How to get Residency in Costa Rica

hello everyone lettuce last memories from thewanderinginvestor.com and today we will be discussing how to obtain residency here in Costa Rica with my lawyer Mariela Mariela how are you I'm good thank you so Costa Rica is an increasingly popular place for people to obtain residency it's a beautiful country lots of national parks beautiful nature amazing weather there are multiple ways to get residency here so that's always interesting and that's what we're going to be discussing in detail here so Mariela can you tell us about the most popular ways for foreigners to obtain residency here in Costa Rica okay here we have different categories for you to obtain your residency the most popular right now are investment a retirement and ventista so the first category is the investment residency in which you need to invest here in Costa Rica 150 000 which you can invest in a property you can buy a house or you can do a term deposit also here in Costa Rica this can be bring you a lot of benefits as you can bring your group your family group which include your kids your parents and your spouse you can also have some tax benefits if you want to bring things from the from other country into Costa Rica for your new house here in Costa Rica and about the investment the 150 000 can I for example buy a little apartment for a hundred thousand dollars and put fifty thousand dollars in a term deposit or must it all go in either real estate or a term deposit you'll need to go in the same 50 just one thing and then you'll get the okay so it's a bit different from Panama for example where you can just mix the two depending on how much you want to invest in property you want term deposit so here there isn't that flexibility in Costa Rica but what's really interesting is that you can bring your whole family so it's not just your spouse and your kids which is typical in a lot of countries here the the grandparents essentially your own parents qualify so with just one investment you get three generations that can move here live here in Costa Rica or that can have the residency as a plan B yes exactly then we have the retirement residency which means you need to show a certified document that you have a retirement of a one thousand dollars monthly income it brings the same benefits as the investment you can bring your family you have tax exemptions you just need to prove that you are retired and that you have your one thousand dollars income cool so it's not about rental income here it's it really needs to come from a retirement fund of some sort or from some life insurance product yes some private pension Etc so it needs to be something that is credibly coming from pension money yeah and the third one we have is uh rentista residency in this you need to show to the bank that you have an income of two thousand five hundred dollars monthly too in this you have the same benefits it may vary the tax exemptions but it's usually the same and you can also bring your family with you and so you need to send these two and a half thousand dollars every month to Costa Rica yes exactly okay and then there are the other typical ways to obtain residency you know marry a local and then also you can create a company here but if you create a company the government actually wants you to do business here so they want to see activity you can't just create a dummy company and appoint yourself director and hope that that will work it might work for one year if you have a business plan but you won't be able to renew once they realize that actually you're not doing anything yes exactly so Mariella so this is for temporary residency all right and one when I get my card how long is it valid for okay it is usually valid for one year and then you need to renew it but if you have your temporary residency for three years you can now apply for a permanent residence once you have your permanent residence you can live you can have it for five years and then you can apply it to become your nationality here in Costa Rica this is five to seven years depending on your nationality so I think a lot of people are interested in the permanent residency but how many days do you actually need to for example I get my temporary residency after one year I have to renew it does the government care how much time I spent in Costa Rica for them to renew my residency or can I just come here for two weeks every year and then that's fine okay no one of the benefits of having residency in Costa Rica is that you can come and go from the country it won't affect your status for example if your residency is about to expire you need to book an appointment to renew it before it expires if you do that there won't be a problem if you're here in Costa Rica or if you're out if you let your document get expired then you need to stay in Costa Rica before they give you the appointment and tell them that your documentary has expired and then you can go out when you need to be coming back to clear yeah and when I apply for permanent residency same thing they don't check how much time I spent in Costa Rica so they're not they're not asking me to build a case for permanent residency and they wouldn't come back and say no let us lost you can't be a permanent resident after your three years of residency because actually you're here just for two weeks a year you don't deserve permanent residency no they won't check that they might check some other stuff like for example what are you doing in Costa Rica if you have business here if you're paying your taxes the caja gustavism if you're doing everything right they won't check how much time you spend here in Costa Rica but they would will check some things right okay cool so essentially Costa Rica can be used as a paper residency that turns into a permanent residency after a while so you mentioned the Social Security taxes that people have to pay here yes so this is something that is fairly recent it wasn't like this before but can you elaborate on the on the new developments yes so once you didn't see one of the requirements for them to give you the card is for you to go to the Social Security and register yourself you need to do a voluntary registration that's how it's called depending it's a voluntary registration but without which you can get residency yeah exactly and depending on your monthly income then you need to prove to them I receive I know one thousand dollars a month or two thousand depending on how much you receive you need to pay to them monthly so typically people end up paying about between 100 and 200 a month roughly you know if they don't have crazy income that they yeah that they declare and it's every adult that needs to pay this so even if you're not technically a tax resident of Costa Rica even if you're just a resident you use it as paper residency you will have to pay into the local Social Security so this is the big negative in many ways because it makes the paper residency more expensive on the other hand you actually get something for it which is Access to Health Care Healthcare is really good in Costa Rica people I mean Costa Rica is one of the countries with the longest life expectancy yes so you know it's not just the climate and the lifestyle but it's also the good health care it's so you know sure it sucks to have to pay 100 200 a month per person but then again it's a decent Plan B if you have cancer or you need surgery Etc you need a hip replacement and you're in the U.S or in Canada you can just come here and get it done in for free entirely yeah so yes you're paying but it's you're actually getting something for it so for example even digital Nomads you know having this as a as a plan B residency is interesting because then all you need is a travel insurance really and if you catch something you you know that is you can fly and you can go treat it then you just come to your home base in Costa Rica and you'll have access to very good health care yeah so fantastic thank you very much for this overview Mariella so if you're interested in obtaining residency here in Costa Rica feel free to reach out to Mariela there's her email right below as well as a link with more information on her Services Mariella thank you thank you you can go to my website thewanderinginvestor.com and sign up to the private list it's entirely free this way you will be getting Insider information as I travel around the world looking for opportunities lastly feel free to follow me on Instagram at the wandering investor I look forward to hearing from you

Channel: The Wandering Investor

Views: 5,780

Keywords: get residency in costa rica, obtain residency in costa rica, how to get residency in costa rica, residency through real estate in costa rica, retirement visa costa rica, rentista visa costa rica, passive income visa costa rica, immigration lawyer costa rica, immigration attorney costa rica, immigration attorney san jose costa rica, immigration lawyer san jose costa rica, residency bank deposit costa rica, wandering investor, the wandering investor

Id: 2v7Pv4-lYKk

Length: 9min 55sec (595 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 22 2022