Services  ·  01 · The move

Residency & People.

The Golden Visa is the document. The architecture beneath it — which route, for which people, sponsored by what entity, in what sequence — is the work. Done properly on day one, the next ten years of renewals are quiet, the team arrives without friction, and the family lands without queueing. Done casually, the wrong route is chosen and the better one is now closed.

Why the route you choose matters more than the visa you receive.

The Golden Visa is widely understood as a single product — ten years of UAE residency, renewable, with dependant rights. In practice it is a family of five distinct routes, each with materially different eligibility criteria, processing timelines, dependant rules, and renewal mechanics. Most people who arrive in Dubai have either chosen the wrong route for their position or chosen a route that was correct on the day but constrains a decision they wanted to make three years later.

The five principal routes are: the Property Investor route (AED 2 million qualifying real estate), the Investor route (qualifying shareholding in a UAE-licensed company), the Salary route (AED 50,000+ monthly salary in a senior position), the Specialist route (doctors, scientists, talent in defined fields), and the Pensioner route (over-55s with qualifying income or property). Each has its place. None is universally the right answer.

The right Golden Visa route is not the cheapest, the fastest, or the one you most easily qualify for. It is the one that still works in 2034 — when your company position has changed, your property may have sold, your salary may have shifted, and the people sponsored under it have moved on.

What we do.

The founder or director — Investor Route

For company owners and directors holding qualifying shareholding in a UAE-licensed entity. The route is structurally the most flexible — the visa is tied to the shareholding, not to a salary or to a property — and is often the correct answer for founders, family-business principals, serial entrepreneurs, and the principal directors of a multinational group establishing a Dubai presence. Eligibility depends on the company's substance, capital, and operating profile rather than a single threshold figure.

The investor route is the route most likely to interact with our second-phase work on Companies & Structures. The shareholding that supports the visa needs to sit in the right vehicle (mainland LLC, free-zone company, or holding entity) for both the visa to be issued and the broader corporate position to be efficient. We design these two phases together rather than sequentially.

The senior employee — Salary Route

For senior employed individuals — typically C-suite, partners in professional firms, senior specialists — earning AED 50,000 or more per month in a UAE position. The route does not require property ownership or company shareholding and is often the cleanest path for an internationally-mobile executive whose Dubai position depends on a single employment relationship.

The principal coordination is with the employing entity (we work directly with their PRO or HR function), the Ministry of Human Resources for salary attestation, GDRFA for the visa stamping, and the family for dependant onboarding. We also advise on the question that almost every salary-route candidate asks too late: what happens to the visa if the employment ends.

The property investor — Property Route

The most common route for incoming families who are buying or already own qualifying Dubai real estate. The eligibility threshold is AED 2 million in qualifying property — either a single asset or, in defined circumstances, a combination. The visa is issued by the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) following Dubai Land Department title verification, and grants ten years of residency renewable on the same basis provided the qualifying property is retained.

We do not sell property; we work alongside your chosen broker or recommend from a small panel. Our coordination covers title and Oqood verification, Dubai Land Department workflow, ICP application submission, medical and Emirates ID scheduling, dependant visas, parent sponsorship where applicable, and the issuance of the first visa stamps. Typical end-to-end timing is eight weeks from property completion to family fully resident.

The team that follows — employee visa allocations

For founders relocating an existing business, the visa conversation does not end with the founder. The team that follows — operations, finance, technical, sales — needs visa allocations through the corporate structure, and the allocations available are a direct function of the company licence chosen in phase two. A free-zone licence with two visa slots is the wrong place for a team of nine. A mainland LLC with unlimited visa allocation but office-space requirements creates a different set of trade-offs.

We design the visa allocation alongside the corporate structure: how many people are expected in years one, two, and three; what mix of senior and junior; what nationalities (which determines processing time and documentation burden); whether the company will sponsor on its own or whether senior staff hold Golden Visas in their own right. The result is a team arrival plan that scales without forcing a licence restructure.

Dependant residency

The visa for the principal applicant is one quarter of the work. Dependant residency — for spouse, children, and in defined cases parents — is where most families discover that the choices made in their principal application have downstream consequences. A spouse's professional credentials may need separate attestation. Children's school enrolment is contingent on dependant visa issuance, which is contingent on Emirates ID, which is contingent on biometrics, which is contingent on the principal stamping. The sequence is unforgiving.

We orchestrate the family-wide sequence as a single project: who is biometrics-eligible from outside the country versus in-country, which dependants need to be sponsored by which family member, the school application calendar relative to the visa issuance calendar, the timing of medical examinations, and the practical question of where the family lives during the eight-week processing window.

Parent sponsorship

Parents can be sponsored by a Golden Visa holder in defined circumstances, but the rules are tighter than they appear in marketing material. The sponsor must demonstrate the parents' financial dependency (or, alternatively, a sole-provider declaration where applicable), and the sponsorship is reviewed at each renewal cycle rather than granted indefinitely. The process is in-country: parents enter on a visit visa, undergo status change in Dubai, and complete medical and Emirates ID locally. There is no entry-permit-from-abroad route.

Costly mistakes we see, and how we prevent them.

• Founder visa applied for before the corporate structure is right. Founder takes an Investor-route Golden Visa against a shareholding in a free zone that turns out to be wrong for the business. The corporate restructure that follows triggers a re-sponsorship of the visa from scratch. Avoidable by sequencing phase two before phase one when a founder is moving with an operating company.
• Property purchased before structure decided. Family buys a qualifying property in personal name, then later realises the property should have been held by a Foundation or a corporate vehicle for succession reasons. Restructuring after the fact triggers Dubai Land Department transfer fees of 4% — on a AED 2 million property, that is AED 80,000 of avoidable cost.
• Salary-route visa with no exit plan. Senior executive relocates on the principal's salary-route Golden Visa. Two years later the employment relationship ends. The visa lapses, the family is on a six-month grace period, the school year is mid-term. We design every salary-route engagement with an alternative-route fallback identified before the move.
• Team arrives faster than the licence accommodates. Company set up with two visa slots because that was what the first-year hiring plan suggested; six months later the company needs seven. Upgrade requires office expansion under most free-zone rules and creates a multi-month visa freeze on new hires. Avoidable with a three-year team plan at incorporation.
• Dependant visas out of sequence. Principal visa issued first, then dependants applied for one at a time. Each application restarts the clock. A coordinated family-pack submission lets dependants be processed in parallel rather than serially.
• Parent sponsorship attempted from abroad. Families assume parents can enter on a residence visa stamped abroad. They cannot — parent sponsorship is an in-country status-change process. Misunderstanding this costs a wasted entry permit and a delay of weeks.
• School applications submitted after visa issuance. Top Dubai schools have multi-year waiting lists and require dependant visas to confirm enrolment. The right order is: school place provisionally accepted, dependant visa application submitted with school documentation, school place confirmed on visa issuance. Most families do the reverse and find their first-choice school is full by the time the visa is issued.

How we work, in this phase.

A residency engagement begins with a route-selection conversation — typically ninety minutes — where we work through the eligibility profile of every person being moved (principal, spouse, children, parents, key team members) against all five Golden Visa routes, identify the primary route and the most viable fallback for each, and sketch the people-onboarding sequence. The output is a written route memo that you can take to your existing advisors and that becomes the basis of our engagement letter.

From engagement letter to fully resident family — and team, where applicable — is typically eight weeks for property-route applications and six weeks for salary or investor routes, depending on document availability and dependant complexity. Throughout the process you have a dedicated case officer, a fortnightly progress call, and a clear line of sight to every government touchpoint.

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