Information and advice for Rentista Visa to get residency in Argentina for American family?

[Dirk Diggler]

Hello everyone. Great forum. I just found this and it is wonderful.

My family of six (wife and four kids) is currently preparing to apply for the Rentista visa in Argentina, utilizing our real estate portfolio in the US as our qualifying "passive income". I am trying to map out a few specific compliance details before we officially submit, and I would appreciate insights from anyone who has recently navigated this process.

First, regarding the income threshold, there is a lot of conflicting information online.

Does anyone know the exact, currently enforced minimum monthly USD income requirement for a family of six?

Second, in terms of processing timelines, what is the realistic wait time to receive the actual temporary residency cards from the moment a lawyer officially submits the file to Migraciones?

Finally, regarding contract continuity, if we are using rental agreements to prove income, what happens if a tenant moves out and is replaced by a new one mid-application? Assuming the monthly cash flow remains uninterrupted, does a change in the underlying lease agreement trigger any red flags? Does the rental contract really need an Apostille seal on it? We were told it is required.

Thanks in advance for the on-the-ground intelligence!

 

[MikeAnton]

4 kids? Holy sh*t! It is expensive here. How old are they? Do you know how expensive schools are here? You will spend a fortune here on good schools. Do they speak Spanish?

Good luck on the processing times. All my friends have been waiting over a year with not much progress and they even had all their documents in order at the time of the application. I'm not sure where the delays are from. I am not sure if it was this bad pre-Milei.

They are sticklers here about rental contracts being Apostille but not sure how in the hell they would know but they want a stamp on everything here. I doubt they have any way of knowing if a tenant moved out. But you probably have set time frames for the contract? Presumably 1 year? That could be a problem. Maybe just make a fake contract with a family member or something. It doesn't really matter. They just want to see a stamp! I think you need the minimum for each person. That is what they required for my friend but he is still waiting after a year!

 

[Esposas]

Wow. 4 kids is a lot and I agree with MikeAnton. Be prepared to spend a lot of money on private schools here The public schools are terrible even if your kids can speak Spanish you wouldn't send them to public schools. Have you looked into tuition? Most of my friends that go to a partially English school are paying around $1,100 USD per month now per kid. And elite schools are over $30k USD per year per kid.

My best friend from the UK applied and she has a child and married and it took her a long long time to get it. It has been slow before Milei. Many thought he would improve things but maybe they are even worse now. He fired a lot of public workers so that is probably what is creating the bottle neck.

You have to have 6 times the minimum wage for each person. Probably about $8,000 USD per month for all of you. Maybe more.. I haven't seen the latest requirement/minimums.

Definitely get a lawyer and even with a lawyer it can drag out.

You have to provide the actual contract and my friend ran into the same issue. She had a 1 year lease and the tenant was a pain in getting Apostille but the process took so long she had to do it again and start over with Apostille all over again which was frustrating. Nothing works well in Argentina.

And the worst thing is when you go to renew your temporary residency again at the end of the 1 year you have to repeat the entire process again with contracts so it maybe a good idea to just lie as suggested above with a friend or family member that you trust.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Wow this is NOT the news I wanted to hear. I thought Buenos Aires was cheap? How is tuition so much? No, my kids don't speak any Spanish. I was reading some posts on X by some dude and he posted his budget. He only had 2 kids but I doubled it thinking that would be enough. He didn't have anywhere near the amount you are saying for school. Was he lying or what?

I wasn't planning on spending this kind of money on schools. I thought it was cheap there. I wanted my kids to learn Spanish and that is why we were going to move there. We can't afford $4,000 USD a month in schools. And no way I will home school my kids. That would defeat the purpose!

I thought it was much cheaper. My friend went to BA a few years ago and told us everything was super cheap. I have some reading up to do.

What chaos about the rental contracts. That is crazy!

 

[earlyretirement]

Wow this is NOT the news I wanted to hear. I thought Buenos Aires was cheap? How is tuition so much? No, my kids don't speak any Spanish. I was reading some posts on X by some dude and he posted his budget. He only had 2 kids but I doubled it thinking that would be enough. He didn't have anywhere near the amount you are saying for school. Was he lying or what?

