In 2021, 89% of Our Clients Went for the Fund Route

2021 has ended, and with it, the opportunity of buying residential properties in Lisbon, Porto, or most of the coastal areas or investing merely 350k in a fund to get a Golden Visa is also gone with the wind.  Note: The Portugal Golden Visa regulations was changed again in 2023, check here the latest Golden Visa regulations.

The past few months have been very active, with investors flooding in at the last moment, congesting every point of the pipeline.  

One bank that specialises in Golden Visa clients closed its door for new clients trying to catch the year end deadline by mid October.  They suddenly had 200+ clients wanting to open an account all at the same time.  

Another bank that specialises in Golden Visa for American clients also closed its door for remote account opening by mid November.

It really shows that having backup plans is essential, not just in life, but even in the point of view of applying for your Golden Visa: clients acceptance by the bank, client acceptance by the fund manager, need more documents, money transfer not arrived…  And we all have learn a few new things along the way.  

Every experience we have with clients teaches us something new and make us more knowledgeable to serve better our clients.

The last clients we took in for catching the year end’s deadline, were in the last week of November.  No NIF, no bank account, but fortunately had their police reports.  A couple were able to come to Portugal for bank account opening.  But there were others who were too far to travel but were willing to make the jump and proceed as quickly as possible and take the risk to top up to 500K if they can’t make the deadline.  

We are happy to say that all our clients have successfully submitted their online application.

The greatest lesson here is to do everything quickly and in parallel.  We are planning to compile some key take-aways on how to speed up/ streamline your application, but let’s hope we won’t have anymore deadline to catch in the future for Golden Visa!

The Golden Portugal 2021 Client Statistics

Here goes our first infographics on The Golden Portugal’s clientele of 2021.  We have got some interesting findings that we would like to share with all of you.

1.  89% for the fund routes.  Yes, it is astonishing, the overwhelming skew towards fund investment, especially for clients coming in the second half of 2021.  It really wasn’t realistic to buy property in a rush just for the sake of the Golden Visa application when the property market was hot and it’s hard to personally come to Portugal to visit.  Plus there are structural advantages of funds over properties, like diversification and professional management.  Also, nearly half of those who invested in fund, invested in more than one fund.  This trend will stay with the higher investment threshold of 500k.

2.  While we know we have a lot of Chinese and American clients, it is very surprising even for ourselves to see that actually the biggest portion of our clients comes from ‘other countries’. 

3.  The high percentage of single and couple clients also came as a surprise. Conventionally when we think of a Plan B, we have the impression that they are looking for a better future/ more options for their children.  But in reality, a quarter of our clients are single applicants (this includes single, or divorced and applying without any children).  And almost half of our clients are just couples, including couples that have no kids, or couples that have independent adult children whom are not included in their application.  

4.  22% of our clients are on to their 3rd passport.  This is amazing.  We take into considerations clients that has 2 passports, and also those that hold a passport from their original country and have a permanent residence status in another country (most likely their country of residence now).  In fact, most of these clients are not living in their home countries at the moment and need to get documents remotely. 

We have gathered a lot of experiences along the way in gathering personal documents remotely - for US, UK, China, HK, India, Singapore, Russia and so on.

5.  Our clienteles are quite young (here we are only speaking about the main applicants).  Over 60% are 45 and under, of those, half is under 35 years old.

6.  We have a lot of clients that come in groups – family, siblings and friends.  We have parents that were looking into Golden Visa for their independent adult kids who eventually decided they also want get on the Golden Visa train. 

Lastly, while most our clients regards the Portugal Golden Visa their plan B for the time being (less than 10% are to move to Portugal in the near future (within 1 – 2 years), most of them (over 50%) do plan to come and live in Portugal in the longer term, either full time or part time.  The other 40% are uncertain, some are too young (in their 30s) to think of moving/ or retirement, and some just take this as a contingency plan and a view towards the whole EU for their plan B.

We are working on a questionnaire to look into details on reasons for choosing the Portugal Golden Visa, their plan to move to Portugal and so on.  We will share some interesting findings with you.  Stay tuned!

Learn more about the Portuguese Golden Visa and how we can help you can get your Portugal residency and citizenship!

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