How to obtain Residency in Colombia

Why obtain residency in Colombia?

There are many reasons to obtain residency in beautiful Colombia:

• An absolutely gorgeous country with mountains, beaches, beautiful churches, a rich history and delicious food.
• A very affordable cost of living; Colombia ranks near the bottom of the Numbeo Cost of Living Index.
• Affordable, quality real estate. I wrote an article on real estate in Medellin for example.
• Geographic location – close to North America
• Many residency options
• Many international schools.
• Business friendly; Colombia ranks in the top Latin American countries in the Ease of Doing Business ranking by the World Bank.

What are the Residency options in Colombia?

It’s important to understand that there is a lot of wrong information online as the immigration laws were changed in a heavy way in September 2022.

Migrant visas are granted for 3 years. You must show up at least once every 6 months in Colombia to keep the visa active. At year 3 you can renew your visa if you still fit the original criteria. After 5 years, you can apply for “(Permanent) Residency”.

The most common 3-year Migrant Visas

1. Retirement migrant visa

If you can demonstrate 3 minimum wages (about $800) per month, then you are eligible for a retirement migrant visa. The regular pension payments must come from a government source or from widely recognized private pension providers.

2. Real estate migrant visa

If you purchase Colombian real estate for at least 350 minimum wages (about $114,000), then you quality for a real estate migrant visa. It’s known as the cheap real estate option.

3. Other migrant visas

Starting a small business, marriage to a local, getting a job, etc. There are many options.

Colombia Digital Nomad Visa 

Colombia offers a Digital Nomad Visa for citizens of countries that do not require entry or tourist visas for Colombia.  

Validity is for up to 2 years. This visa does not confer the ability to work for a Colombian employer.  

The requirements are as follows:

• A letter from your employer describing your work and confirming that you are able to perform it remotely, as well as details concerning your compensation. If you work for your own company, you can also provide evidence of your ability to perform your responsiblities while abroad. 
•  A recent bank statement showing minimum monthly income of at least 3 minimum wages, or around $1100 USD.
• Valid health insurance for the duration of your stay

 The government seems to increasingly be adding administrative hurdles in the way of acquiring this visa, but this pathway is still functional at the time of writing.

The most common 5-year (permanent) Residency option

Investing in a business or in real estate can help you obtain (permanent) residency in Colombia

You must invest about 350 minimum wages (about $114,000) in Colombian real estate. This will grant you and your family a 3 year migrant visa which is renewable as long as you keep the property. At year 5 you apply to change your migrant visa into (permanent) Residency.

After 5 years of (permanent) residency you can apply Colombian citizenship (a total timeline of 10 years).

It’s very important to note that to keep your migrant visa active, you need to go to Colombia every 6 months even if just for a day, or else you lose the migrant visa. Once a (permanent) resident, this requirement changes to once every 2 years.

Meet my lawyer Alan

My lawyer Alan and his team will take good care of you. He is a US-based attorney that has a law firm in both New York and in Colombia. His team is used to working with foreigners and helping them obtain residency in Colombia. His prices are surprisingly affordable as he has made the process as efficient as possible.

His team will help you apply, help you choose the proper documents to gather, fill out the paperwork, get your documents translated, and help you get the Cedula (ID card)

Watch the Youtube video below that I recorded with him in which we discuss the various immigration options to Colombia, and some little-known facts on the topic.

Video: How to obtain residency in Colombia

Get Residency in Colombia

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Transcript of “How to get Residency in Colombia in 2025“

LADISLAS MAURICE: Hello, everyone. Ladislas Maurice of The Wandering Investor. Today, I’m with Alan, my attorney in Colombia, and we’ll be discussing how to obtain residency in Colombia. Alan, how are you?

ALAN: Great, Ladislas. And good to see you, man. It’s been a while.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, it’s always a pleasure to visit you here in Medellín.

ALAN: Absolutely, yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, so a lot of people want to move to Colombia for very obvious reasons, it’s a lovely country.

How to live in Colombia as a foreigner

LADISLAS MAURICE: What are the different ways one can obtain residency or live here as a foreigner?

