When I moved here I started a rental business without Residency. There are still many people that I know who run rentals businesses here - some live outside the country, let alone have Residency. Similarly, on coming here I immediately obtained local health insurance and I know people who to this day have it without Residency.There are a lot of perks to residency. You can't work legally, nor run a business (including a vacation rental business such as AirBnB) without residency. You don't have access to local health insurance. Your driving license may be invalid after 3 months. If you have residency for investment / pension / renter then you get a 50% reduction on IPI and on property-related taxes. It's way harder to open a local bank account without residency. And so the list goes on and on and on. If you are serious about living here, integrating into society and not just having an extended vacation, then residency is pretty much essential. In my opinion.
But I now have Residency, in case you were wondering, but not because of those issues.