I wasn't planning on spending this kind of money on schools. I thought it was cheap there. I wanted my kids to learn Spanish and that is why we were going to move there. We can't afford $4,000 USD a month in schools. And no way I will home school my kids. That would defeat the purpose!

I thought it was much cheaper. My friend went to BA a few years ago and told us everything was super cheap. I have some reading up to do.

What chaos about the rental contracts. That is crazy!

Heed the advice of what others are saying @Dirk Diggler. I just went through this exercise with my wife as I tried talking her into moving to Buenos Aires. We previously lived there for 9 years. 2 of my kids were born in Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires is NOT cheap. If you have 4 kids (I have 3 kids) you would need to rent a big place and big places aren't that easy to find and not really cheap either. You would need to rent a furnished place as I can't see you wanting to rent and then buy furniture if you don't know how long you will stay. And renting a long term rental is a pain in the ass too.

You'd be surprised how expensive it can be there. No way you will send your kids to public schools. It's as the others suggested. Decent private schools that speak English only 50% are expensive. My best friend and accountant sends her 2 kids to a school where they speak English just part time and she pays 3.2 million pesos per month ($2,285 USD for the two of them) each month and that is NOT including uniforms, buses, school lunches, etc. So you gotta figure you will spend $4,570 USD per month for your kids.

And realistically I don't think your kids could handle it if they speak Zero Spanish. Elite all English schools like Lincoln are about $30,000 USD per kid. That is where I would send my kids if we moved back. That would be $60,000+ USD per year for school. Where we live in San Diego it has some of the best private schools in the country. I'd say probably even better than many private schools. It is expensive cost of living here. No lie there. But our house is bought and paid for and the property taxes are low as I bought 15 years ago when property is cheap and they only allow property taxes to go up 2% a year. Now it would cost a fortune for property taxes. In the neighborhood for my house of $35,000 USD per year. But the schools are all free.

My daughter was born in BA but I moved to the USA as I wanted to raise my kids here and I don't regret it one bit. My daughter is going off to University this fall. With her public school FREE education she got accepted to all the elite schools she applied.

She got into Boston University (Questrom School), Northeastern in Boston, University of Pennsylvania (Wharton School), University of Michigan (Sloan school of Management), NYU (Stern School), University of Washington (Foster), and Georgetown (McDonough School of Business). She is waiting to hear back from UCLA, Stanford and UC Berkley.

But her dream school is Boston University and going there. My point is that I seriously doubt if we raised them in Buenos Aires she would have gotten into all of these schools. She is an overachiever but I still seriously doubt if she didn't get the US education she would have had the same results. Some of these schools listed above have only an 8% acceptance rate for the business school.

I also wanted to give them the US mentality and work ethic which is very lacking in Buenos Aires.

Take some advice from the others about the contract. Nothing is easy here and few things make sense. Good luck.

 

[Johnny]

Heed the advice of what others are saying @Dirk Diggler. I just went through this exercise with my wife as I tried talking her into moving to Buenos Aires. We previously lived there for 9 years. 2 of my kids were born in Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires is NOT cheap. If you have 4 kids (I have 3 kids) you would need to rent a big place and big places aren't that easy to find and not really cheap either. You would need to rent a furnished place as I can't see you wanting to rent and then buy furniture if you don't know how long you will stay. And renting a long term rental is a pain in the ass too.

You'd be surprised how expensive it can be there. No way you will send your kids to public schools. It's as the others suggested. Decent private schools that speak English only 50% are expensive. My best friend and accountant sends her 2 kids to a school where they speak English just part time and she pays 3.2 million pesos per month ($2,285 USD for the two of them) each month and that is NOT including uniforms, buses, school lunches, etc. So you gotta figure you will spend $4,570 USD per month for your kids.