ALAN: Got it. What I tell clients all the time is that the answer is that it has to be very specific to that person’s situation. Everyone has a different need and a different reason for being in Colombia, so the answer is just going to be personalized to that client. The vast majority of our clients come through and become a resident of Colombia usually through maybe three particular strategies.

How to get residency in Colombia by real estate investment

ALAN: The first one is investing in real estate. If you buy property where the value is 350 times the local minimum salary, and for those of you who might be from the States, Canada, etc., in other parts of the world like Colombia, a lot of stuff is calculated based on the local minimum wage. This is just one of any number of things where that happens. And in this particular calculation, you take the local minimum wage, which is currently 1.4 million or so, you times it by 350, and you would get the threshold to invest for real estate. Right now, it’s around 500 million pesos. The dollar is going to go up and down, so it’s maybe $120,000. That’s a really popular way to secure visas in Colombia. It gets you what’s called a migrant visa.

And the M Visa, the main thing you need to know about that, pretty simple, that’s the kind of visa that can eventually lead to residency. It’s not residency, right? Usually get it for up to three years when you apply. If you keep it for five years, you can then apply for residency. But again, one of these main M visas is the property owner visa.

How to get residency in Colombia by starting a company

ALAN: The second one is called the company owner visa. A lot of people come to Colombia, they started business. And if you’re going to be doing that business and making a good amount of margin, why not get a visa as well? That’s also a migrant visa, an M Visa. And if you invest around $30,000, $35,000, you will get a migrant visa and eventually also get a residency.

LADISLAS MAURICE: I think let’s discuss this in detail here, because in a lot of countries, you just seem to create a company, hire yourself, but the company doesn’t do anything, it’s just a dummy corporation. And this allows you to obtain residency. Does this work in Colombia as well, or does it get audited for actual business activity?

ALAN: No. Well, let’s back up. Many, many years ago, we’ve been in a market for, at this point, almost 15 years, so way back when all you needed was proof that you sent money into the country and a certificate from an accountant and then you were off to the races. That era came and went. Now what they’re looking for is actual activity. And what that means is, and I always tell clients, you’re looking at two very different avenues, the first avenue is sort of like that situation where you’re coming to Colombia and you’re trying to sell into the Colombian market.

You’re starting a bar, you’re starting a club, you’re starting a consulting business in Colombia to do X, Y, and Z, and you’re selling to Colombia. And that’s where you set up a business, you receive shares from that business, you make your $30,000, $35,000 investment. And then we tell clients, wait six months or so. You can show, hopefully, invoices to clients. If you have a bar, well, you’re invoicing every day.

LADISLAS MAURICE: I love that your examples are bars and clubs. [laughs]

ALAN: [laughs] There’s a reason for that. There’s a reason for that, and we can get into that at some point. But yeah, basically, anything that is physically in Colombia, that you’re selling into Colombia, that’s sort of this first category. But what you’re doing is you’re showing activity, you’re showing invoicing, you’re showing maybe hiring employees, you’re showing whatever it is that you’re showing to show that your business is real. And in six months, you apply for your visa, and you should get three years.

The second avenue, I want to go back to this, this is now much more popular, is what’s called exporting services. This is where you have a call center or a tech development company, you have something in the US, in Canada, in Europe, and that’s your main business. Let’s use tech development as an example. I started tech development company in the US, or in London, or something, and I’m invoicing my clients. I’m receiving money through those invoices in London, in New York, in Canada. But what I do is I start a different company in Colombia, and instead of me doing all the work for that tech development company, I start hiring local talent in Colombia, which is much less expensive. It’s much cheaper.

And those employees are employees of a Colombian company. And the Colombian company has a contract with my US company, my Canadian company, my UK company. And through that service agreement, all these employees are doing that stuff for my clients. And once a month, that Colombian company issues an invoice to my company abroad, and then once a month, the foreign company sends money to Colombia to pay off all your expenses. If salary, benefits, pension, maybe internet, maybe you have an office space, whatever, you add up everything, and it’s $10 a month, well, the contract and the invoice that’s issued will be for maybe 11 bucks. Every month, the foreign company is sending $11 to Colombia, you’re paying off all your fixed expenses, and you keep $1.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. Essentially, you just pay the bare minimum in terms of taxes, and that’s good enough for the–?

