That would be my recommendation as well.
Itâs fine to get help from lawyers on the documents preparation, but the actual registration and submission on the SEF portal should not be outsourced, in my opinion.
So we can self apply ? What is preventing us from doing it ?
Actually knowing how to do it and the risks of âgetting it wrongâ with all that implies. Plus speaking Portuguese, and speaking âSEF Agentâ. But thatâs all, AFAICT.
I view this as analogous to the situation in Costa Rica. You can apply for visas yourself. People do it all the time. You just have to be willing to work through an inscrutable process featuring capricious bureaucrats and vague sets of requirements and lots of waiting in offices. People post horror stories about denials and wasting years on it, others post about how great it is to do yourself. People of course post the occasional horror stories about lawyers screwing up their lives and losing their applications, but it tends to be more âdarn rapacious lawyersâ and âwho needs themâ but âI donât want to figure this outâ and some â made it so easyâ and âboy am I gladââŠ
Read the FB forums on getting D7s. People do it all the time. But at least that is fairly well-baked. But it does appear to be âdo these exact things in this exact way or prepare to get rejectedâ since you are still at the whim of an official. Thereâs just a lot more folks who have applied for D7s vs ARI.
Me, paying a few grand to not deal with it is worth it. Though I do intend to ask for the login/pwd for the SEF ARI portal - there is no reason I should not have that, and I think thereâs provision for âyouâ and âyour lawyerâ as separate entities, though I havenât looked at it hard. I just assumed from the get-go that I was dealing with a latin-arc country and it would be annoying and slow, and Iâve dialed in some further tolerance based on COVID and the ongoing disaster it is.
IMO expecting better treatment is probably a waste of energy. YOU might feel that way, but that doesnât mean THEY do. Other cultures just donât feel the same way about money. Costa Rica is very much this way. Itâs nice that you bring money. They welcome it. But is it going to buy you preferential treatment? Only up to a point. Thereâs a reason Costa Rica is still a third world country, even though itâs made great progress. The culture isnât going to change for you, and no matter what you do, your house will still only get built in the sweet bye and bye and your visa will only get processed when they get to it. But itâs so great there some people stick it out anyway. This really to me feels like how Portugal works as well.
Me, I will be happy if I get my visa before the 2022 elections. Is that what I want? No. Does it frustrate me? Yes. Am I prepared to accept it anyway? Yes, I always was.
Should immigration firms be advertising 3-6mo? No. Is the sales department going to update the literature? No. However, this is no different than any other sales literature or sales pitch anywhere else in the world - caveat emptor.
But YMMV, everyoneâs got a different view on it.
Well, technically, nothing.
I previously did all of my visa/nationality/passports work totally myself, except for some unavoidable involvement from my employers where it was necessary. Even then, on one occasion the lawyers employed by my employer screwed up on their application form with a consequence of me facing unexpected non-renewal of work permit/visa. Luckily this was avoided but required involvement of some senior official in the border force who thankfully was reasonable and applied some âjudgmentâ in my favour.
However, as I said earlier, for the Portugal GV I intend to use lawyers purely to help me out in preparing numerous documents, translations etc. before the actual submission. Also answering a few practical detail questions where SEFâs guidance is unclear or non-existent.
Besides, as I am pursuing the property route, I hope that I will get some package deal from the same legal firm who could do both the conveyancing and help with the GV.
But I nevertheless intend to verify every single document and application form field myself prior to submission as no lawyer in the world can do that better for me, no matter how much money Iâd pay them.
As for the property purchases, I would never do them without a lawyer.
1 Like
To be clear, I didnât actually recommend doing the application without a lawyer. I think there are areas where a lawyer adds value and areas where the lawyer will hinder your progress. My point was that in all the cases, I have not heard once of a lawyer advocating for the clientâs lack of progress with SEF. It seems there is no basis to advocate because the system is the system (although I will point out some immigrants advocated for themselves in the street ). In fact, the only lawyers that appear to be successful for their clients recently are those that are, how shall I put itâŠgaming the system. In this respect the entire process seems bureaucratic and not based on advocacy. So if you are just filing forms and waiting your turn, you can certainly do that yourself. On the flip side, the lawyers do understand the bureaucracy better than anyone and can intervene if there is some arbitrary decision to deny you, for example the examiner is having a bad day.
In my view this is just a wishful thinking and one of the âfakeâ reasons why people happily pay lawyers.
I cannot imagine how a random private lawyer can âinterveneâ into a SEFâs case on my behalf and somehow sway their decision in a positive way. Unless we are talking about not-so-random lawyers who actually can âinfluenceâ somebody, but then we enter into a totally different territory which again no such lawyer would advertise to you upfront, so weâre back at square one.
I agree with everything else you said though.
My lawyers did tell me multiple times that they have written letters (with their clientsâ names, i.e., including me) to SEF about this situation â I guess urging them to do something ASAP. (Not that they have any effects so far)
(Disclaimer: I am not 100% happy with my lawyers, I guess most of us arenât except for those who somehow got appointments; also, I havenât seen these letters so only taking their words for it)
Letâs face it, there is probably somewhat of a club. Thereâs 50 SEF agents, and 100 lawyers, and they probably all know each other to at least some level. Thatâs just how this kind of thing works in any industry. If Joao the lawyer shows up with a client, Pedro the SEF agent probably starts from a place of âok so stuffâs probably all been sortedâ. You show up by yourself, Pedroâs thinking âso who is this guyâ.