And realistically I don't think your kids could handle it if they speak Zero Spanish. Elite all English schools like Lincoln are about $30,000 USD per kid. That is where I would send my kids if we moved back. That would be $60,000+ USD per year for school. Where we live in San Diego it has some of the best private schools in the country. I'd say probably even better than many private schools. It is expensive cost of living here. No lie there. But our house is bought and paid for and the property taxes are low as I bought 15 years ago when property is cheap and they only allow property taxes to go up 2% a year. Now it would cost a fortune for property taxes. In the neighborhood for my house of $35,000 USD per year. But the schools are all free.

My daughter was born in BA but I moved to the USA as I wanted to raise my kids here and I don't regret it one bit. My daughter is going off to University this fall. With her public school FREE education she got accepted to all the elite schools she applied.

She got into Boston University (Questrom School), University of Pennsylvania (Wharton School), University of Michigan (Sloan school of Management), NYU (Stern School), University of Washington (Foster), and Georgetown (McDonough School of Business). She is waiting to hear back from UCLA, Stanford and UC Berkley.

But her dream school is Boston University and going there. My point is that I seriously doubt if we raised them in Buenos Aires she would have gotten into all of these schools. She is an overachiever but I still seriously doubt if she didn't get the US education she would have had the same results.

I also wanted to give them the US mentality and work ethic which is very lacking in Buenos Aires.

Take some advice from the others about the contract. Nothing is easy here and few things make sense. Good luck.

I also have 3 kids. I couldn't believe how expensive the last time I was in BA a few months ago. Most nice restaurants were what we were spending back in California. It's funny but every event we went to with Mike's friends the parents were complaining about cost of living, tuition, and how it's tough. Do some research especially on the tuition.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

d

Heed the advice of what others are saying @Dirk Diggler. I just went through this exercise with my wife as I tried talking her into moving to Buenos Aires. We previously lived there for 9 years. 2 of my kids were born in Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires is NOT cheap. If you have 4 kids (I have 3 kids) you would need to rent a big place and big places aren't that easy to find and not really cheap either. You would need to rent a furnished place as I can't see you wanting to rent and then buy furniture if you don't know how long you will stay. And renting a long term rental is a pain in the ass too.

You'd be surprised how expensive it can be there. No way you will send your kids to public schools. It's as the others suggested. Decent private schools that speak English only 50% are expensive. My best friend and accountant sends her 2 kids to a school where they speak English just part time and she pays 3.2 million pesos per month ($2,285 USD for the two of them) each month and that is NOT including uniforms, buses, school lunches, etc. So you gotta figure you will spend $4,570 USD per month for your kids.

And realistically I don't think your kids could handle it if they speak Zero Spanish. Elite all English schools like Lincoln are about $30,000 USD per kid. That is where I would send my kids if we moved back. That would be $60,000+ USD per year for school. Where we live in San Diego it has some of the best private schools in the country. I'd say probably even better than many private schools. It is expensive cost of living here. No lie there. But our house is bought and paid for and the property taxes are low as I bought 15 years ago when property is cheap and they only allow property taxes to go up 2% a year. Now it would cost a fortune for property taxes. In the neighborhood for my house of $35,000 USD per year. But the schools are all free.

My daughter was born in BA but I moved to the USA as I wanted to raise my kids here and I don't regret it one bit. My daughter is going off to University this fall. With her public school FREE education she got accepted to all the elite schools she applied.

She got into Boston University (Questrom School), Northeastern in Boston, University of Pennsylvania (Wharton School), University of Michigan (Sloan school of Management), NYU (Stern School), University of Washington (Foster), and Georgetown (McDonough School of Business). She is waiting to hear back from UCLA, Stanford and UC Berkley.

But her dream school is Boston University and going there. My point is that I seriously doubt if we raised them in Buenos Aires she would have gotten into all of these schools. She is an overachiever but I still seriously doubt if she didn't get the US education she would have had the same results. Some of these schools listed above have only an 8% acceptance rate for the business school.

I also wanted to give them the US mentality and work ethic which is very lacking in Buenos Aires.

