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Foreign Investment in Brazil: 2019 | A StartBrazil Research Report
Approvals nearly doubled in 2019 — and the real estate route made its debut.
Brazil published 303 investor-residency approvals in 2019, up 92% on 2018 and a volume the country would not see again until 2022. The year also recorded the first nine approvals under the new real-estate route. This report analyzes every one of them — who invested, from where, and what it set up for the years that followed.
Published: July 15th, 2026
Research: Daniel Atz & Suzana Vilela Caetano Castro
Part of the yearly Foreign Investment in Brazil series — all editions & the 2018–2026 dashboard →Written By: Daniel Atz & Lauren Lowell
43
countries of origin
303
investor residency approvals in 2019
1
startup visa approval — the route stayed at one a year
The Three Pathways
The real estate route made its debut in 2019.
Brazilian law offers foreign nationals three routes to residency by investment. They share an underlying legal framework but diverge sharply on cost, outcome — and who actually uses them.
Real Estate Investor
(RN 36/2018)
USD 190,000
≈BRL 1,000,000
Buy qualifying property in Brazil. Receive a 4-year temporary residency, then convert to permanent afterwords if you continue to meet the criteria.
9 approvals in 2019 — the route's first, published from June 2019, almost a year after RN 36/2018 was signed.
Company Investor
(RN 13/2017)
USD 95,000
≈BRL 500,000
Invest in a Brazilian company. Receive permanent residency immediately, provided capital stays active for three years.
293 approvals in 2019. 97% of the year — the company route's all-time record
Startup Investor
(RN 13/2017 ART 3)
USD 29,000
≈BRL 150,000
Invest in an innovative Brazilian startup. Receive permanent residency immediately — the same outcome as the BRL 500,000 company pathway, at less than a third the cost.
1 approval in 2019 — the route stayed at one a year.
Nationalities - All 3 Pathways
303 total investors. Italy alone accounts for a quarter.
Italy, China, and France together represent 54% of all approvals. Italy's 80 approvals — more than double its 2018 count — remain the largest single country-year of the first half of the dataset.
Europeans make up 63% of all approvals overall. The US accounts for 5%. China represents 16% — still fundamentally an Italian-Chinese-French year.
Italy
80 investors
China
48
France
36
Portugal
29
United States
15
Spain
14
Germany
12
+ 36 other countries
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