Why market information is key to successful real estate investing

Whether you are moving down the street or considering purchasing a property in a foreign country, it's your market knowledge that will help you succeed.

Understanding how your future investment compares against similar properties on the market can make the difference between a good investment and a great one.  Finding out which factors drive price in different areas will help you prioritize what is most important to you - whether it's a close ocean view, proximity to a golf course or a location within 1hr from an international airport. And knowing how much, say, $100,000 can get you in different real estate projects, areas or countries can help you distinguish between quality and hype.

What made the difference?  Information

The problem for investors wishing to research property opportunities in Central America is the lack of consistent and objective data on property prices.  Unlike more mature property markets such as in Canada, the US or the UK, investors can’t draw on data served up by national institutes, registries or central bank databases. 

Reveal Real Estate focuses on the Central American market because it's what we know best.  We’ve operated as brokers in the region since 2003 and been asked many times over for comparative data and price point benchmarks.  We’ve looked hard and found the data to be difficult to find and often unreliable.

So we took the task in-house.  We started by building a spreadsheet and preparing Market Analysis Reports for individual clients on a consultancy basis.  Then in 2006 we began the blog covering Panama, Nicaragua, Belize and Costa Rica property markets. 

Over the past 12 months we’ve expanded our database to include a directory of real estate developments for Central America (i.e. residential communities, private gated communities, off-plan developments, apartment blocks, condominium projects, resort communities etc).  Practically all the projects in our database target the international buyer seeking a second home investment or lifestyle buy.  Some of the projects are in a pre-construction phase while others are well advanced in the roll out of their master plan. 

In November 2008 we put the database online at Reveal Real Estate always with the same goal: to help investors make better informed investment decisions.

The art and science of successful property investing

The good news is that with our searchable database and standardized price comparisons, you can do much of your homework without ever setting foot on a plane or getting in a car.  You’ve now got access to a high level of price transparency about real estate opportunities in Central America to facilitate your research.

And since international real estate investing is more than just about data, we’re building a layer of soft analysis in the form of articles and "top 10" lists to add context and meaning.  These are summarized in our regular newsletters.

You'll also find a review facility where you can learn from other people's experiences and even share your own stories and offer advice to others.  It's a place where you can share your real estate knowledge and get to know what other investors think.

We didn’t want to launch with data that feels incomplete for any one country so we’ve started our analysis on four Central American countries:  Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.  We’ll be adding more countries and more features in 2010.

So go ahead… subscribe today and join us on a real estate investing journey in Central America.