Take some advice from the others about the contract. Nothing is easy here and few things make sense. Good luck.

Thank you for all that information. Way to go for your daughter. Those are some great schools. I went to Stanford and it was a great school. Expensive but judging by your list all of those schools on the East Coast are all over $100k now. Be prepared to shell out a lot of dough. My sister goes to Boston University and is a Junior. She LOVES it. She did her first year at North Eastern and hated it. Not sure why but she transferred to Boston U and she said night and day. Both schools very hard to get into.

You make a great point about potentially not getting into a good school. My thinking was moving for 2 years would be a good idea and something unique to get them to learn Spanish. My kids are in 4th, 7th and 8th grade and 12th grade.

I am going to have to rethink this is the schools in BA are really as expensive as you say. They are going to public schools now so free. Thanks everyone for the advice.

I was reaching on X when I saw this post by this guy with 2 kids and his budget seemed really affordable.

 

[Allah]

d

Thank you for all that information. Way to go for your daughter. Those are some great schools. I went to Stanford and it was a great school. Expensive but judging by your list all of those schools on the East Coast are all over $100k now. Be prepared to shell out a lot of dough. My sister goes to Boston University and is a Junior. She LOVES it. She did her first year at North Eastern and hated it. Not sure why but she transferred to Boston U and she said night and day. Both schools very hard to get into.

You make a great point about potentially not getting into a good school. My thinking was moving for 2 years would be a good idea and something unique to get them to learn Spanish. My kids are in 4th, 7th and 8th grade and 12th grade.

I am going to have to rethink this is the schools in BA are really as expensive as you say. They are going to public schools now so free. Thanks everyone for the advice.

I was reaching on X when I saw this post by this guy with 2 kids and his budget seemed really affordable.

Don't listen to BowtiedMara guy. He post fake data. Why do you think he never show face or put his name on websites. Just another grifter type that post info to try to get people to come to Argentina. Look at his website. He make money by trying to get people to come to Argentina. If people say it expensive it't not good for him. He make money by trying to market lawyers and they pay him.

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If you take a look at content he very racist person. Always putting down Indian people and Bolivians and foreign people.

Look at the nasty thing he posts daily about Indian people. And you can read all the disgusting comments about us Indians. He far to Ultra Right of Milei. It good to see people understand him for what he is.

 

[Finance Prof]

d

Thank you for all that information. Way to go for your daughter. Those are some great schools. I went to Stanford and it was a great school. Expensive but judging by your list all of those schools on the East Coast are all over $100k now. Be prepared to shell out a lot of dough. My sister goes to Boston University and is a Junior. She LOVES it. She did her first year at North Eastern and hated it. Not sure why but she transferred to Boston U and she said night and day. Both schools very hard to get into.

You make a great point about potentially not getting into a good school. My thinking was moving for 2 years would be a good idea and something unique to get them to learn Spanish. My kids are in 4th, 7th and 8th grade and 12th grade.

I am going to have to rethink this is the schools in BA are really as expensive as you say. They are going to public schools now so free. Thanks everyone for the advice.

I was reaching on X when I saw this post by this guy with 2 kids and his budget seemed really affordable.

You really can't trust much of what that BowTiedMara says. I laughed at his numbers. He blatantly has to be lying about what he spends on groceries for a family of 4. He left out all kinds of expenses. Argentina is not a country I would recommend moving to right now with school aged kids.

His kids must be babies or very young but once they start normal school age it's going to jump up to over $1,000 dollars per kid at most nice private schools with partial English curriculum which I'd recommend for an expat. He used to have some good content but he mostly just shitposts about pro Milei stuff now.

 

[Betsy Ross]

You really can't trust much of what that BowTiedMara says. I laughed at his numbers. He blatantly has to be lying about what he spends on groceries for a family of 4. He left out all kinds of expenses. Argentina is not a country I would recommend moving to right now with school aged kids.

His kids must be babies or very young but once they start normal school age it's going to jump up to over $1,000 dollars per kid at most nice private schools with partial English curriculum which I'd recommend for an expat. He used to have some good content but he mostly just shitposts about pro Milei stuff now.

