Archive for August, 2009
Free Real Estate Tours with Coldwell Banker
Sunday, August 16th, 2009
Our Your Future Now property tours have been so successful that we’re adding more dates between November 2009 and February 2010 – to coincide with Nicaragua’s traditional high season.
The tours take place over 3 days, we co-ordinate everything from your airport pick-up to hotel accommodations during your visit to the country and you won’t have to pay a cent over the three days. Learn more.
That’s right, we cover all your in-country expenses, with no obligation whatsoever.
Here are the new dates:*
- November 13-15th 2009
- December 4-6th 2009
- December 11-13th 2009
- February 12-14th 2010 – Special focus on Green real estate developments.
- February 26-28th 2010
Benefits from joining Your Future Now property tours:
Cut great real estate deals on exceptional properties – Remember many of the deals we’ll be showing you are released specially for the tour. It’s the perfect way to leverage the current buyer’s market.
See more properties that you could on your own – Our tours are jam-packed and intensive. They’re designed to make the most of your most precious commodity: your time. We keep the tours small so that we can offer you a personalized experience.
Build your own network of experts, legal advisors and analysts – We’ve opened up our contact book giving you face-to-face access to the best investment and legal brains in the country. On tour we will also educate you on the process involved with purchasing property as a foreigner and the ins and outs of Title Insurance
Experience first hand how you can live a luxury lifestyle for less – Nicaragua has the cheapest cost of living in Central America. We’ll show you how you can live like a rockstar on a bare bones budget.
See for yourself opportunities for personal and business development – Whether you are downshifting or embarking on a new businesses abroad, the opportunities are vast and yours for the taking.
Leverage the Coldwell Banker experience – We’ve run dozens of real estate tours and helped hundreds of investors purchase in Nicaragua. Our tours are the result of the many years of experience that Coldwell Banker has in finding the best investment and lifestyle buys in the country.
Interested? Please complete this form for more details.
Getting in early by investing in Nicaragua real estate
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009Critical to any successful real estate investment is the question of timing. Ideally, you want to get in early, before the rest of the world catches on to a new purchasing destination. Ten or fifteen years ago, you could describe Costa Rica or Belize as an ‘early-in’ investment destination. Today they welcome millions of people from all corners of the earth and property values have risen significantly over the years. Right now, many commentators are calling Nicaragua the ‘early in’ investment destination for the region, set to follow a similar growth trend as Costa Rica or Belize.
Comparison shopping
The key indicator to look at to determine where a market lies along a development curve is the cost of property. Problem is, it can be hard to get hold of comparative market statistics in Central America, particularly in areas where there is no functioning MLS.
So we turned to Reveal Real Estate, a market research organization focusing on international real estate in Central America. They have aggregated listing prices from real estate developments and master planned communities in Nicaragua, Belize, Costa Rica and Panama and put this information online. The chart below shows their analysis of median price per square foot for houses in 2008 across the four countries.
Nicaragua emerges as the lowest cost property destination across all categories, and second cheapest (after Panama) for ocean view houses. The 2009 data, which has just been released for Nicaragua and Panama real estate, backs this up with Nicaragua emerging as a cheaper investment destination across all property types. Costa Rica real estate and Belize property data will soon be released so we’ll run the comparison when it is available.
And it’s not just property values that are paving the way for early-in property investors, Nicaragua has the lowest cost of living in Central America. (Calculated using implied Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) conversion rate from the IMF.)
It’s a buyers market in Nicaragua
Right now it’s a buyers market in Nicaragua. The country is not immune to the global economic crisis. Developers are offering incentives and there have been some price reductions. But what’s clear is that Nicaragua is not experiencing the double digit declines we’re accustomed to seeing in headlines across the globe.
As noted by Reveal Real Estate, the key reason for this is the low levels of lender-mediated activity in the Nicaragua property market. With most property purchases being made in cash, foreclosures are very rare.
A second factor is the emergence of a new type of ‘lifestyle investor.’ These are buyers who are seeing their chances of retiring in, say, Florida unwind but they’re not ready to give up on the lifestyle they had planned for their retirement. So they’re looking at countries like Nicaragua where the real estate is cheaper and, crucially, the cost of living more affordable. And they’re getting in early by investing in Nicaragua real estate.
