SHOULD YOU INVEST IN REAL ESTATE IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY?
Dec
26
2018
Peter Answers
Of course not. You should not purchase any non-local property that requires management.
Do not acquire anything unless it is within half an hour’s drive of where you live and you can manage it personally.
Why? Because outside managers will never take care of a place, screen tenants, handle repairs efficiently, collect rents, and deal with the local bureaucrats like you as an intelligent owner would. Some will even collect rents for a while and report to you that the property is vacant and needs an injection of more cash to make it rent-able. I have seen this happen with variations, on 95% of all foreign real estate investments.
A Swiss friend once put half a million Euros into a “prosperous successful” South American farm in Cochabamba. It was run he said “by a reliable German Entrepreneur.” I told him ”You must be nuts! “ You will never see a centime of you money if you do that.
Flash forward ten years. He never saw a centime. Only request for more care and feeding of his pet crocodile. That is what we call such a foolish investment.
Then he sent me on a paid mission to check out his investment. Result?
The farm has bad title, it is full of weeds, his interest is completely worthless, and the German manager (still in the area) had nothing but excuses. I suspect his reliable and respected manager pocketed at least half of the purchase price and then washed his hands of the entire deal.
I have seen time and time again the foreign investments of people go down the toilet.
One exception is a newsletter writer I know with thousands of subscribers who resells and rents his houses and apartments via Air BnB in top tourist locations like Paris –to his subscribers. Another newsletter guy sold a lot of (now) worthless lots in Chile and Colombia to his gullible subscribers. He made money on the land he subdivided and sold to suckers.
Another exception:
If you want to buy and own a vacation getaway property (home or Condo) for yourself in a high security gated community, nothing wrong with that. But I strongly suggest you keep it vacant for your own use because sooner or later a bad tenant will trash it .
To restate my answer:
With rare exceptions, you should NEVER even think about investing in foreign real estate!
Category: Peter Answers
By P.T.
December 26, 2018
Source : http://www.petertaradash.com/should-you ... n-country/