The No. 1 Reason to Own International Real Estate

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Diversifying, protecting your wealth, owning incredible properties in beautiful places…these are great reasons to consider property overseas.

But the number one reason to own international real estate is this: Real estate fortunes, large and small, are made at moments of big transformation. I’m talking about exceptional changes that happen so infrequently in your backyard you might never even see one. Once in a lifetime events, seismic social shifts…

Let me show you exactly what I mean using examples from America’s past…

• At the dawn of the 19th century the newly invented steamboat meant farmland became expensive high-end suburbs at the edges of U.S. cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Cincinnati. Millionaires were made. If you had owned farmland in Brooklyn in 1814 within a decade you would have been very, very rich.

• By the 1870s the railroads were pushing across the country and making fortunes for savvy real estate investors of the day. The word “boom” has its origins in what happened to real estate in Los Angeles when the trains arrived. 

• The Florida real estate boom of the roaring 1920’s was brought about largely because of a relatively new invention—the automobile—which brought a surge of vacationers on new roads. Scams were rife but wise investors cleaned up by buying well. This was mirrored across the U.S. as suburbs grew thanks to Henry Ford’s affordable cars and better access to finance. 

• The GI Bill in the 1940’s put money in the pockets of millions of Americans to buy homes… Huge new suburbs were created putting vast sums into the pockets of savvy investors. 

• The interstate highway system begun in the 1950s was the largest public works in history and turned thousands of acres of cheap agricultural land into valuable commercial and residential land.

Without a time-machine we can’t hope to profit from the booms of the past. But we can learn from them…and then go and find today’s big transformations wherever they may be. 

Because the stories of those who got rich from America’s big transformations are—in short—stories of people in the right place at the right time, doing the right things. By looking overseas you can ensure you are in the right place at the right time all of the time. 

When you take a world view you see these sorts of major “once in a generation” transformations regularly.

If we only look to our own hometowns, or our own countries, then we may never have the chance to invest ahead of a big trend or development set to drive spectacular profits.

And I’m not saying you need to be a total pioneer, learn a foreign language, or do wild land deals in some jungle. There are winners and losers from such major transformations. It’s critical to buy at the right time. To lock down the right kind of real estate, at the right price.

I like to wait until the momentum is clearly there, until the road is built, the airport is getting flights. I want to see the demand for myself…get boots on the ground, sometimes for months, even years before I act on, or recommend, any deal. 

I like to see the upswing underway. The key then is to find the right real estate and do the right deal.

I’ve made it my mission to identify big transformations across the world. Billion-dollar investments in airports, highways, and other infrastructure. The massive growth of burgeoning middle classes. Sometimes I travel in air-conditioned comfort, sometimes in off-road vehicles…whatever it takes. 

Hacking through jungle or arriving exhausted after an arduous dirt-road adventure on a deserted beach, I’ve made it made business to be in the right places at the right time, and to get the right real estate deals. I’ve pounded pavements from Chiang Mai to Cancun, Cabo to the Costa del Sol…

The bigger the transformation, the bigger the opportunities for investors like us. We’re talking about sea-changes in the development of some of the world’s most beautiful places. Billions of dollars poured into opening up new areas of virgin land. Turning fishing villages into beachfront cities in a matter of a few decades. Or millions of people becoming work-from-anywhere professionals, taking their jobs with them to the world’s most desirable destinations and driving demand up just as supply gets thoroughly squeezed. 

To profit from a major transformation first you need to see it. Take the birdseye macro view. Then get ahead of it. 

And I’ll repeat, I’m not talking about speculating or buying any old property. You need to do the same smart things you would do with any real estate investment. That is, buy the right real estate.

Location, location, you need to drill down and find real estate that will be in biggest demand and is protected from competition, from oversupply. The absolute best real estate protected by moats.

And, finally, to lock in the most spectacular of gains you then need to buy it at a low, low price. This is the key benefit of buying at the right moment in a big transformation, you buy ahead of demand. It’s also a key benefit of being a member of Real Estate Trend Alert…

Members of my Real Estate Trend Alert and I have made spectacular gains by doing this. It’s at the core of what we do.