I saw his grocery bill for 4 people in the family and laughed because I spend about the same for myself. He must be starving his kids. 😆

I had no idea that is what his business is. There seems like so many are doing that referral business. I'm not sure how people can make money with that. So many of them. Makes sense now why he is downplaying how cheap it is to live here. If it makes it sound like it's too expensive, no one will come here.

 

[Wally]

I also have 3 kids. I couldn't believe how expensive the last time I was in BA a few months ago. Most nice restaurants were what we were spending back in California. It's funny but every event we went to with Mike's friends the parents were complaining about cost of living, tuition, and how it's tough. Do some research especially on the tuition.

Contrary to popular believe it isn't too cheap raising kids here. Sure cheaper than what you would spend in the US probably but it's all relative. In the US I'd make much more money than I can ever hope of making here. My wife's brother once offered me a job in one of their companies. I asked about the salary and I just laughed. I make more just managing my portfolio and investing. It would have been long days for like $4,000 USD a month which is actually a great salary here. I said no thanks. I ended up being a stay at home dad while my wife went to work.

Kicker and wildcard factor is the tuition and which school you send your schools to here. Great points about what the college plan is. Many locals just go to UBA or a free school University here but it's kind of like a death loop because those kids graduating mostly are only marketable to Argentina market. No way they will compete with someone graduating from a top tier school like some recommended above.

I don't care how bad the economy is, what is going on with AI. If you graduate from one of those top tier schools listed above you're going to set your kid off on a good foundation to get a job and make something out of their life. My kids we will all send off to American Universities when the time comes (IF they can get in). International tuition is also a monster.

You really can't trust much of what that BowTiedMara says. I laughed at his numbers. He blatantly has to be lying about what he spends on groceries for a family of 4. He left out all kinds of expenses. Argentina is not a country I would recommend moving to right now with school aged kids.

His kids must be babies or very young but once they start normal school age it's going to jump up to over $1,000 dollars per kid at most nice private schools with partial English curriculum which I'd recommend for an expat. He used to have some good content but he mostly just shitposts about pro Milei stuff now.

I had no idea that is how he makes his money but that makes sense now reading some of his posts, especially the budget ones. Many of his numbers sound way low, especially healthcare, groceries, dining out, utilities, etc.

Found that most of the people selling residency referrals and the like are all a bit of grifters. They sell plan B "don't pay any tax anywhere". They sell them as bullet proof. I don't really like all of these people all over just marketing services for people to never pay tax anywhere. Most of them are lies. If it was so bullet proof why not stand by it with the person's name on their website? None of them do. It's because they would probably be the first ones to get audited and then have issues. Same thing with his website. I would bet that he doesn't pay any taxes to Argentina on his income. Don't fault him for that. Lots of people in Argentina do that but marketing and selling services like this just rubs me the wrong way.

 

[Nasdaq]

Contrary to popular believe it isn't too cheap raising kids here. Sure cheaper than what you would spend in the US probably but it's all relative. In the US I'd make much more money than I can ever hope of making here. My wife's brother once offered me a job in one of their companies. I asked about the salary and I just laughed. I make more just managing my portfolio and investing. It would have been long days for like $4,000 USD a month which is actually a great salary here. I said no thanks. I ended up being a stay at home dad while my wife went to work.

Kicker and wildcard factor is the tuition and which school you send your schools to here. Great points about what the college plan is. Many locals just go to UBA or a free school University here but it's kind of like a death loop because those kids graduating mostly are only marketable to Argentina market. No way they will compete with someone graduating from a top tier school like some recommended above.

I don't care how bad the economy is, what is going on with AI. If you graduate from one of those top tier schools listed above you're going to set your kid off on a good foundation to get a job and make something out of their life. My kids we will all send off to American Universities when the time comes (IF they can get in). International tuition is also a monster.


I had no idea that is how he makes his money but that makes sense now reading some of his posts, especially the budget ones. Many of his numbers sound way low, especially healthcare, groceries, dining out, utilities, etc.