ALAN: Well, trying to be very objective here, this gets way into the weeds, because technically speaking, you can’t just charge 50 cents, you can’t just charge $5. It’s got to be a particular number. But if the business is small enough, the risk of being audited, the risk of things getting complicated is really, really low. So long as, I always tell clients, 5%, 10% margin is a pretty good margin, you’re being tax efficient. But here’s what happens, if you have that activity in the UK, in Canada, in the US, you’re going to be paying a lot of money. But if you centralize in Colombia, suddenly, your fixed expenses go way down. They go way down. And suddenly, your margin goes up. It’s just, you’re printing money for certain businesses. That’s tech development, call centers, that’s their entire format.

But my point here is to get this visa you can either sell into the market or you can export services. And more and more people are just setting up a very simple company. They’re hiring one employee, two employees. They’re saving on their expenses and making money through their normal business, and at the same time, they’re justifying a visa.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool, okay. What are other ways?

How to get residency in Colombia through marriage

ALAN: I mentioned two of the more popular ones. The third one, again, this is all, like, life happens sort of situation, which is where you want to get married. Marriage in Colombia gets you also a marriage M Visa. It’s called an M Visa as well. It’s the same category, except it’s got additional benefits. Instead of waiting five years to get residency, you can wait only two, three years. Again, if your focus is to get residency as fast as possible, and you do have that relationship, then you should seriously consider getting married and applying for the marriage visa, because you’ll get residency faster, for sure.

Difference between common law marriage and civil marriage in Colombia

LADISLAS MAURICE: There are different types of marriages in Colombia.

ALAN: Yes, yes. The two main categories, the first one is common law marriage. In Colombia, it’s called unión marital de hecho. And this is where you essentially hold yourself out to the world as being in a couple. Not in a marriage, exactly, but in a marital relationship. There’s a different one, which is what a lot of us are used to, which is sort of the normal civil marriage situation. And there are different flavors of that. There’s this sort of religious marriages, there’s civil marriages, but these two main categories have different sort of trajectories when it comes to visas.

On the common law marriage side, that used to be a very, very popular way to secure a visa. The Colombian Government would equate these two categories as one, and whether you were in a common law marriage or whether you were in a civil marriage, under either scenario, you get the same benefits. Getting married-married, that is much more complicated. You need a bunch of documentation from abroad. It takes a while to set up. The common law marriage was super simple. “Here’s my passport,” [laughs] and pretty much that was it.

They changed the rules several years ago, so now you can still get a visa with the common law marriage, but the restrictions make it really not very usable at this point. You have to wait a year after declaring your common law marriage to apply for a visa. And now you can only get one-year visas, so every year you’re renewing, and renewing, and renewing. Whereas if you actually go all the way and marry someone, you can get a three-year visa like that.

Timelines to citizenship with Colombian residency

ALAN: One of the main benefits of the marriage visa is that you can kind of get ahead of the line.

I sort of see it as kind of like a race. You’ve got your property owner, you’ve got your business owner, you’ve got your marriage visa holder, and it turns out that if you have a marriage visa, you can get residency much faster. Instead of waiting five years, you wait three years, and then, boom, you get your residency. And you still have to wait five years to get citizenship, but you can cut a couple of years out of the process.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, so eight years to citizenship with marriage, 10 years with the others.

ALAN: Eight years to start the process of citizenship, which will get you citizenship.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay. And you can organize the marriage and all the prenup and all that?

ALAN: Yeah, we handle all this. Everything we’ve talked about today, these are things that our business has been doing for 15 years at this point. So yeah, for sure.

How to get retiree visa for Colombia

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. And then there’s one for retirees as well?

