Portugal Golden Visa Guide: Pros & Cons in 2024 – Nomad Gate

John. Any update on getting your temporary residence card? How long did it end up taking?

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Great article! In the article update it
Says you can invest in PEF private equity funds now. However you refer to the fact us citizens can’t due to factfa. I have tried to find more detail on this but coming up empty. Can you explain more?

Yes I finally got it after complaining to my lawyer. By magic, it was ready 2-3 days after, I paid the fee (5K EUR) and received the card a few days later.

So from August, 2018 (real estate investment, application for Golden Visa) to December 3, 2018 (biometrics) to September 2019 to receive the resident card.

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Hi Kurt,

Who told you that / source? It is really not what I was told or read online. It looks like the "traditional Portuguese Visa (short or long term)… NOT the Golden Visa.

Source: Nomad Capitalist;

"But you won’t have to wait for citizenship to enjoy travel benefits. Your Golden Visa residence permit will grant you visa-free travel privileges within the Schengen Area and many other countries around the world.

Aside from granting you the right to live in Portugal and work toward citizenship, your Golden Visa residence will also allow you to legally work in the country. If you don’t want to spend much time in Portugal while you wait for citizenship, you are only required to spend an average of seven days per year there to maintain your residence. And, as a resident of an EU country, you have the right to live and work in any of the EU/EEA countries.

Portugal’s Golden Visa gives you unlimited access to the EU so, if your goal is to be able to live, do business and travel to the EU beyond the 90 or 180 days of visa -free access that you have on your current passport, a Portuguese residence permit may do the trick.

Also, technically it would be impossible for any other country in the Schengen Area to “track you down”. There is no borders. You can flight to France and stay there 6 months… then leave and go 3 months to Belgium by car.

Tracking flights and mobile numbers through satellites has only been used so far for criminal tracking.

As long as you flight in and out of the Schengen Area through Portugal, nobody will know where you were traveling in Europe during that year.

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I’m confused. So does Portuguese residence give you the right to live and work anywhere in the EU or not? Or would that be “permanent” Portuguese residence? Perhaps you have to wait for actual citizenship which, from what I’ve read, has language requirements that everyone is ignoring? It can be somewhat challenging passing a citizenship language test if you spend less than a couple of weeks a year in Portugal.

You can travel freely. But you can’t officially move / register as a resident in Paris, as you have a visa from Portugal. As long as you don’t need to register as a resident it’s fine. If you get a full time job in Paris then that requires that you live there you will probably have to get another visa.
Also, officially you can’t stay in another country for more than 3 months as you would have to register as a resident. But if if you don’t need to register because of work then no one will know how long you’ve been there.

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Thanks. I get it now. Also I assume applying for work visas or residencies elsewhere in the EU would be less of a hassle if you do it from Portugal with your new permit.

12% return is very good - what Dutch fund is this? I would be interested in investing even without having any intention of getting a Dutch visa if it really delivers these returns!

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Hi, with the 350 000 share option of 60% portugal companies is there a list of investments to look at?

Are there any managed fund type options with portugal companies in it?

Thanks for your help

There’s no such list unfortunately. You could start with the list of PE and VC funds regulated by CMVM (the Portuguese regulator). However, probably you’ll find that most of these either are not open for new subscriptions, or do not meet the criteria. If you do find any other than NEST & PT Co Innovation please let me know so I can update the article :slight_smile:

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Hello everyone,
I am going to begin with the process of buying a property and apply for Golden Visa. Does anybody have a good lawyer to reccomend?

Regards,
Hanieh

Thanks for sharing the info. I’m still chasing my lawyers who are so slow to respond probably because they can’t explain why it’s taking longer than expected. Fingers crossed I get it within 9 months.

Hi
If one is not going to move to Portugal immediately and say only in 10 years time does it not make more sense for my spouse and i to apply for GV and once citizenship is obtained, apply for citizenship for my children?
Thanks

Hi All,

I am looking for such funds and came across “Safe Investment Fund” (SIF). It has exit strategy at 7 years and managed by Lince. Does anyone have heard of this? Does it look legit?

Would love to hear from other folks with actual experience i. This or any other such funds.

Thanks,
Ravi

Did you find any information about the fund qualifying for GV and being open for subscriptions?

Yeh SIF is suggested by a consulting/lawyer firm. Cant find much detail about it so little skeptic.

Does anyone know anything about Investment Funds in portugal?

  • How to know that fund is trusted and not scam?

The same question from me. Due to high demand some offers (especially with 350-280k amount) looks like just selling an entry ticket instead of real investment cases with future returns. It is clear we have no legal guarantees for any return from private equity funds, including initial amount.
But there are more questions:
Do we have any procedures to monitor a state of our investments in such funds? Annual audited reports, etc.
Do we have an “emergency exit” options?
What management company will do in case on under-subscription, for example if only one or two investors subscribe for units? Still run an useless fund for years while paying all the annual fees from investors’ money?
Or quit it - and ruin investors GV applications and/or renewals?
And it is not my complete list…

All the funds are audited regularly (I believe quarterly, but not 100% sure). Not sure what the access to those reports is like for investors.

You can sell your fund units in the secondary market.

This is extremely unlikely. First of all, most funds are not only exclusively for GV investors, so there are plenty other investors in the funds. I still haven’t seen any funds that are a lot smaller than €10 million. The ones that are more specially tailored for GV investors (with a more suitable duration, for example), don’t seem to have any issues raising money. If you’re concerned about this just ask them how much they have raised so far before investing.

Thomas, thank you for reply.
I am going to ask a set of question to management companies of investment funds mentioned above, and your opinion helps me to define those questions more precisely. Definitely there will be the question about availability of information about funds’ portfolio and assets to investors.
Regarding sale of private equity funds’ units on secondary market, I doubt about any real liquidity in them.
I know that NEST Fund is registered with Interbolsa exchange, but couldn’t find any deals with its units.
The last my point was inspired by latest SEF statistics which reports only 7 GV permits issued via investment funds in 2019. It is hardly more than 2-3 million Euro combined.