Caribbean / mortgages / other locales

[dhcayman]

Hi all

Good forum and very informative. I keep seeing all this hype on Montenegro and Morocco which it appears are the new hotspots...hard to know where to invest.

Have been looking at St Martins (Antilles) and find that getting finance is well a big hurdle. Banks locally dont want to know and Barclays France for eg dont finance property in their own territory! This is after meeting with banks and explaining that I am looking for an investment property with a deposit to put down of 50%+. Any suggestions on other angles of approach, outside of an unsecured/secured loan. Have about 200k US to invest (sold some properties) and looking to spread over 2/3. Looked at the Philipines. Anyone got some reliable reports out there on Ph..ines.

Bottom line is there is too much info out there and it starts to get confusing. Certainly there are lots of opportunities, but my main fix is that it is always better to use the banks money than your own cash, in which case, trying to find the method to do so with committing a sizeable chunk of $$ is hard. I live in a tax free environ now, so again further complications given tax free status etc. Anyone got any words of wisdom? Obviously outside of DYOR

DH

[John]

Welcome to the forum DH.

My first bit of advice would be to take your time, there are so many options out there and so many people trying to promote different areas, that it can overwhelming for someone trying to decide which direction to take.

Philippines seems to be an option that is definately being pushed at the moment. If you do a search for "philippines" on the search tool above, you will find that some of our members are very experienced in this market. Maybe you can contact them through Private Message.

It's not an area where I have any personal experience, but I am keen to learn as from the outside it does look like there is good potential. Hopefully you can tell us all you have learned along the way over the next weeks and months!

Financing in Philippines I think would be fairly easy for you to obtain. I notice that many developments offer financing direct from the developers there.

[dhcayman]

Hi John

Sage advice and much appreciated. St Martins is our first point of interest. We have as we recommend anyone to do, done some spreadsheets, cash flows, capital outlays, ROI's, Break even points and we are close to finding a good deal or two in St M.

Re Philipines, I noticed as you say there are some experienced people there. We were thinking of asking our nanny!! whether for a fee, (and we trust her) that she can have one of her family members go check it out and put some feelers and wheels in place and in motion. Certainly our feeling is that there are lots of sharks out there all trying to get your $$ and you cant beat doing your own research. If I learn more on the Philipines will post again. I also feel hat there is only so much beach property left in this world that is developable and these emerging markets have great potential. The lesson I learned is to be able to to have enough liquidity to wether any downturns and possibly even invest during those periods, and wait till the sun shines again.....

You seem to be an experiences buyer. You have many property investments?

DH

[John]

Only ventured "overseas" twice so far. Invested in 2 properties in Croatia in 2004/2005 with a group of friends. Both were renovation projects and both produced a tidy profit. As I decided to go back to school, I took my money and ran!

Currently I am involved in 2 single home developments here in Ireland. When these 2 sell, I will probably be looking at putting the profits into Dubai, specifically the short-term rental market there. After that I'm very open-minded as to where to look at next.

[dhcayman]

good luck with Ireland. Sounds like you will do well.

The Irish tiger!!