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  • Home
  • Countries

    Top Destinations:

    Whether you’re looking for fun and sun, a peaceful retirement, or the chance to earn some extra income, you’ve got a real world of opportunity open to you… In short, we’ve done our best to narrow down your best options, but only you can decide the right country for you.

    • Spain
    • Portugal
    • Panama
    • Belize
    • Colombia
    • Cyprus
    • Mexico
    • France
    • Montenegro
    • Browse All Countries

    Best For:

    • The Best Places To Retire
    • Health Care Abroad
    • Cost Of Living
    • Investing in Real Estate
    • Establishing Residency
    • Gun Laws In The World
    • English-Speaking Countries
    • Safest Places For Retirement
    • Best Places In Latin America
  • Budgets

    How Much Will It Cost You To Live Overseas?

    The only honest answer is, we have no idea. And neither does anyone else. The only one who can answer that question is you. Here’s the most important thing to understand about budgeting your new life overseas…

    Super Cheap

    • Chitré, Panama
    • Santa Marta, Colombia
    • Phuket, Thailand
    • Dumaguete, The Philippines

    Cheap

    • Medellin, Colombia
    • Boquete, Panama
    • Kyrenia, Cyprus
    • Hua Hin, Thailand
    • The Algarve, Portugal

    Affordable

    • Valencia, Spain
    • Cascais, Portugal
    • Las Terrenas, The DR
    • Pisa, Italy
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    • The Panama City Beaches
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    Follow Us:

    • Meet Our Experts
  • Real Estate

    Buying Real Estate For Cashflow

    • Discover tips and strategies used by global property investing veterans

    Explore Our Latest Posts

    • Learn how to invest and purchase property abroad…

    Go To The Overseas Property Alert Site

    • How To Become Independently Wealthy And Fund The Lifestyle Of Your Dreams
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    Live and Invest In Spain Conference

    Offshore Wealth Summit

    Greece Workshop

    VALENCIA, SPAIN

    Sep. 17-19, 2025

    PANAMA CITY, PANAMA

    Oct. 15-17, 2025

    VIRTUAL

    Nov. 13, 2025

    Learn More About This Event
    Learn More About This Event
    PRE-REGISTER
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    PRE-REGISTER
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    Toll-Free U.S. and Canada:
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    From Outside North America:
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    Reach us with your questions by email at: events@liveandinvestoverseas.com

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    overseas living letter offers affordable retirement guidance
    The Simon Letter Wealth Protection Insights
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Home Real Estate

Find Out The Top 5 Panama Property Markets In 2023

Panama’s 5 Top Growth Markets

by Kathleen Peddicord
Jul 30, 2023
in Real Estate
0 0
Panorama of modern Panama City, Panama

iStock/DavorLovincic

Panama remains one of the best places in the world to live or retire overseas this 2023.

It’s also one of the world’s safest investment havens.

This despite the fact that a downturn in Panama’s property markets has been predicted for years.

Panama is my part-time home base and my full-time business HQ. I can tell you from that boots-on-the-ground perspective that, like Mr. Twain’s demise, those rumors of Panama’s softening investment climate are greatly exaggerated.

Starting in 2003 and continuing through 2008, this country enjoyed a mega construction boom. Then came the crash of real estate markets around the globe. Would-be investors worried about the unfinished projects in Panama at the time, especially in Panama City.

Panama developers were forced to adjust. No longer able to sell at frothy pre-2008 prices, they retreated to “what the market would pay.” What they found was that, while their profit margins were constricted, they were still able to turn over inventory.

Most affected was the top end of the market. The highest-priced projects in 2008 suffered the biggest reductions in pricing, of course. Some buildings underway were delayed. Others in planning stages didn’t get off the ground.

However, the market in general carried on. Values fell 25% on average.

Markets elsewhere around the world fell by 50% and more.

Meantime, in Panama City, rental rates remained strong for those who were able to take possession of their apartments, and prices recovered quickly across the capital city.

Why was Panama’s drop less precipitous than in other markets? And why did the country recover more quickly than nearly any other?

The Panama Canal!

It’s a cash cow.

The critical global trade route generates nearly four billion dollars a year. That’s a lot of per-capita cashflow in a country of four million people.

The Canal makes Panama the ultimate safe haven.

That was true in 1998 when I traveled to Panama for the first time… and it’s more true right now than ever.

Today this marketplace is far more niched than you might expect.

Panama City, for example, like any city of a million-and-a-half people, is many different markets, some offering more potential and upside than others.

In 1998 and through 2008, you could have bought almost anything in Panama and felt confident that you’d make money. That’s no longer the case. Today you need to target your investment search.