I started my RETA group in the teeth of the 2008 crisis. I knew there was huge potential for a group like ours to leverage collective buying power. I hit the road for real, pouring money and time into travel and boots on the ground scouting. 

I have long thought about it like this: when you look everywhere there is always big opportunity somewhere. As a boy I was bored in school but for two subjects: geography and economics. I was fascinated by travel, foreign places and always sat up to hear news of world events. I’m grateful and glad, for this interest in the world meant that even early in my investing career I was comfortable looking beyond my borders for opportunity. 

Just a few years before the 2008 crisis, I sold some of my property in Ireland. Values had risen to a level that made no sense to me. In just one decade, between 1997 and 2007, prices for new houses increased by more than 200%. (No, that’s not a misplaced zero—that 200% figure is correct.) Already built homes sold for even more. The increase was a whopping 280%.

I made a killing and invested the profits in Panama where there was a major transformation underway. And yes, as I’ve said, my friends and family thought I was crazy investing overseas. But by doing so, not only did I protect my gains, I increased them. I made a profit of over $72,000 on a property in Panama City. Not so crazy then, and I was off…

Today, and for a long time now, it’s been difficult to see much sustainable upside in most real estate markets in North America. Most U.S. and Canadian markets are highly leveraged and expensive relative to incomes, very susceptible to interest rates rising or employment falling. 

I’ve watched over the last few years as “little guy” property investment and speculation has come back in vogue. News articles and hundreds of blogs cover investing in Atlanta or Austin. Television shows feature baristas or graphic designers turned house flippers.

I see real estate investors struggling to make the numbers work in America. Increasingly folks are looking outside of their home states. That’s smart, and also a lot easier than it would have been a decade ago. Today with the internet and other technological advances, investing long-distance from the comfort of home is easier than ever. The internet is itself a massive transformational event. And it means you can buy, manage, and market a property in another state or country in a way that was inconceivable before.

But I’d argue that they should look farther than the U.S. Because—like a broken record here—when you make the world your oyster, you can play big transformations for enormous profit far more often.

And playing big transformations—as I say—is where real estate fortunes get made. 

When you live in Ohio or California you can invest in Florida or Mexico’s Riviera Maya… It’s as easy if not easier to get to the Riviera Maya—a highly internationalized place with hundreds of direct flights from U.S. and Canadian cities and millions of potential renters pouring in through Cancun airport to spend time on the 80-mile stretch of Caribbean coast. 

Sure, it’s in a different country, but that doesn’t mean you can’t safely buy a property there and make a lot of money. Plus, it means you own and can enjoy a luxury property in the Caribbean.

And here’s a key thing to understand about internationalized destinations like the Riviera Maya. These days your essentially renting or selling to the same market you would be in the U.S. Remote work now means millions of people are free to relocate to desirable international destinations and they are doing so in droves. These are people who will want your real estate and who are willing to pay a lot more for it than you did…assuming you get it at the right price. It’s likely your guests will be from Ohio or California…

I own no stocks today. None. I don’t own gold, silver nor any other precious metals or gems. I haven’t got a cellar stuffed with rare wines or a garage full of classic cars. I neither own nor do I want a digital wallet packed with Bitcoin or any other crypto currency. I’m all in on international real estate. I devote myself to finding big transformations I can follow, get ahead of, and profit from. When I’ve found a big transformation it’s then about finding the right location, real estate, the right deal, and the right people to deal with. And getting in at the right price. 

The most common transformational event is a Path of Progress. 

Essentially, a Path of Progress is the collision of real estate and technology. The railroads made successes of towns along their tracks. The interstate highway system turned backwaters into boomtowns. The car made the growth of suburbia possible. When a technology changes where we can live or do business, it changes the rules of the property market.

I’m not a speculative guy. I’m more often accused of being too risk averse and conservative in my investments. I only like deals that—even if things don’t work out how I think they will—I’ll still do okay. And the best way I know how is to find those deals is ahead of big transformations.

Get the right real estate deal positioned ahead of growing demand and with supply constraints on top of that, it’s a formula for values to soar…