Well that is a Golden question for Golden visa, getting the money back is the key factor , but i can tell till today no one has got the money back.29th July 2022 and the problem is that if the hotel will not return the hotel apartment cannot be sold to anyone else , so it seems risky , as it is not a free hold property
Can you plz share your experience of working with them for one year, as i am under the impression since IAS is referred by Mercan, so they will not take care of investors interests , they will take care of only Mercanās interest, so an independent lawyer is a solution ? as IAS not seem to do Property due diligence?
Plz let me know if my assumption is wrong ,
Hi Melanie,
Is that possible for you to share the lawyerās contact info? I am talking with Mercan for reviewing several projects now.
Thanks lot!
sure, Iāll IM you now. They assign different lawyers within Mercan to each case- mine changed once.
Hello violet,
Can tell us about your experience with Mercan? Iām about to start the process but need to hear some feedbacks from people with real cases , any negative thing about them?
Thanks
I had the exact same concern, add to it that IAS is actually a subsidiary of Mercan as per what Iāve found on searching online. Did Anyone used 3rd party representation with Mercan?
When we were considering Mercan in late 2020, Jerry Morgan with Mercan told us we could use our own lawyer if desired. Ultimately, we decided on a different investment route. Again, this was back in late 2020.
Hi dyaakudsi,
The only negative thing I will say about them is that they dropped the ball on our paperwork at our biometrics appointment. We brought all our documents along with us to the appointment. The lawyer (who is not our case responsible, our appointment was in Azores so they sent a junior lawyer to accompany us to SEF) took our paperwork with him because it needed to be translated. What happened to it after that is unknown. The next communciation we got was that SEF needed our marriage certificate and police certificates. Of course the police certificates are only good for three months so the ones we had given to the Mercan attorney were expired and we had to go get new ones. I was very displeased with both the inconvenience and the delay. We are still waiting for our visas, our biometric appointments were in November and we got this notice mid-January and it took us about six weeks to get our police certificates reissued, apostilled, and sent to Mercan.
Outside of that, they have been fine. They did manage to get us last minute biometric appointments during a one-week trip to Portugal. They have offered us an extra week of free accommodation due to their mess up, which I donāt think is particularly generous but Iām not sure what I would consider adequate. If you are considering going this route then I would reach out to them directly, there is no high pressure sales pitch. In fact, they seem to just leave you be unless you reach out to them to move things along. This is the case even during the process, they will not be contacting you to send money, send documents, set up appointments, etc. They will do their part and wait for you to do yours.
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Thanks Violet for your feedback,
So how long it took you since you started and where youāve reached so far?
I think the buy back promissory note is an important aspect and at least assures you the return of your capital post 5-6 years.
We nearly burned our fingers with a new hotel property in Evora on the lines of Mercan which promised to return the capital in the investment agreement. Offcourse the bait was a very good return on investment.
When we asked for them to sign a promissory agreement confirming that, they were very quick to backtrack on what was in the investment agreement.
Legally the promissory contract or CPCV is a must if you want to preserve your capital.
Please check the agreements with your lawyers before you make the payments 
So did you went with Mercan at the end? Have you negotiated any terms of their contract? And how they guarantee the buy back?
Hi,
I was never with Mercan.
I was speaking about a different company which refused to do buyback CPCV.
As per this post if Mercan does a buyback CPCV, thatās a plus point in their favour.
Hi Sarah, Thanks for starting this thread.
I can see many people already asking for peopleās experience with Mercan.
May I please ask for anyoneās firsthand experience with Mercan (in relation to the Portugal GV)?
I am particularly interested to know whether they have been honoring the buyback guarantee, and if not, what would be the fallback scenario?
That would be super helpful, thank you all!
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Hello Steve, I am also considering to invest in Hotel developmentā¦but I am bit careful with the promised annual % income and guaranteed buyback optionā¦Are you with Mercan and on a similar arrangement? Thanks
Hi. Would love to know anything more youāre willing to share about your whole experience. Considering la vida, but before sending $, etc need to make sure theyāre legit. Thanks in advance!
Hi Karim,
I already replied to you personally, but this could be helpful for others too.
Mercan had their first call for investors in 2017 for Casa da Companhia, which means their first clients are in the second renewal phase. Theyāre expecting to have their first case of citizenship application in 2023.
Thereās also a separate group for current and potential Mercan investors which you can join here if youād like to.
Hi Natasha,
Iād recommend reading the beginning of this thread regarding La Vida. La Vida is offering repackaged Mercanās properties and adds an additional fee.
Hi. Thanks so much for the reply. I did read that entire thread and understand that they are repackaging the Mercan properties. I just wondered if anyone had made it through most or all of the process, as that firsthand information seems hard to come by.
Thanks again
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Hi Melanie,
I guess youāre getting tired of being asked the same request, to share the names and your experience of the law firms that you used, but Iām going to ask anyway!!
Thanks in advanceā¦
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Hi Karim,
I asked Mercan about this recently and they say they had one investor apply for citizenship earlier this year (in March, I believe it was). While technically you can sell your property when you apply for the citizenship, itās usually not a good idea in case you still need to renew your Golden Visa before youāre granted the citizenship. So they expect to buy back his share once he gets the citizenship.
How long thatāll take is anyoneās guess. Iāve seen people here stating that it takes about 2 years at the moment, Mercan themselves says they think itāll take about 14 months (so May 2023), based on recent experiences they have heard of from their network.
Still, I think itās likely that they will be honoring the buybacks, short of any crazy black swan event.
As far as Iāve understood things are structured in such a way that they canāt take out any profits (e.g. dividends) from the properties until all investors have been reimbursed their investment. So far it seems their properties are doing well (they have 5 operational by now), with good ratings on Booking.com (the lowest is 9.1), as well as high average daily rates (ADRs) and occupancy rates.
Since the hotels are not leveraged at all, if they donāt have enough built-up cash flow to meet buyback demand from investors it wouldnāt be any issue to leverage the hotel to cover the shortfall.
Iāll caveat this by saying that I havenāt seen any of their investor agreements for a couple years. I know that RA Groupātheir initial Portuguese entity from back when they were more of a limited partner in the projects, which has now been replaced by Mercan Properties which is much more involved with every step of the processāused to be the entity you contracted with. As I understand it, this is now with the individual hotel (SPV), like is the usual approach in the industry.
When I pressed them on what would happen if a specific SPV wouldnāt be profitable enough to buy back investors, in the unlikely event that even leveraging the property wouldnāt be sufficient, they said that at that point of course it would make sense for them to cover the rest of the shortfall from their overall operation. This isnāt formalized in any contract, as far as I know. But from a purely self-interest perspective, I do think they would be incentivized to do so, as any failure to make investors whole would compromise their global brand and make it much harder for them to fund any future projects.
To sum up: No, thereās no such thing as a 100% buyback guarantee, not with Mercan or anyone else. But I still think Mercan is the least risky buyback option available in the Portuguese market, given their track record of planning, building, launching and operating hotels.
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