Why might it make sense for you to buy a piece of property overseas?
The answers to that question are more compelling right now than they’ve been at any other time in our lifetime…
Reason #1:
Like real estate anywhere, real estate overseas is a hard asset, and, in the current investment climate, hard assets are the most sensible investment class, the best choice for storing value…
Reason #2:
As with real estate anywhere, you’re buying with the hope of capital appreciation, but you can also be buying for cash flow, right now an important investment agenda…
Reason #3:
Real estate overseas provides portfolio diversification—diversification of currency, diversification of market, and diversification of asset type (rental, raw land, condo-hotel, etc.)…
Reason #4:
Real estate overseas provides the opportunity for you to position yourself to profit from both expanding and crisis markets…
Reason #5:
Real estate overseas can double as a retirement plan—today’s investment can be tomorrow’s retirement residence…
Reason #6:
Real estate overseas can double as a holiday home, an investment that you and your family are able to use and enjoy from the day you make it…
Reason #7:
Real estate overseas can be part of a legacy of wealth that you leave to your heirs…
Reason #8:
Real estate overseas is safe and private, one of but two remaining asset types that an American need not report to the IRS every year…
Reason #9:
A real estate investment overseas can bring tax advantages, including deductions you can take on your U.S. tax return…
Reviewing this list of reasons to buy real estate overseas, you notice that, big picture, it breaks itself down into two categories…
Category 1: investment… category 2: lifestyle.
Different agendas that, for the best results, should be considered in unison.
Another thing to notice about this list of reasons to put your time and money into the acquisition of real estate overseas is that, fundamentally, it’s all about diversification.
This is the real advantage of this strategy—diversification of your portfolio and your assets, but diversification, too, of your life, your retirement, and your legacy.
We are living at a time that presents the opportunity to take the investor’s profit agenda, combine it with the live-better-for-less agenda of the retiree, and transfer it overseas. An opportunity to use overseas real estate as both an investment vehicle and a strategy for a new and better life, both immediately and longer term in retirement.
Overseas real estate amounts to the surest strategy for creating and preserving legacy wealth while simultaneously reinventing your life and rescuing your retirement. Thanks to global market events, many options exist right now for where to buy to make money while also making a new life, and, thanks to our Age of the Internet, it is possible today to seize these opportunities easily and cost-effectively to build a new life while staying in real-time touch with family, friends, business concerns, and investment portfolios from the old one.
The best case is when you are able to find a piece of real estate in a place where you want to spend time, short term on vacation and long term in retirement, that also holds out the potential for an investment return, in the form of capital appreciation, rental return, or both.
This perfect storm of objectives should be your ultimate goal. A holiday home on the beach of the Dominican Republic can become little more than a headache and a carrying cost if you ultimately decide you can’t abide life in the tropics.
So, I say again: The reasons to diversify your investment portfolio and your lifestyle to include real estate overseas have never been more compelling than they are right now.
But, you may be thinking, who does this, really? Isn’t this a strategy of the jet-set?
No, it’s not.
I come from middle-class Baltimore, Lief from middle-class Phoenix. We started our overseas real estate adventures with next-to-nothing. Lief made his first property investment using a US$5,000 gift from a family member.
I’ve been covering the live-and-invest-overseas beat for nearly three-and-a-half decades. In that time, I’ve met thousands of others, at conferences and in my travels, who, likewise, have built adventure-filled lives that include real estate holdings overseas, and I can’t think of one of them who I’d describe as jet-set.
These are all regular folks, representing all demographics.
I’d say it’s high time you joined us.
Kathleen Peddicord