Found that most of the people selling residency referrals and the like are all a bit of grifters. They sell plan B "don't pay any tax anywhere". They sell them as bullet proof. I don't really like all of these people all over just marketing services for people to never pay tax anywhere. Most of them are lies. If it was so bullet proof why not stand by it with the person's name on their website? None of them do. It's because they would probably be the first ones to get audited and then have issues. Same thing with his website. I would bet that he doesn't pay any taxes to Argentina on his income. Don't fault him for that. Lots of people in Argentina do that but marketing and selling services like this just rubs me the wrong way.

We figured this out when we did our residency. We found a website like that one and they just connect you to a lawyer and they get paid a few hundred bucks by the lawyer. Nothing wrong with that I guess but as long as you know why the lawyer cost so much. But often times it's cheaper if you just go to the lawyer directly. When they have to pay a fee they usually market it up by the same amount.

Just go direct. We used Argentina Residency and they were great.

We worked with Lorena. They had a money back guarantee if they didn't get our DNI.

Our services - ARCA, ARGENTINA RESIDENCY

Our services - ARCA, ARGENTINA RESIDENCY

www.argentinaresidency.com

The residency process is impossible to do alone. Get guidance. Also remember your tax resident requirements. Argentina is no joke and they have a worldwide asset tax including cash you have in your savings account outside of Argentina. If you are having to show $8,000 a month for the 6 of you, you can probably bet they are going to research and see how you are affording all of this.

And your houses that you own in the USA (that you're using for the rentista) are going to be subject to worldwide asset taxes once you get tax residency here. That's why many people don't bother to get tax residency here and just go another route like student visa, etc. You have to bring that $8,000 a month into the Argentine banking system. That is a lot of money. Things have been stable between white and blue rates lately but just keep all of this in mind. At those kind of numbers you become a target in ARCA.

You might get hit up for income taxes on those rental payments as well as asset taxes. Not just something to jump into. A friend had that situation and it was a nightmare. That's why we sold our properties in the USA before we moved here.

Here if you decided to buy a property and Airbnb it, there is no rental taxes anymore and almost no locals pay their annual property tax. Food for thought.

 

[Wally]

Don't listen to BowtiedMara guy. He post fake data. Why do you think he never show face or put his name on websites. Just another grifter type that post info to try to get people to come to Argentina. Look at his website. He make money by trying to get people to come to Argentina. If people say it expensive it't not good for him. He make money by trying to market lawyers and they pay him.

SovSpot: The Mobility Platform for Sovereign Individuals

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If you take a look at content he very racist person. Always putting down Indian people and Bolivians and foreign people.

Look at the nasty thing he posts daily about Indian people. And you can read all the disgusting comments about us Indians. He far to Ultra Right of Milei. It good to see people understand him for what he is.

I noticed a lot of the hard right Milei herd like the anti immigrant stance in Argentina. They like to post that kind of stuff which I don't think is positive.

 

[Will I Am]

Thank you for all that information. Way to go for your daughter. Those are some great schools. I went to Stanford and it was a great school. Expensive but judging by your list all of those schools on the East Coast are all over $100k now. Be prepared to shell out a lot of dough. My sister goes to Boston University and is a Junior. She LOVES it. She did her first year at North Eastern and hated it. Not sure why but she transferred to Boston U and she said night and day. Both schools very hard to get into.

You make a great point about potentially not getting into a good school. My thinking was moving for 2 years would be a good idea and something unique to get them to learn Spanish. My kids are in 4th, 7th and 8th grade and 12th grade.

I am going to have to rethink this is the schools in BA are really as expensive as you say. They are going to public schools now so free. Thanks everyone for the advice.

Why didn't she like Northeastern? What is where my brother wants to go next year. It is at the top of his list. Crazy expensive but they have a good reputation for all getting high paying jobs when they are out.

You would spend a small fortune in education here. I'd rethink that and listen to some of what people are saying. They aren't cheap here. Every friend I have keeps saying it goes up every month.