Before you’re ready to retire, you’re likely to notice places around the world where you’d like to be able to spend time. Not just once every several years or so in a hotel, but more regularly, as often as possible, in the company of friends, and in a place of your own.
When you identify a destination that meets this description, I recommend you take stock of it bigger picture, considering, first, whether that destination is also a place where you think you might like to spend time in retirement and, second, if the real estate market there presents potential for capital appreciation or cash flow.
If the answer to either of those questions is yes (and certainly if the answer to both of those questions is yes), then you’ve found your ideal second home overseas.
In Lief’s and my case, this line of thinking has led us to several purchases over the years… in Panama, in Croatia, in Colombia, in Belize, in France, and, most recently, in Portugal. These are all places we’d like to be able to return to regularly, long-term, as part of our eventual “retirement” plan.
In addition, in each case, we’ve identified the potential for value appreciation over time, portfolio diversification, and, in some cases, cash flow from an active rental market to boot.
In each case, this perfect storm of opportunity, as we think of it, is what has motivated us to take action… to stake our small claim.
When it comes time to flip the switch to retirement, Lief and I hope to have organized our lives so that we’re able to move around during that phase of life among the handful of destinations where we most enjoy spending time, with established infrastructure in each so that we can come and go as residents, not tourists, with friends and connections, social circles, and, important to us, homes of our own.
When making your own plan for retirement overseas, the starting point, key to the success of the adventure, is to be honest with yourself as to what kind of lifestyle you’re after.
When Lief and I ask ourselves what kind of lifestyle we want in retirement, the answer is: varied.
City and coastal, ocean and highland, spring and summer, fall and winter, developed and emerging, sophisticated and raw, refined and gritty… we appreciate it all. So we’ve conceived a retirement plan that will allow us to enjoy it all, perpetually, in turns.
Whatever your plan, I encourage you to start developing it as soon as possible.
An easy first step can be the purchase of a piece of property in a locale where you want to be able to spend time now and that you think eventually could become part of your long-term retirement plan.
Meantime, whenever you’re not using the property yourself, it could be generating cash flow from rental, and, over time, it could be increasing in value, too.
Your future retirement residence could be a nicely appreciating asset on your balance sheet… a place you own outright (meaning no housing cost to factor into your retirement budget) and that generates cash flow that can be used both to cover your property carrying costs and even to bolster your retirement fund.
That’s the ideal situation, the global property investing trifecta—when the holiday home-cum-retirement plan you buy also qualifies as an investment.
Identifying and following through on this kind of multi-agenda purchase will be one important topic of discussion during our Fourth Annual Global Property Summit, taking place March 20–22, 2017.
In addition, we’ll be using our 2017 Global Property Summit as a forum to look closely at the 14 most appealing property investment markets in the world today and to showcase more than 20 different current offers.
Several of these top property investment opportunities come with buy-ins of US$50,000 or less… some with buy-ins of US$30,000 or less… and at least one you can buy into with less than US$17,000.
But, again, that’s just one piece of this picture.
That’s why the program we’ve conceived for this once-a-year event focuses on many opportunities and agendas beyond straight-up profits, yields, and cash flow.
Buying real estate overseas is about making money, but it’s also about reinventing your life and saving your retirement.
This is about fun and profit… making money but also living better.
Kathleen Peddicord
