How much headroom, and what it costs you

Every source that understands the January problem gives the same advice: buy above the minimum. Almost none of them finish the sentence, because the honest version has a cost attached.

Margin above the threshold is insurance. You pay for it, and the premium is not money — it is yield and liquidity.

Why a bigger unit is usually a worse asset

Rental yields do not scale linearly with purchase price. A larger, more expensive apartment in a premium building generally rents for proportionally less than a mid-market one, carries a higher administración, and sits in a thinner segment of the market.

The resale problem is sharper still. A threshold-sized apartment bought by a foreigner for residency purposes is competing for a small pool of buyers: other foreigners doing the same thing, plus wealthy locals. A mid-market unit is competing for a local family, and there are vastly more of those. When you need to sell on a schedule, pool size is the whole game.

So how much

There is no official margin requirement, which means this is judgement. Three inputs make it tractable.

How long do you need it to hold?

The M visa runs up to three years. Permanent residency takes five. If you intend to renew once, you need to survive roughly three January decrees. If permanent residency is the goal, five. Each one compounds on the last.

What rate should you assume?

The increase into 2026 was 23.7%. Modelling anything materially below the most recent actual increase is optimism dressed as analysis. Model at least that, and check what a lower rate would let you get away with so you understand the shape of your exposure rather than a single number.

What can you tolerate losing to compliance?

This is the personal one. Money parked as buffer is money not earning. If the difference between adequate margin and comfortable margin is a meaningful share of your net worth, that is worth knowing before you fall in love with a specific apartment.

The alternative nobody raises

If aggregation across multiple properties is permitted — and there is reason to think it may be, though we have flagged it as needing confirmation — then the entire trade-off changes.

Two mid-market units reaching the threshold together would give you better combined yield, a much deeper resale pool for each, and the option to sell one and keep the other. It would also give you a way to top up margin later by buying a third rather than being stuck with one indivisible asset measured against a rising line.

That is a materially better structure than one large apartment, and it is worth confirming with a Colombian immigration lawyer before you commit to the single-unit approach by default. We would rather send you to ask the question than guess at the answer here.

A workable default

Absent that confirmation, and stated as reasoning rather than as a rule: model the number of January increases your plan requires, at a rate no lower than the most recent one, and treat the resulting figure as your floor rather than your target. Then look hard at whether the property that clears it is one you would want to own on its merits.

If the answer is no — if you are buying a unit you do not actually want in order to clear a line you did not set — that is worth pausing on. There are residency routes that do not require buying anything, and for a lot of people they are simply the better answer.

Run the numbers in the threshold check before you decide.

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.