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    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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  • 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
    • La Rochelle, France
    • Mazatlán, Mexico

    Luxury

    • Ambergris Caye, Belize
    • Kotor, Montenegro
    • The Panama City Beaches
    • Paris, France
  • Resources

    Global Living

    • Living & Retiring Overseas
    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
    • Offshore & Diversification

    Making Money

    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing

    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
  • Conferences

    Upcoming Events

    • Explore Our Events Site

    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
    DISCOUNT
    LEARN MORE
    PRE-REGISTER
    LEARN MORE
    PRE-REGISTER
    • MORE EVENTS

    Contact Our Events Team

    Toll-Free U.S. and Canada:
    1 (888) 627 8834
    From Outside North America:
    1 (443) 599 1221
    Working Hours
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    Reach us with your questions by email at: events@liveandinvestoverseas.com

  • Store

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    • Titles on living and investing around the world
    • Explore Our Store
    Your passport to a life well-lived abroad

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    overseas living letter offers affordable retirement guidance
    The Simon Letter Wealth Protection Insights
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    Our Customer Service team is here to assist with any questions or concerns CustomerService@LiveandInvestOverseas.com

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Home Investing

Why Real Estate Cash Flow Should Be Your Main Focus

Do This One Thing Before Buying Property Overseas… And The Profits Are Sure To Follow

by Lief Simon
Jun 21, 2021
in Investing, Real Estate
0 0
Bangkok, Thailand skyline at dawn.

Alamy/Sean Pavone

Cash is king, right?

Not really.

It’s cash flow you should care about.

Cash flow is critical to most aspects of life, including real estate investing.

Cash flow was my focus when I bought my first property back in 1995… the three-flat building in Chicago I’ve told you about before.

I put together a fancy spreadsheet to analyze and compare all the buildings that I considered. I wanted to show how the cash flow would play out. I believed the answer to that question would tell me which building to buy.

And, indeed, with the help of the spreadsheet, it became clear to me quickly that a two-flat wouldn’t pan out. The price discount compared with a three-flat wasn’t enough to make up for the income loss from that third unit.

So I wasted no more time looking at two-flats, even though there were more of those on the market and many were nicer and needed less work than the three-flat buildings I was finding.

I had very specific cash flow requisites. If someone came to me with the same requirements today asking what I thought, I’d probably tell that investor he was being too restrictive.

But I had no choice. I was just starting out and had a tiny capital budget and no room for error.

My plan was to live in one of the three apartments of the building and rent out the other two. My big-picture objective was to find a building where the income from the two rentals plus the amount of rent I was paying where I had been living would cover the mortgage payment I’d calculated in my spreadsheet.

In addition, I had specific ideas about location, size of the units, and condition of the property. It wasn’t easy, but I stuck with my requisites and it paid off. As the tenants who came with the building turned over, I was able to increase the monthly rents and was close to covering the mortgage on the building from total income from the two rented units within six months.

I’d met my cash flow goal.

In addition, I was able to sell the building just two and half years later for almost twice what I’d paid for it. The ROI on my initial cash investment was tremendous.

It was my first lesson in the potential of leveraged appreciation, and it made an impression.

I took the proceeds from the sale of that Chicago three-flat and launched my property investing career in earnest… overseas.

The capital appreciation I’d enjoyed from that first investment was intoxicating, but I didn’t let it turn my head. As I expanded my real estate portfolio, I kept a focus on cash flow. That is how I was able to weather the 2008/2009 global real estate crisis.

Diversified cash flow (across countries, markets, and currencies)… and controlled leverage. That’s how I’ve ridden out every investment cycle of the past 25 years.

Property prices fell as much as 70% in some markets post-2008. In most cases, the root problem was that the cash flow from rental income—whether long- or short-term—didn’t support the property prices investors had been paying.

Ireland and Spain stand out as two key case studies in this regard.

That and over-leveraging. Over-leveraged markets saw the biggest drops. Again, Ireland and Spain top the list.

I was buying again by 2010… focusing on properties with cash flow to support their prices… in markets that hadn’t really fallen or that were recovering quickly.

Top of the list was Medellin, Colombia, where prices were good and appreciating and rental yields were good to excellent.

How To Overcome Downturns In Real Estate

The pandemic has created a new crisis in real estate, but one that is playing out differently than the broad global crisis of 2008/2009.

People are moving from cities to the suburbs and from the suburbs to the country…

Or they are buying a country property as part of their new backup plan, preparing for a possible next surge or new pandemic.

We tend to plan for the last war.

This surge in demand coupled with extremely low interest rates has many U.S. markets on boil. People are chasing capital appreciation.

Me? I’m looking for cash flow.

You should be, too.

Lief Simon
Editor, Offshore Living Letter

Tags: 'real estate'buying propertyCash flowdiversificationinvesting in real estate
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Lief Simon

Lief Simon

Lief Simon has lived and worked in 7 countries on 5 continents and traveled to more than 75 countries. His real estate investment career began with a $5,000 down payment on a three-flat building in Chicago. Less than three years later, Lief sold the building for a leveraged return of 3,000%—$150,000 in profit after closing costs and commissions.

From there, he turned his attention overseas and has bought property in 24 countries including France, Croatia, Portugal, Ireland, Belize, Spain, Argentina, Cyprus, Romania, and beyond. Thanks to his decades-long career as a global property investor, Lief has built a multi-million-dollar portfolio that includes rental properties, significant land holdings, and 7 personal residences.

Lief has established residency in 3 countries and acquired a second passport from Ireland.

In 2008 Lief and wife Kathleen Peddicord made the most important investment of their lives—a 215-acre oceanside finca, known as Los Islotes. There, on Panama’s largely undiscovered Veraguas coast, they’ve installed underground electricity, water, and internet and built a forever family home that sits at the heart of their ultimate vision: a gold standard private residential community for those in search of a true safe haven escape.

Lief’s latest book, “Cowboy Millionaire—The New American Pioneer,” collects all the wisdom he has learned in three decades of living and investing outside America.

He offers advice on international diversification in his twice-weekly Offshore Living Letter and monthly Simon Letter dispatches. For real estate investment opportunities, check out his monthly Global Property Advisor service.

If you’d like to meet Lief in person, join him for one of our upcoming in-country conferences. You’ll find further details here.

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HOME

Top Countries

  • Spain
  • Portugal
  • Panama
  • Belize
  • Colombia
  • Cyprus
  • Mexico
  • France
  • Montenegro

Best For:

  • Health Care Abroad
  • Retirement Living
  • Cost Of Living
  • Investing in Real Estate
  • Establishing Residency
  • Gun Ownership
  • English Speakers
  • Safety
BROWSE ALL COUNTRIES

Budgets

How Much Will It Cost
To Live 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
  • La Rochelle, France
  • Mazatlán, Mexico

Luxury

  • Ambergris Caye, Belize
  • Kotor, Montenegro
  • The Panama City Beaches
  • Paris, France

Resources

Global Living

  • Living & Retiring Overseas
  • Raising A Family Abroad
  • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
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Making Money

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Real Estate

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Reach us with your questions by email at: events@liveandinvestoverseas.com

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