How to Buy Real Estate Overseas by Kathleen Peddicord

Author:Kathleen Peddicord
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

Colombia

Years ago, I sat around a table in a just-opened restaurant in a little-known mountain town in Panama called Boquete with a group of investors and businesspeople who were in the country, as I was, to scout opportunity. “I believe that the potential in this place for retirees is enormous,” one of the gentlemen in the group (the one who had just invested in opening the restaurant where we were having dinner) theorized. “Right now, the opportunity here is for the investor and the speculator. Property prices are so undervalued. Apartments in Panama City are a screaming bargain on a global scale. Pacific beachfront, Caribbean, farmland, riverfront, this country has it all, and it's all cheap.

“Panama is still misunderstood, suffering from a lingering case of bad press,” my host for the evening continued. “When you say ‘Panama’ to an American today, he thinks: Noriega, drug cartels, CIA intrigue. It won't be too many years before those perceptions are flipped on their head. I predict that five, seven years from now, when you say ‘Panama’ to the average American, he'll think: retirement. Because that's what this country is gearing up to offer—a very appealing retirement option.”

That was 1999. In August 2010, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) named Boquete, Panama, one of the top five places in the world to retire.

In 2011, I sat around a table in a just-opened restaurant in a little-known mountain town in Colombia called Medellín with a group of investors and businesspeople who were in the country, as I was, to explore current opportunity. “Property values in this city are so undervalued,” one of the gentlemen having dinner with me remarked. “I believe that apartment costs here are the lowest for any cosmopolitan city in the world on a per-square-meter basis. This is because Colombia, including Medellín, is still misunderstood. When you say ‘Medellín’ to the average American, he thinks: Drugs, gangs, Pablo Escobar. It's such a misperception. The current reality of this city is so far removed from all that.”

My host for the evening had just toured me around central Medellín, taking me to see apartment buildings that he was rehabbing and converting into rentals, including one in a neighborhood I'd not visited before. “Manhattan retro chic” might be the best way to describe it. Running off a carefully maintained, beautifully landscaped park, these few side streets are lined with small colonial structures housing sushi restaurants, funky bars, contemporary art galleries, and vintage clothing and furniture shops. The last thing I felt was unsafe.

As in Panama years ago, the opportunity today in Medellín is for the investor and the speculator. Prices are an absolute global bargain. Costs of getting in are low, and demand is expanding. Right now in this city you could buy almost anything and feel comfortable that you could make money from the purchase. And this is a market where you could buy even with very little capital, say $50,000.

The coming opportunity in Medellín is for the retiree. I predict that,

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