Oct. 22, 2009
Panama City, Panama
PLUS:
- Health Insurance Options In Chile And Bulgaria...
- Musicians In Panama...
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17 Ways To Profit From Real Assets Right Now
Developer equity offers out of Asia...Yield-producing Europe plays earning as much as 35% per year...Lots with breath-taking mountain views as low as US$13,000...No money down. No interest. Offer to lease. Payments over time...
Those in the room with us at the
Global Real Estate Profits Summit in Panama City last week sure had a great time considering these opportunities in turn. If you weren't able to join us, we missed you.
Here's your chance, though, to gain access to every one of the recommendations presented. This is time-sensitive material. Some of the opportunities, discounts, and offers discussed are available for a limited time only.
Reserve your Global Real Estate Home Profits Program now.
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Dear Live and Invest Overseas Reader,
"'Fee simple' is the title you want. That's the full enchilada," explained friend and obtaining-good-title-in-unregulated-and-emerging-markets expert Tuey Murdock to the group assembled for our Global Real Estate Profits Summit in Panama City last week.
"In the international marketplace, you'll encounter many other types of title. Some, in fact, aren't title at all. That is, they don't amount to ownership. 'Rights of possession,' for example, isn't title. It doesn't mean you own the piece of property in question. You simply hold the right to use
it."
Tuey has been working with First American Title for 35 years. I've been listening to her speak to groups like ours last week on the importance of insuring the title for any overseas real estate purchase you make for a dozen years at least, but I never tire of it. For Tuey's talks are punctuated always with new and ever-more-unbelievable tales of just how wrong things can go when you buy real estate in certain markets and don't invest in a little insurance.
In the kinds of markets we recommend, you can't take things for granted the way you do back home in the developed world. You can't assume, for example, that the guy offering to sell you a house in fact owns the house. You can't take the developer's word that your access or right-of-way is guaranteed even though it crosses another man's property. You can't believe the real estate agent when he insists that rights of possession is as good as title or that, sure, you could build your home right on the beach, no problem.
Down here in the Lands of Mananas and Fiestas, the promises flow along with the rum. The key to navigating these property markets is avoiding the liquor and turning a deaf ear to the assurances.
Property developers in these Wild West markets should be treated with skepticism, as should the promises they make about the land they're developing. Here's how this will go:
The developer in question will drive you out to his beach. There, at the shore, he'll have erected a small clubhouse. Come in, have lunch, enjoy a drink, he'll say. The fish is fresh. My guys caught it just offshore from our beach this morning. And the rum is local.
After you've eaten your fill, the developer will take you out in his 4X4 or maybe on horseback to explore the beach and the surrounding countryside.
As the sun is beginning to slip behind the horizon, and the ocean's surface is glittering and dazzling, the sky behind it turning fire red and orange, the developer will begin to make his pitch.
"Look at that sunset," he'll urge. "This could be the view from your front porch. You could have a front-row seat for this show every evening.
"Come on, he'll continue. Let's head back to the clubhouse. It's time for some Sundown Rum Punch..."
You're smitten. Who wouldn't be? There's nothing wrong with appreciating what's being put on the table in front of you. The coasts of Nicaragua, Panama, Belize, and the Dominican Republic, for example, are special and extraordinarily beautiful. Seeing them for the first time can make you weak in the knees. The feeling can be something like falling in love. Don't resist it. Allow yourself to savor it. But don't so lose your balance that you marry the first beach that charms its way into your heart. Ask yourself, is this the beach you want to grow old with?
Before you answer that question, understand what you're buying and make sure that, once you've made the purchase, you'll indeed own what you think you own.
You want to be more careful shopping for real estate in another country, where the language, the customs, the culture, the way of doing business, and the property purchase process are all foreign, than you would be back home, not more cavalier. In the unregulated markets south of the Rio Grande, you don't have the safety nets you count on back home. What if, turns out, the guy offering to sell you a house isn't the owner of that house? What if you don't discover this fact until after you've handed over payment? What is your recourse?
