Real Estate vs Investment Funds

A snapshot comparison between the most popular route to Portugal’s Golden Visa, Real Estate, and the rising star, Investment Funds.

As we can see from the table below, there are seemingly a number of advantages to the Golden Visa investment funds when compared to real estate.

Although the minimal threshold for real estate is €280,000, this applies only to renovation projects in low population density areas of the country where liquidity tends to be lower. Therefore, a straightforward investment into a Golden Visa fund at €350,000 is still quite attractive.

Aside from the fact that fund investors don’t have any management responsibilities as they might with property investment, the real stand-out benefits are all related to taxes.

Investing via a fund rather than buying a property allows the applicant to save tens of thousands of Euros on property purchase taxes (IMT) and ongoing municipal taxes (IMI). In addition, the Portuguese fiscal authorities look favourably on funds and the rules surrounding them allow taxes on income and gains to be worked down to zero in some cases. For example, Portuguese residents and residents of blacklisted overseas territories pay just 10% on gains in Portugal whilst other non-residents pay nothing.