Hi Jim,
Do you have a receipt from AIMA for the 3k? Or just one from the lawyers?
Asking because my Real Estate renewal is up later this month. Thanks
Thank you.
So I’ve now seen some recent renewals requiring biometrics and some not.
My lawyers just emailed me to say in-personal renewals with biometrics are now required again, so I’ll need to attend in person when I have to renew in a few months. My biometrics were taken in 2021. In fact, I don’t think anyone still renewing their ARI has biometrics over 10 years old, so that can’t be the reason.
Am I missing something here? Can anyone explain the discrepancy? Are there now different biometrics requirements depending on type of investment?
EDIT: So my lawyer just sent more clarity on this question. She said even when biometrics are valid, AIMA has recently been demanding applicants be present for document submission. I guess some of the more lax interpretation has only been for people with long overdue renewals, not people with expiries post-June 2025.
She also added that going forward AIMA is trying to better match appointment dates with card expiry. So even if you apply for a renewal 3 mths in advance of your expiry, your appointment will be around your expiry date.
Did you see the actual email from AIMA inviting you to the appointment? I have seen mine and it clearly says no bio or personal attendance required as it can be done via legal rep.
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Ok, so when did your card expire?
In July of 2025.
What was the exact Portuguese text in your email? And was your investment real estate or fund? Mine is in a fund, which is why I’m trying to work out if there are now diverging requirements as with the fees.
If that’s the case, I don’t know what my lawyer is on about. To be clear, I haven’t applied yet. I will be able to request an appointment in a few weeks so I’ll know better then.
Edit: @tommigun don’t worry, another user kindly sent me the text of their email in DM. You’re right it’s pretty clear. I’ll forward to my lawyer. Still doesn’t explain why @jimhock3 was required to appear and give biometrics
I renewed last year (I have a Real Estate GV), was charged around $181, and it’s valid for three years.
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That’s quite surprising to see.
Perhaps the AIMA clerk didn’t realize you had a real estate investment or perhaps your lawyer somehow convinced them that you should remain as an ARI holder and not be converted (for whatever reason). Or since they themselves had the belief that you should pay the higher fee at a minimum did not push back against the AIMA clerk when trying to renew you as regular ARI?
I haven’t seen any other RE investor be charged more than the €181.50 in a long time and AIMA just last month confirmed that those cases should be converted and pay the lower fee.
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For the people that are paying the (much) lower fee, were they converted to a different type of visa and if so what are the repercussions, pros and cons of that? Do they still need to maintain ownership of their investment property? Etc.
And I think since our attorney thought we’d always be golden visa there wasn’t any push back or questioning at aima when they said it would be €3k per person.
There are people on the forum far more connected than I, but from what I can gather there is no discernible difference between the converted RE D2 Entrepreneur visa and the Investment path ARI, other than getting a card for 3 years and paying magnitudes less in fees.
Happy to hear from others with direct knowledge on this.
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It would be hard to imagine something called the entrepreneur visa would require a property investment?
I know right? But it does seem that the real estate GV holders are being converted to this when they come up for renewal and maintaining the investment - whatever that may be - has been a key component of this entire program. I’m as confused as anyone!
When Portugal killed the real estate route on 7 October 2023, those already on that ARI path were allowed to stay on it. However given it was now an ‘extinct’ path they had to concoct somewhere to put us… which for some reason ended up being the D2. I don’t know why - maybe it was the least-awkward fit of the D’s?
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Curious to know if the conversion was done at the time of renewal, and was automatic, and if proof of ownership of the property investment was required. Our property was stolen from us in a scam, so we currently don’t own it, and are in the middle of a criminal lawsuit in an attempt to get it back. If proof of ownership was not required when people renewed into a D2 visa, that might be an option we could pursue.
Cheers! Are there any drawbacks for you on the new D2?
Haha… someday when I finally get my damn 1st GV card, and then have to renew it, I’ll tell you! 
Other RE GV’ers have posted about their experiences though. The conversion was at renewal time, far as I know. I would have thought it was automatic, but then I see these random outcomes where RE folks are paying €3k for renewals, so not so straightforward? Perhaps this is because your property ownership is currently disputed @jimhock3, or just regular AIMA SNAFU randomness.
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Now, c’mon. You can’t bury the lede like that and not share the story
At a minimum it’ll help us other property owners not fall for a similar scam!
The short-ish version is we gave our contractor who was renovating the building a power of attorney to submit plans and pull permits with the city of Porto. He altered the poa to enable him to sell the property, enlisted a crooked notary, and sold the property without our knowledge. The property was vacant as we awaited plans to be approved by the city to renovate it. We later found out the sale happened in September of 2024. In January of 2025, our tax representative sent us a notification that we no longer owned the property and needed to file taxes on any gain from the sale of the property. We felt certain it was some sort of weird administrative error. Panicked, we contacted our attorney, and she confirmed the property had been sold and we no longer owned it. As soon as we found out, our attorney put an emergency hold on the building so it couldn’t be resold. We had a court hearing this June where the judge seized the property and gave us custodianship of it while we await the criminal trial to hopefully regain ownership of it, which won’t be for another year.
The police interviewed us and said it’s a racket that takes place regularly by different groups. The buyer of our property already had it under contract to sell to a third party, but we found out about the sale in time to stop the flip.
The buyers are claiming they are innocent parties who didn’t know they were buying stolen property, and there’s a law in portugal that protects buyers who in good faith buy stolen property. So the judge in the criminal trial could award ownership to the buyers unless we can prove they didn’t enter into the sale in good faith, so we’re having to hire a private investigator to connect the dots between the contractor who sold the building, the crooked notary, the buyers and the buyers they had the building under contract with.
To make matters worse, we didn’t own the building at our aima renewal appointment, which was also in June, and proof of ownership of the investment property is the key requirement of renewing. So we submitted all the documents we had, plus copies of the lawsuit, in hopes that someone up the chain will take pity on us and give us our renewal.
So on this forum when I found out many/most people who invested in property were shifted to an entrepreneurial D2 visa, I thought maybe proof of ownership of the investment property wasn’t required, and that somehow we could switch to that visa since we don’t own our investment property currently.
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