ALAN: Right. Another popular way to get residency is just, you’re a retiree, you qualify under local law, and you get another migrant visa. Same deal, you wait five years, and you apply for residency.

LADISLAS MAURICE: What’s the minimum?

ALAN: That goes up and down every year, but if you’re making $900 plus in benefits, pension, social security, that would qualify.

How to get Colombia rentista visa

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay. What about the rentista passive income option?

ALAN: This is another way to secure residency, but in terms of volume, it’s a fairly low volume option, because you have to have a very particular type of application. You have to show that you’re earning a regular, specific amount of money every single month above a certain threshold. And it can’t necessarily be from employment, it can’t necessarily be from some kind of standard contract, maybe with a client. It’s usually, I always call it kind of the trust fund baby sort of option. We manage it all the time, but what tends to happen is not everyone would qualify because the requirements are so specific.

If you’re doing that type of potential visa, talk to us, because it gets complicated quick. And it needs to be provided to the government in a particular kind of way so that they don’t get confused, because the Colombian authorities get very easily confused.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And that’s a migrant visa?

ALAN: It’s also a migrant visa. Well, let me back up. It was changed to what’s called a visitor’s visa during the last changeover. But there’s a way to make it a migrant visa, depending on how we structure it.

LADISLAS MAURICE: If my understanding is correct, you need five years on a migrant visa, in most cases?

ALAN: That’s right.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And then afterwards, once you get residency, then five years before you can apply for citizenship?

ALAN: That’s correct. The vast majority of migrant visas, M visas, they will get you residency if you keep them long enough. It’s important to know that the basis for your visa cannot change.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Let’s talk about the property one, because this is probably the most popular, along with marriage. What happens if, for example, I buy a property for $120,000 now, and when I come to renew in three years’ time, the minimum wage has gone up. My property is still $120,000, the minimum has gone up to $140k, what happens?

ALAN: I get this question all the time. And the answer is this. The answer is, technically speaking, when you’re renewing your visa, the threshold is going to be higher than your investment amount. That’s true. But informally with the government, we confirmed years ago that they assume that the appreciation on the investment is enough to allow you to keep on getting these migrant visas, even though the threshold has increased above it. The government itself might not tell you that, but we’ve confirmed that, and we have never had an issue with this. Well, let’s back up. We’ve had some issues reapplying, but when we explain the law to the government, every single time, they’ve approved the visa.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, good to know. That’s good. They’re quite rational about it.

ALAN: Well, rational and Colombian Government don’t often go together. But let’s just put it this way, you want a company that has the trajectory. We’re not the only game in town, but we’re definitely probably the company. And I think when they get info from us, and they see that it’s us, they usually kind of go, “Okay, yeah, we know what’s going on.” And at least when we go and have to deal with, for example, administrative law judges, and they see that we’ve handled this for many, many years, definitely, trust our process.

Physical stay requirements to renew residency in Colombia

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay. What about the minimum amount of days that one must stay in Colombia or be present in Colombia to be able to renew the visas or residency so that they don’t expire? Because this is quite important.

ALAN: The answer is this, with the migrant visa, you cannot be outside of the country for more than six consecutive months. What that means in practice is that if you come to Colombia one day every six months, you’re fine. If you miss a day, then you would technically default that visa. And when you come up for applying for the visa again, you might get rejected. That’s basically the issue.

For the residency visa, that’s why everyone wants residency, once you have residency, the pressure is off. You have the obligation to sort of renew your visa status every five years, which requires providing information again, but it’s not like you’re applying for new residency. It’s just, it’s kind of like, let us know you’re still alive, kind of thing. And you keep that going forever for a five-year period, but now the pressure is off. And one of the benefits is that you don’t have to come every six months, you have to come one day every two years.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, so very easy. It’s not a punishment to come to Colombia for one day every two years.

ALAN: No. I mean, yeah. I think having a migrant visa is probably complicated for that international investor that might be in Dubai primarily, and he’s looking at different properties in different locations and jurisdictions but Colombia isn’t exactly his priority. But I think for the vast majority of investors, that’s doable, that’s no problem.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. Especially if you’re in the US, it’s really easy to come down here.

