline dynamic currency conversion.
Cheap: rent, domestic help, fruit and vegetables from a market, taxis, eating in local restaurants, phone data. Not cheap, and often a surprise: anything imported, electronics, a car, European groceries in the supermarkets that stock them, international school fees, and good private healthcare. The shape of the saving is that daily life costs little and the occasional big thing costs about what it would at home.
The single most useful sentence on this page. Every town on this coast is a different place to live and the differences do not show up on a holiday — where the wind sits, how far the walk is in August, whether anything is open in low season, who your neighbours turn out to be. People who rent first choose differently from people who bought in the first month, and the ones who bought in the first month are the ones selling.
The market is overwhelmingly furnished, informal and short-cycle. Listings circulate through agents, Facebook groups and word of mouth rather than through portals, and the best places are usually found by being here rather than by searching from home. Expect a written contract, expect to negotiate, and expect the price to depend on season. Ask specifically what is included: electricity and water are usually separate and summer air-conditioning is not a small bill.
A gated development gives you a pool, security, maintenance and neighbours who are mostly also foreign, at a service charge. A flat in town costs less, puts you in an Egyptian neighbourhood, and asks more of your Arabic and your patience. Both are legitimate and the mistake is drifting into one without deciding. Ask what the service charge covers and how often it has risen — that is the question that separates the well-run developments from the rest.
Foreign nationals can own property in Egypt subject to restrictions, and the rules differ by region and have changed before. The recurring problem is not the purchase, it is the REGISTRATION: a great deal of property has been sold to foreigners on contracts that were never properly registered, which is discovered years later when someone tries to sell or inherit. If you take one thing from this page: instruct your own independent Egyptian lawyer, not one recommended by the seller or the agent, and have them confirm the title and the registration before any money moves.
Fibre exists in the newer developments and parts of the towns, and mobile data is good almost everywhere — for anyone working online, confirm which of those the specific flat has rather than what the area has. Power cuts happen and are usually short. Water is delivered or supplied depending on where you are, and drinking water is bought. Ask about all four before signing, because none of them is visible on a viewing.
Not the four things people worry about before arriving. These are drawn from what happens, which is the more useful list.
June to September on this coast is above forty degrees for weeks at a time, humid near the water, and it does not let up in the evening the way a Mediterranean summer does. Life moves indoors and after dark, a lot of people who can leave do leave, and the towns thin out. Nobody visits in August and then moves; almost everybody moves and then meets August. It is survivable and air-conditioned and many people simply plan a month away — but it should be a decision made in advance rather than a discovery.
Processes here are rarely difficult and frequently slow, and they run on documents that must be issued, translated, stamped and presented in a specific order, in person, on a working day that is not Friday. The people who cope treat it as a known cost and start early; the people who struggle are the ones expecting a European timeline and an online form. Budget the time, keep certified copies of everything, and expect to go back a second time.
English gets you through the entire tourist economy and a fair amount besides, and plenty of long-term residents never get past greetings. But the line between visiting and belonging here is drawn in Arabic more than in anything else — prices, repairs, neighbours, offices and every conversation that is not a transaction. Even a hundred words changes how you are treated. The phrasebook on this site is a start rather than an answer.
The safety section ranks this honestly for people on holiday and nothing about it improves when you live here — it gets worse, because you are on the road every day rather than twice a fortnight. Driving yourself means an international permit and eventually a local licence, and it means driving defensively in traffic that does not follow the conventions you learned in. Many long-stayers deliberately do not drive here, and that is a reasonable position rather than a timid one.
The mistake: Buying property within the first few months, usually off-plan, usually from a developer met on holiday.
Instead: Rent for a year, in the town you think you want, through a summer. The cost of a year’s rent is trivial against the cost of owning the wrong flat in the wrong town, and the resale market here is not liquid enough to fix a mistake quickly.
The mistake: Using the lawyer, agent or notary the seller introduced you to.
Instead: Instruct your own, found independently, before you sign anything or transfer any money. The recurring failure on this coast is unregistered title, and it is discovered years later by the person trying to sell — which by then is you.
The mistake: Drifting on tourist extensions and border runs while telling yourself you will sort out residence later.
Instead: Decide which residence route applies to you before you commit to the move, and start the paperwork from a position of not needing it yet. Everything is easier when you are not against a deadline.
The mistake: Letting travel insurance lapse without replacing it, on the grounds that clinics here are cheap and good.
Instead: Keep a policy that covers medical evacuation. Routine care here genuinely is quick and reasonable — the thing that ruins people is the serious event that needs Cairo or a repatriation flight, and that is not a bill you pay out of a current account.
The mistake: Building a life entirely inside the foreign community, then wondering why it feels thin after a year.
Instead: The expatriate scene here is welcoming, immediate and high-turnover — people leave constantly, which is exhausting in a way nobody warns about. The residents who are still happy after five years are almost always the ones with Egyptian friends, some Arabic, and a reason to be here beyond the weather.
The mistake: Assuming a local job — diving, hospitality, agency work — will fund a European standard of living.
Instead: Do the arithmetic in the currency you will actually be paid in, and then do it again assuming that currency loses value, because it has done so more than once. Working here as a chosen life is a good decision; working here as a financial plan is the one that sends people home.
Last reviewed 26 July 2026. Something out of date? Tell us