Of course this works for and against you. Say Joao had a fight with SEF agent Rita over drinks the other week, or Joaoâs last client turned out to be a PITA, and youâre potentially hosed.
I do think that if questions come up, a lawyer whoâs been into that office 500 times before will have a better idea of âwhatâs the right thing to say to explain thisâ than you will. How one views âthe truthâ is often a matter of context and presentation. And why wouldnât a lawyer be able to intervene and argue your case? Isnât that part of why we hire lawyers in the first place? SEF is an agency, it has administrative procedures and petition for redress and all that.
Checking over all the forms yourself before submission makes sense to me. If Iâd thought about it, I might have asked to see them before they went in. It sounds like you had a rough row to hoe in another venue and thatâs bound to engender caution - and you probably gained quite a bit of experience on the topic, too. 
On the whole, to me itâs all an inscrutable process happening in a foreign country and context and I make no presumption that Iâm adding any real value to the process. I think a lot of people fall into this category. That said, my case and situation is so dead simple that Iâm not all that concerned about it in the first place.
On the other hand, I am perfectly comfortable reading a fundâs financial reports and digging into its assets and background so I am trusting absolutely no one with my evaluation of funds. Others know little to nothing, and therefore the advice of a GetGV or GCS is worth something, even if theyâre getting a cut of the setup fees and the like. I donât mind flying into foreign countries and making my own way around, so I am skipping the full-service vendors. Others really need that.
Weâre all doing what weâre comfortable with, and hopefully none of us are passing judgment on anyone elseâs choice. 
4 Likes
We have purchased our >500k EUR property in Algarve back in summer of 2018 and officially applied for GV ARI in December 2018. My application was pre-approved in March/April 2019 and got my biometrics appointment for July 2019.
Ever since than SEF has asked me (my solicitor) to provide additional docs every 3-6 months, either
- something new like bank statement for the transfer of funds or
- some of the same like tax statement or criminal record - cause they expired.
Itâs been 2 years since I had biometrics and our case is not resolved. Every attempt to contact them directly failed.
Anyone had anything similar or any advice what to do?
1 Like
Time is of the essence now, for sure. And I am only one week into looking at this option (switching from RE.)
I am unclear on when the clock starts ticking for the minimum required five-year investment period. Is it when you actually transfer funds and are technically part of and âinâ the fund, or when you submit confirmation of funds transfer/subscription in the fund, or after your SEF appointment?
5 yr clock starts to tick on residence card issuance date, i.e. âa fewâ weeks after SEF biometrics appointment.
Well that extends the payback period quite a bit now doesnât itâŠ.
Who did you use to help buy property? Did you buy sight unseen? Any recs or advice?
I used 11Pier. I looked at the listings and they visited on my behalf and sent lots of pics and videos.
No, I choose the property whilst visiting Lisbon in February 2020. Spent a few days looking at various options and chose the one which represented the best value for money. Also set up my NIF and Bank Account on that visit. Then on my return to my home country, I transferred the funds and finalized the purchase. The Firm I am using for my Golden Visa, facilitated the purchase.
Our experience has been a fair bit faster . Day 0 (mid-March) to Pre-approval (late May) was 57 days. Three weeks after that, (mid-June) we completed all biometrics. Now weâre waiting for approval. The trick seemed to be physically being there (we decided to just take a chance), and grabbing anything that opened - so we did a lot of driving starting very early in the AM because the appointments always seemed to be in the last town we stayed in.
5 Likes
How many of you were there in the application? Did you manage to get the biometrics for all of you at once? And may I ask you to elaborate a bit more on your experience on getting the appointment? Weâre thinking of going to Portugal for 2-3-4 weeks in October to try catching the slots, but it is a bit problematic for my children, who will have to learn online all that time, and skip all their sports and other activities for that quite long timeâŠ
1 Like
Four of us on the application Max. Three got in on one appointment (took about 8 days from the time we arrived), the other a week later in a different part of Portugal. We timed this around school terms so our kids were not impacted. Unfortunately, I have minimal insight into scheduling. Our attorney and staff handed all the coordination - which I understood meant repeatedly hitting the SEF scheduling system.
4 Likes
Quick update on the timeline we are experiencing:
Nov 2020 - finished the investment process and submitted docs to SEF.
April 2021 - our lawyers managed to book biometric appointments for August 2021.
August 2021 (today, the 24th) - we visited SEF and submitted biometrics.
The lawyers are saying that from today we are likely to wait anywhere between 6 and 12 months to receive the cards⊠
Reading the above posts, I believe we are fairly lucky that we got biometrics done already. The lawyer said there was no magic involved: they were just sitting there waiting for the calendar to reopen and once it did they booked as many appointments for their clients as they could. Still, some of the clients were left without a booked slot, we were just lucky to be on top of the list. The calendar has never reopened ever since.
I was expecting the process to be slow but didnât expect it to take over a year.
Good luck to all of us and especially the ones who are still waiting for their appointments! 
3 Likes
6-12 months to get the card after biometrics ???
So whole process will go almost 9-10 years.
1 Like