All payments that you receive will be subject to an initial 30 day hold period and will be placed in a pending balance. This means that you will not have access to your funds for at least 30 days.
After the initial 30 day hold period, your funds will be released to your available balance unless PayPal is holding the amounts for another reason as specified in the PayPal User Agreement, or other agreement that you have entered into with PayPal.
PayPal, in its sole discretion, may determine that you are no longer subject to an initial 30 day hold period. In such an event, payments you receive into your PayPal account will appear in your available balance soon after you receive the payment. PayPal will base its decision to remove the 30 day hold period on a number of factors including but not limited to the following: the length of time you have been a PayPal customer, the type of goods or services that you sell, and the number of customer complaints that you receive.
I can understand that having a payment held can be frustrating. Please understand that we place these holds to protect our users. Even if you have had your account for a long time, it may be that you haven't used it for receiving payments. If you are new to receiving payments or have not received a lot of payments then you would be subject to the same holds that @sharpiemarker mentions in their response.
