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PRACTICE UPDATE: How the content must now be read in light of current ImmD policy:

The legacy position explored here—that serviced business suites, executive desks, or shared co-working memberships can serve as acceptable business premises for initial entry clearance—is now outright obsolete. Adjudicating officers have systematically eliminated accommodation for flexible, unsegregated office arrangements; ImmD now mandates tangible commercial substance in the form of an executed commercial lease granting exclusive physical possession (“four walls”). Today, submitting an agreement for a hot desk or serviced office without physical demarcation is treated as prima facie evidence of an undercapitalized, asset-light venture, triggering immediate requisitions for floor plans, dedicated photographic signage, and commercial utility accounts.

Hong Kong has an incredibly dynamic economy with the reality that the Hong Kong Immigration Department has recognized that entrepreneurs today have a wide variety of options in which to home their start up and early stage businesses.

Consequently, incubators, serviced offices and co-working spaces are generally acceptable to the Immigration Department as early homes for such nascent enterprises.

Indeed, applications for business investment visas are not often denied just because a foreign national entrepreneur wishes to surround himself with like-minded people in the cost effective business-friendly environment which incubators and co-working spaces afford.

Similarly, ImmD are prepared to accept the notion that a mere virtual office will suffice for the first few months in the life of a new business assuming that the business plan underpinning the application for a business investment visa provides a clear pathway to the creation of local jobs and with it an upgrade into more suitable ‘bricks and mortar’ type premises once the first employee has been recruited.

That employee, after all, cannot report to your spare bedroom or kitchen table to perform their duties for you!

However, suitable business premises are just one facet of the investment visa approvability test.

It’s important not to be lulled into a false sense of security expecting your visa to be approved just because  you’ve made business accommodation arrangements which are generally acceptable to the Immigration Department.

There’s quite a lot more to it that just where your business lives.

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Is there any advantage in being an existing resident of Hong Kong when you make an application for a Hong Kong investment visa?

Hong Kong investment visa wrongly applied for – clearing up the confusion and getting the correct employment visa instead