Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations

Living Abroad: If It’s All Over the News, You’re Too Late

If you have ever dreamed about living abroad or investing in property overseas someday, put EscapeArtist.com at the top of your bookmarks. It’s not the slickest site out there and you get what you pay for sometimes (it’s free). But they have a knack for telling it like it is, which is an important trait when seemingly everyone involved with investing has a not-so-hidden agenda.

Exhibit A is a short and sweet gem from this month’s newsletter: “The Rise and Fall of an Expat Haven.” It’s about San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. I’ve never been there, but a friend I trust calls it “a Disneyland version of colonial Mexico.” I’m sure it’s very nice if it’s what you’re looking for, but to me it has always seemed like the kind of place you go to for a few days, then hightail it out to areas where there aren’t so many gringos forming little circles of gringo friends.

The problem is, most people who suddenly wake up and think they want to live abroad are not really all that imaginative. They are spurred on by an article in the New York Times or Travel and Leisure and they do a minimum of homework. They hear about Costa Rica and think it’s the place to be, not even realizing they are 20 years too late. They think Roatan Island is some exotic backwater where the bargains are there for the plucking, even though the people who really made out like bandits there have moved on to Panama or Nicaragua. They read some article about deals in Croatia and start making plans to buy property there, not realizing that they will be buying from a rich European who bought that dream home four years ago–at 1/3 the price.

My point is, by the time you’re seeing a location featured in every major media outlet, it’s old news. By nature, those outlets are conservative, with long lead times, and the writer is unlikely to be someone who has ever lived in or traveled to the places he or she is writing about. Plus when a half million of the richest people in the country have read about something, you can be assured your buying power has just decreased dramatically. But hey, a writer from Barron’s just interviewed me on this subject, so perhaps this weekend I’ll be surprised.

If you want to do this, do it right. Read EscapeArtist.com, especially their real estate investment newsletter. Subscribe to International Living, despite all their annoying sales pitches for conferences and properties where they have a vested interest. Spend some money to buy specific country reports or books. Make contacts with people who have been there, done that, and have lived to tell the tale. Go to the places that weren’t hot 10 years before you even started looking. (Then smile nicely when the hordes come in and you decide to move on…)