Buying Real Estate Overseas For Cash Flow (And A Better Life)

Introduction

Earning Cash Flow from Real Estate Overseas Is the Same as Earning Cash Flow from Real Estate at Home … with These Three Important Differences

“It's perfect. I'll take it. How much is it?”

So said the Irish hairdresser to the Montenegrin real estate agent.

The agent was touring the young woman through an apartment for sale in the medieval town of Kotor. The woman didn't get past the entryway before making her buy decision. Indeed, she had been ready to invest before boarding the plane from Dublin. She was desperate to take her first step onto the property ladder but didn't qualify for financing at home in Ireland (the “do you have a pulse?” mortgages didn't become common in this country until a year later). No bother. Everyone was buying property abroad. She would, too.

The agent who sold the hairdresser that Kotor apartment told me the story when Lief met him the following week. We, too, were considering an investment in Montenegro.

It was 2004 and that agent (like all real estate agents in the country) was selling properties faster than he could count the commissions. All Europe and a few Americans like us were competing with each other to get into the hottest new property market on the Continent. Unlike the hairdresser, we didn't invest. The math didn't work.

That young woman from Dublin, like too many novice and even many experienced investors, was buying because she was certain the value of what she was buying was going to increase. She didn't bother to ask ...