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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

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    • The Panama City Beaches
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  • Resources

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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
  • Conferences

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    • 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
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    Toll-Free U.S. and Canada:
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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
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Home How to

My #1 Way To Store And Grow Wealth

The Benefits Of Overseas Real Estate

by Lief Simon
Jun 07, 2024
in How to, Offshore
0 0
A house

AdobeStock/ttinu

8938.

That is the number of the IRS form you have to fill out to report foreign financial assets.

If you own foreign assets, you have to fill out IRS Form 8938 even if you’ve lived out of the country for most of your life.

However, here’s an important point: You do not have to report foreign real estate on 8938.

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Here’s the relevant reference from the IRS’s website:

“Foreign real estate is not a specified foreign financial asset required to be reported on Form 8938. For example, a personal residence or a rental property does not have to be reported.”

The IRS wants every dollar and dime it can claw together, right? So why would they leave foreign real estate alone?

It’s a matter of practicality.

Even if they wanted to, how is the IRS (or anyone else, for that matter) going to seize or force the sale of your second home in Belize… your condo in the Dominican Republic… your penthouse in Colombia… your beach house in Mexico… your farmhouse in Portugal… or…

 

You see my point.

Store And Grow Wealth

Lawyers, former spouses, friends, employees, and business partners with axes to grind are stone-walled, too. None of them can touch your Panama villa with the avocado and mango trees growing in the backyard… no matter how many attorneys they hire.

For me, this makes a rental in Paris… or Medellín… or Lisbon… a piece of property anywhere in the world… the safest, smartest investment I can imagine.

It’s like having a Swiss bank account that you can stay in on vacation… and that you could even eventually retire to…

The ultimate strategy (just as a Swiss bank account was long considered to be) for both storing wealth and keeping it private.

Now, this strategy born of a significant loophole is not a free-for-all. There are some rules…

You have to report any income you make from the property (the IRS gets their pound of flesh, but they can’t ever take the underlying asset from you).

If you decide to hold the property in a trust or LLC, then your interest in either of those has to be reported.

Hold it in your own name, though, and you don’t have to report it… not even if you own an entire village in a sunny, balmy Caribbean paradise.

I’ve long been committed to global real estate as an asset class.

It’s the ultimate investment for both excellent return and privacy and protection, superior to investing in stocks and mutual funds in nearly every way.

My wife Kathleen and I have a growing portfolio of real estate in a variety of locations around the world.

Thanks to this strategy, which we have pursued together over more than two decades, we aren’t worried about our retirement. We aren’t worried about our kids’ or grandkids’ futures. We aren’t worried about U.S. markets, the future of the U.S. dollar, or who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue now or next…

We’ve been able to travel the world for fun and for profit. And, as a result of this strategy, we’ve evolved a lifestyle that is both comfortable and filled with adventure and that will convert, whenever we’re ready to pull the trigger, into our retirement plan…

A retirement that will have us dividing our time among some of the world’s best places to spend time… in properties that we own and that are generating cash flow year on year.

This is the best time in history to take advantage of this strategy and the most critical point in our lifetimes to begin investing in real estate overseas… or to expand your portfolio if you’ve already begun.

Preserving your wealth in offshore real estate is a heck of a lot more fun than putting it in a stuffy bank vault.

You get to do real stuff with your money… cool stuff… rather than just locking it away with a banker.

Now, I realize (with Kathleen’s help) that not everybody is like me. You may not want to own dozens of properties all around the world. You might simply want a second home in paradise… whatever that means to you.

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I don’t like the Caribbean.

You might love it.

I like the city.

You might want to be up in the mountains.

That’s what’s great about this strategy… you can build whatever kind of investment portfolio and accompanying lifestyle that you want.

You could follow my lead and go big…

Or you could just find your place in the sun… safe, separate, and secure from the government and other parties out to get your money.

How, exactly, do you get started at this… and how, in time, do you build a safe, private, and high-yielding portfolio that appreciates in value while doubling as an adventure-filled lifestyle?

You join me for my International Property Summit taking place in Panama City, Panama, June 18-20. You’ll find the full details here.

Stay diversified,

Lief Simon signature

Lief Simon
Editor, Offshore Living Letter

Tags: 'Global Property Investing''How To Buy Real Estate Overseas''Privacy''real estate overseas'Lief Simonwhy buy real estate overseas
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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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Top Countries

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

Best For:

  • Health Care Abroad
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  • Cost Of Living
  • Investing in Real Estate
  • Establishing Residency
  • Gun Ownership
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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
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Making Money

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Real Estate

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Lahardan Books

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