In truth, if you haven't invested in title insurance, you likely don't have any. There's no Better Business Bureau, Department of Housing, district attorney's office, or local congressman to contact for help, and people in the rest of the world don't sue each other the way we Americans do. You aren't going to find an attorney in Nicaragua or Belize or anywhere else to take your case. You must protect yourself, because no one else is standing by to protect you or to help you make things right should something go wrong.
The best way to protect yourself is to engage your own attorney to represent you through the purchase process, one who works not for the seller, the agent, or the developer but for you. You want your own independent attorney whose agenda and loyalty are clear.
And you want to invest in title insurance. It costs, typically, 0.5% of the purchase price.
Kathleen Peddicord
P.S. As Tuey explained last week, a title insurance policy protects your foreign property purchase against outstanding mortgages, liens, or litigation; it confirms and insures for easements, access, right-of-way, and underground utilities; and it authenticates the uninterrupted clean history of ownership.
Perhaps most important, it buys you the agency's duty to defend. If any issue or dispute arises, the insurer is on the hook to defend your position at its own expense.
Tuey's full talk, including all her sad but entertaining tales of just how wrong things can go when buying real estate without insurance in the Lands of Mananas and Fiestas, is included as part of our
Global Real Estate Home Profits Program, which includes the audio recording for every presentation during last week's two-and-a-half-day Global Real Estate Profits Summit. The package, with both the audio recordings and the slide shows, is available pre-release starting today.
Reserve your copy at a discount of nearly 45% here.
P.P.S. Here's another discounted pre-release opportunity:
I include a broader discussion of how to shop for and purchase real estate safely in unregulated and emerging markets in the "
How To Retire Overseas" book that I've written for Penguin. The book will be in U.S. bookstores starting in March 2010 (I'm reviewing page proofs this week), but you can reserve a pre-release copy at a discount on Amazon as of this month.
Go here now.
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"Kathleen, can you please let me know if
Bulgaria is one of the countries detailed in the
international health insurance report you've published?"
-- Richard B., United States
"I would like to buy your new
international health insurance report. My question first, though, is, does it include information about
Chile? We are moving next year to that country and need info about health insurance there."
-- Lou A., United States
Our new "
Top Health Insurance Options For The Retiree Abroad" details country-specific health coverage information for 17 of the world's top overseas havens right now.
However, we promise details for 18 countries. For Country #18, we're over to you, the reader. Our report provides details for health coverage in the 17 countries we believe make most sense for the would-be overseas retiree or expat today. But we understand that the country you believe makes most sense for you may not be on our list. In this case, simply contact us to let us know which country you're interested in. We'll bring our resources to bear to help you find the current information you need to consider local health coverage options in that place.
We want this report to be as useful as possible to readers, so we're allowing that perhaps the country any particular reader would like to know about isn't on our current top havens list. In that case, after you've purchased the report, send us an e-mail, and we're on the case.
To answer your questions specifically, dear readers, no, neither Chile nor Bulgaria is included in the report as published. However, get in touch separately at the e-mail address provided in the report, and, again, we're on it.
"Thanks again, Kathleen, to you and your staff, especially Marion, for all your help when we were in
Panama. We could not have gotten all the things done we wanted to get done without your support. The visit to Fatama Parish resulted in a great contact for the music program in Nata, which we had heard about. We have communicated with Rosemarie Ayala Gnaegi, president of the foundation (
www.fundanac.org). She says that the program in Nata has some instruments but needs more, as well as wind instrument teachers. This is just what we were hoping for.
"Our attorney
Rainelda Mata-Kelly estimates five to seven months for completion of our visas, so we will be back then."
-- Elmore S., Panama Circle Member, United States
Entirely our pleasure, Elmore. We're happy we could help and look forward to seeing you when you're back in town.