Where, specifically, should you be shopping in 2003?

Here are our five top picks:

Top Panama Market #1: Avenida Balboa

Avenida Balboa
iStock/Markpittimages

Avenida Balboa, where Lief and I made our first property investment in this country 20 years ago, continues to offer opportunity. This frontline strip along the Bay of Panama has always been and will always be one of the city’s best addresses.

Pricing continues up even as new buildings and more inventory continue to appear along this oceanside boulevard. An apartment on Avenida Balboa will always find a buyer or a renter, as the case may be.

Top Panama Market #2: Costa Del Este

The other area in the city offering strong investment potential in 2023 is Costa del Este. This master-planned suburb is the focus of many top Panama developers who are hard at work building both houses and apartment towers, as well as commercial space.

In addition, this is also the area where many (most) of the many thousands of expat workers moving to Panama City for jobs with the dozens of international companies that have set up and continue to be set up in and around Panama’s capital are looking to live… especially if they are coming with families.

Prices in Costa del Este are among the highest in the city, but demand remains strong. Buying pre-construction either to sell or to rent at completion can be an effective and profitable strategy.

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Top Panama Market #3: Veracruz

Outside the city, other dynamics are playing out and creating opportunity.

Thanks to the anticipated new (fourth) bridge over the Canal, the Veracruz neighborhood, which sits on the coast behind Panama Pacifico, is smack-dab in the path of progress. This is one of my favorite up-and-coming zones for a rental investment. It’s the nearest beach area to the city but has traditionally been overlooked by both tourists and investors.

Top Panama Market #4: Veraguas

When Lief and I decided we were all in on Panama, we went in search of a legacy-level property play.

We focused our scouting on the western side of Panama’s Azuero Peninsula.

Its Pacific coast is one of Panama’s greatest assets. Everyone who can afford a house at the beach has one. By 2008, when we launched our search, beachfront nearer to Panama City was already being aggressively developed and the eastern coast of the Azuero Peninsula was in the crosshairs of international investment groups.

Azuero’s western coast, in Panama’s Veraguas Province, was a final frontier.

Access was more difficult, but prices were one-third as much for land we found to be arrestingly more beautiful. Plus the sunsets along this coast are the best in the country.

For my money, this Veraguas coast continues to hide the greatest opportunities this country has to offer.

Top Panama Market #5: Puerto Armuelles

The final growth market I want to highlight for you today is Puerto Armuelles.

Puerto Armuelles found its place on the map in 1927 when Chiquita Banana came calling. The company built the town as it exists today, complete with housing for workers, roads, sewers, and a railroad. Puerto’s infrastructure is head and shoulders what you typically expect from a small Central American town. Chiquita is no longer headquartered here, but its legacy carries on. 

When Chiquita pulled out of this coastal region in 2003, the local economy collapsed and the population decamped. This is a depressed market that is attracting the eye of forward-looking developers who recognize potential when they see it.

We believe Puerto Armuelles’ star is again rising.

Until next time,

Kathleen Peddicord signature

Kathleen Peddicord
Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter

Tags: 'invest in panama'investmentsPanamapanama propertyreal estate in Panama
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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has reported on opportunities for Americans to live, retire, and do business overseas for 40 years. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 24, established businesses in 7, renovated and built properties in 6, and educated her children in 5.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets from the east coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland, then to Paris, France, and finally to Panama City, Panama, where she has based her Live And Invest Overseas business. Peddicord and her husband, Lief Simon, now divide their time between Panama and Paris.

Peddicord was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. She opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Waterford, Ireland; Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France. Peddicord launched Live And Invest Overseas group in 2008 and has built it into a successful multimillion-dollar business. Today, she shares her firsthand experience of expat life with more than 500,000 readers of her publications, including Overseas Opportunity Letter and Overseas Living Letter.

Kathleen has been featured often in The New York Times, MSNBC, AARP, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, and more and writes monthly about expat matters, international real estate, and offshore diversification for Forbes and U.S. News.

Kathleen has written several books including the memoirs “At Home In Ireland” and “At Home At Los Islotes” and her latest title “At Home Abroad,” all published by Lahardan Books. Her best-selling "How To Retire Overseas: Everything You Need To Know To Live Well (For Less) Abroad” was published by Penguin Random House in 2018 and her “Buying Real Estate Overseas For Cash Flow (And A Better Life)” was published by Wiley in August 2020.

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Super Cheap

  • Chitré, Panama
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Cheap

  • Medellin, Colombia
  • Boquete, Panama
  • Kyrenia, Cyprus
  • Hua Hin, Thailand
  • The Algarve, Portugal

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