350 or 100 SMMLV? Two different visas

Search for the Colombian investor visa threshold and you will find two numbers, roughly a factor of three-and-a-half apart, both presented as the investor visa requirement. One of them is about property. The other is not. Several large English-language sites publish the second as though it were the first.

The three figures

Route	Requirement	2026 equivalent
M — Inversionista, property	350 SMMLV	COP 612,816,750
M — Socio o Propietario, company	100 SMMLV	COP 175,090,500
R — Resident, direct investment	650 SMMLV	COP 1,138,088,250

All three sit under Resolución 5477 de 2022, modified by Resolución 9316 de 2024. They are not tiers of one visa. They are different categories with different evidence and different rights.

What actually separates them

The property route

You buy real estate registered in your own name at or above 350 SMMLV, and you register the incoming capital as foreign investment with Banco de la República. The two documents doing the work are the certificado de tradición y libertad showing the property in your name, and the Banco de la República registration showing the money that bought it came in through the exchange market. It does not carry general work authorisation.

The company route

You become a partner, shareholder or owner of a Colombian company with paid-in capital at or above 100 SMMLV. Critically, this one does carry a work permit — restricted to the company you have invested in. The evidence is corporate rather than registral: certificate of existence and legal representation, and a share composition certificate signed by a qualified accountant showing your ownership and the capital actually paid in.

That last distinction is where company applications fail. Subscribed capital is a promise. Paid-in capital is money that has actually gone in and can be evidenced by an accountant. Submitting a plan where the requirement is a payment is the characteristic failure of this route, just as mismatched title and registration evidence is the characteristic failure of the property one.

The R route

Permanent residency through direct investment, at 650 SMMLV. Note also that the "instant" permanent residency option that used to exist — the thing people still call the Colombian golden visa — was eliminated under Resolución 5477. Content referencing it is out of date.

Choosing between them

The question is not which is cheaper. It is which describes what you are actually doing.

The property route suits you if you want to own Colombian real estate anyway, you do not need to work locally, and you would rather hold a tangible asset than run an entity. The capital requirement is higher but the thing you get for it is an apartment.

The company route suits you if you intend to operate a business in Colombia, you need work authorisation, and the lower capital figure matters. But understand what you are committing to: a company with real accounting obligations, annual filings, and an expectation of genuine activity — not a shell formed to clear a threshold.

Neither may suit you. If your goal is simply to live in Colombia, the pension and digital nomad routes both key off income at 3 SMMLV per month — roughly COP 5,252,715 — rather than capital, and neither asks you to lock up a large sum. That is a genuinely different proposition and it is worth pricing before you assume investment is the way in.

The combination that catches people out

There is a tempting-looking move here: form an SAS, put the property inside it, and satisfy the company route at the lower figure while still owning real estate.

It does not work the way people hope, and the reasons are covered in the piece on personal name versus company. The short version: the property visa is granted against real estate held in your name, so moving it into an entity removes what the property application is looking at, while the company application wants evidence of paid-in capital and corporate substance rather than an apartment in a wrapper. Whether a particular structure satisfies either is a question for a Colombian immigration lawyer, and it is one of the more expensive things to get wrong.

Sources and dates. Peso figures reflect Decreto 1469 de 2025. TRM of COP 3,048.12 certified for 22 August 2026; verify the current rate at banrep.gov.co before relying on any dollar conversion. Visa requirements are set by resolution — currently Resolución 5477 de 2022, modified by Resolución 9316 de 2024 — and change without legislation. Verified 22 August 2026. Not legal, tax or immigration advice.