ALAN: Yeah. US, Canada. If you’re in this hemisphere, there’s no excuse.

Applying for citizenship in Colombia

LADISLAS MAURICE: Then, after 10 years of living in Colombia legally, one can apply for citizenship, correct?

ALAN: That’s right. That’s right. And you can apply, the process is a little bit all over the place, because there’s no centralized process, like, local governmental entities handle this, so the process is a little bit different in a different part of Colombia, versus Medellín, Bogota, whatever. But in general, you’re looking at anywhere from six months to two years. It could get fairly complex sometimes, versus a fairly easy process, particularly if you’re from the States, if you’re from Canada, it shouldn’t be that complicated. But we’ve had clients from Asia, parts of Asia, where they really want to understand why someone from Asia has this affinity for Colombia.

And plenty of people do, it’s just that it’s much easier for them to convince themselves that someone from Miami, from New York, from Calgary would want to come to Colombia.

Tax residency in Colombia

LADISLAS MAURICE: Alan, does having a migrant visa or residency automatically lead to tax residency?

ALAN: No. The answer is, you become a tax resident by physically being in Colombia more than 183 days over the prior 12 months.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay.

ALAN: People who want to buy property but don’t want to become tax residents, they can still get their visa. They can even get residency. But even if you’re a resident of Colombia, because you have the residency visa, doesn’t mean you’re a tax resident for tax purposes, at all.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay.

ALAN: It’s all a physical presence test.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, so very important to note, and very good as well. It’s quite flexible. You can live here six months minus one day and not be a tax resident.

ALAN: That’s right, but remember, this is a very specific type of analysis. People get confused between how long can I stay in Colombia on a visa, a tourist permit, in particular. And that’s six months over a calendar year. If I come in in January and I don’t leave, I can stay through July, that’s it. Then I have to get a visa or leave the country. This is a different analysis. This is 183 days over the prior 12 months. Okay? If I’m buying property and I want to take advantage of the market, I want to invest in real estate, I want to get a bunch of properties so I can be anything, everything, and I want to be in a position to get a visa, which makes things a whole lot easier for you as an investor, you want to make sure that when you come to Colombia, you don’t exceed that rule, 183 days over the prior 12 months.

One last point here. A lot of tourists become tax residents. They don’t even know it. If I come to Colombia in September, stay through December, leave for the holidays, come back again in January, by around, I don’t know, March, I’m a tax resident. Even though I was legally in Colombia the year prior, I’m legally in Colombia this year, I’m still a tax resident. If you’re an investor, you don’t want to become a tax resident, you can absolutely invest, not a problem. You can get your visas, you can get your residency visa as well, but you want to make sure you look at the number of days you’re in Colombia. You don’t want to exceed the 183 days.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, clear. Thank you.

ALAN: Yeah.

Alan’s legal informational brochures about Colombia

LADISLAS MAURICE: Alan, tell us about all your brochures.

ALAN: Sure. We’re known for our brochures.

LADISLAS MAURICE: [laughs]

ALAN: I mean, those of you who are probably clients of us, or have heard of Colombia and have figured something out about Colombia, at some point you’ve seen our brochures. At this point, we have over 30 or 40. They’re incredible resources.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, yeah.

ALAN: They explain the process step by step, no BS, and they touch on everything from the visa process, to buying property, to starting a business, exporting services, which we talked about earlier. All these things we’ve put together into really understandable materials. They include online tutorials, brochures, articles, the whole bit. And I think once clients review that material, they just they know that we know our stuff, and they know we have that trajectory. And we are by far the most well-known market leader in Colombia, for sure.

How to get in touch with Alan

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool, fantastic. If you want to get in touch with Alan and get all the brochures, there’s a link below. There’s more information on how to obtain residency. And then he’ll send you all of the brochures. And yeah, they’re really good.

ALAN: Absolutely.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Alan, thank you very much.

ALAN: It’s good seeing you, man. And good seeing you guys.