Colombia · Residency by investment
M Visa — Real Estate Investor
Open
Last verified July 2026
Resolución 5477 of 2022 remains the operative norm — there was no 2025 visa reform replacing it, contrary to widespread claims. Resolución 5488 is also from 2022 and concerns visa exemptions.
Under USD 190,000 into Medellín or Bogotá property buys a three-year renewable visa and starts a five-year clock. It is one of the cheapest property-backed residencies in the region — but the wealth tax means a UHNW family should probably never become tax resident here.
Qualifying routes
612.8M COP
Registered real estate purchase of 350 SMMLV
350 × SMMLV 1,750,905 = COP 612,816,750 ≈ USD 188,437 at TRM 3,252.11 (15 July 2026). The threshold is a wage multiple, so it moves every January.
The facts
- Minimum investment
- 612.8M COP
- Total landed cost
- roughly USD 190k of property plus USD 3–8k in legal and visa fees
- Timeline
- 1–3 months — Cancillería visa processing is fast by regional standards once the investment is registered with the Banco de la República
- Physical presence
- M visas lapse after a continuous absence of more than six months
- Family
- spouse or permanent partnerchildren under 25dependent parents
- Permanent residency
- R visa after 5 accumulated years on M status; mandatory 5-year 'traspaso'
- Citizenship
- 5 years on an R visa; 2 years if married to or the parent of a Colombian
- Language test
- Examination on the Constitution, historia patria, geografía and castellano, plus a culture module added 25 September 2023; exempt if over 60
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- real estate of at least 350 SMMLV, in the applicant's own nameinvestment registered with the Banco de la Repúblicaclean criminal recordhealth insurance valid in Colombia
What can go wrong
- THE TRAP: Ley 2277 art. 292-3 has exactly two parágrafos and neither contains the 5-year foreigner exclusion that existed under the old Ley 1943/2010. A foreign tax resident pays Colombian wealth tax on WORLDWIDE net assets from day one of residency, above roughly USD 1.16M. For an eight-figure family that is 1.5% of everything, annually, from year one. This single fact disqualifies Colombia as a tax base for most UHNW clients and is almost never disclosed by visa agents.
- Tax residency attaches after 183 days, continuous or discontinuous, in any 365-day window. If the window straddles two calendar years you become resident from the second year (art. 10 ET). It is easy to trip accidentally.
- All thresholds are denominated in SMMLV, which is under active litigation: Decreto 1469/2025 was provisionally suspended by the Consejo de Estado on 12 February 2026 for violating art. 8 of Ley 278/1996, and the government re-fixed the same value by Decreto Transitorio 0159 of 19 February 2026 pending final judgment. Every figure here inherits that instability and all of them reset each January.
- The investment must be registered as foreign investment with the Banco de la República. Unregistered purchases do not qualify.
- 2025–26 was turbulent: the Ley de Financiamiento was archived on 9 December 2025, the government declared an economic emergency, and Decreto 1474/2025 cut the wealth tax threshold to 40,000 UVT with rates to 5% — before the Constitutional Court struck it down in Sentencia C-079/2026, retroactively and with DIAN refunds. The permanent Ley 2277 regime governs individuals in 2026, but the political appetite for taxing wealth is evident and recurring.
- Colombia has no expatriation or deemed-disposal exit tax, but it does levy an impuesto de timbre por salida del país — a per-trip departure charge (Decreto 0625 of 19 June 2026). Do not let the two be conflated.