Could we be witnessing the beginnings of a green movement in Nicaragua real estate?

On a hillside a few kilometers south of San Juan del Sur on Nicaragua’s Pacfic coast, a green community, completely off-grid, is being born.

A team from Earthship Biotecture (gurus in green building from the US) and a local Nicaraguan crew have joined forces to build the first Nicaraguan Earthship - a house made out of all recycled materials that generates its own energy, recyles its own waste and harvests its own water.

A day-to-day property construction blog is being written and we are currently on Day 24.

If you are interested in the green movement or green real estate of any kind - this is something to watch. In the words of Dave Kniffen:

Developments happen everywhere, so we’ve made a choice on how we are going to develop. If we don’t do it this way, someone else will do it their way. Maybe our way helps the local community, instead of using them to help ourselves. Maybe our way is a little better for the environment than the conventional build. At the end of the day though, it’s a logical decision.

We live in a world, especially in Nicaragua, of limited resources. A sustainable home gives you total freedom and independence. The decision to build or live in an “off grid” home is not moral, it just makes sense. Who you rely on is who controls your life.

Create your own electricity, capture your own water, treat your own sewage, and grow your own food and then you are not talking about ideals of independence or freedom, you’re living them.

Read more about Dave’s vision for this green real estate community and help spread the word.

The National Association of Realtors released a report this month that pulls together data and trends on Americans living abroad. This kind of data is hard to come by making this white paper an important contribution to the field.

Download the paper here.

The data does not include Americans still living in the US who have bought second homes and investment property abroad. This number is likely to exceed the number who have moved abroad.

Belize offers some of the most affordable Carribean real estate in the region.  And some of the properties for sale are magnificent.  Have a look at this private island for $650,000.

Click here for a Video Tour

National real estate associations exist for most counties in Central America.  And, given the sharp growth of real estate investment in the region, these bodies seem to be getting more active. There are some big ticket items on the table not least the question of licencing, code of ethics and ultimately (maybe) development of an MLS.   The associations are as follows:

• The Costa Rica Chamber of Real Estate (CCCBR), Costa Rica Global Association of REALTORS® (CRGAR),
• Camara Salvadoreña de Bienes Raíces (CSBR),
• Asociacion Nacional de Agencias de Bienes Raíces de Honduras (ANABIR),
• Camara Nicaraguense de Corredores de Bienes Raíces (CNCBR),
• Asociacion Panamena de Corredores y Promotores de Bienes Raices (ACOBIR),
• Camara de Corredores de Bienes Raices de Guatemala (CCBRG)
• Association of Real Estate Brokers of Belize
• Federation of Real Estate Associations of Central America and the Caribbean (FeCePAC) - an umbrella organisation that ties the other bodies together with a focus on integration and networking.

The recent activity is a good sign.  The FeCePAC and CNCBR conference held in Managua, Nicaragua last week had a strong turnout with some key action steps to take for more regional integration of real estate approaches and standards.  We were also pleased to see the recent announcement that the Association of Real Estate Brokers of Belize will be working together with the government to establish a code of conduct and general property industry standards.   The US National Association of Realtors (NAR) currently has bilateral agreements with real estate associations in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Panama and is affiliated with the Federation of Real Estate Associations of Central America.

Savvy investors are always on the look out for emerging destinations - especially those with a twist on a familiar theme. The Inland Mountains region of Matagalpa and Jinotega could be just that. The area shares many of the characteristics of Boquete - probably the hottest spot for real estate in the Panama after Panama City - such as enchanted “hidden” valleys, mists that shroud the mountaintops, a perfect spring like climate, rushing rivers, flowers and high quality coffee. 

This is where you come to commune with nature, hike, fish, cycle, kayak and recharge your senses in a setting of peace and tranquility. Prices in the area are still 1/4 of what you will find in Panama and around 1/3 of property on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast. Read more on the mountainous, coffee growing areas of Nicaragua.

What emotional drivers are you responding to when you buy real estate in a private residential or resort community? 

• the aspiration to be in an attractive location or interesting setting
• the desire for a change of scene, to unwind and experience a change of pace
• the motivation to be stimulated and entertained through recreational interests such as diving, hiking, fishing, water sports and so on
• the expectation for rental income and capital growth
• the enjoyment of local culture and environment
• the sense that everything is being taken care of
• the desire to belong to a community of like minded individuals
• the wish to fulfill an escapist dream

When assessing real estate offered in private residential and resort communities, don’t let emotions override your decision making.  Our own starting point is to use the criteria in the box below.  Yes, it may be a bit cut and dry but it is worth pausing to consider these factors as they well help you to determine the overall positioning of the product on offer. Remember, the list of characteristics is longer for real estate products positioned at the luxury end.

By Nancy Beth Jackson
When shopping for real estate across borders or across continents, how would you like to tap into the local news and gossip, have a virtual tour of the area and chat with potential neighbors before buying a ticket for a personal visit?

Just as Web listings transformed international real estate a decade ago, new Internet tools are making even more information available — and not just from real estate agents.

Increasing numbers of potential buyers and investors are exchanging information in online forums, downloading video and audio reports, tailoring Internet maps to their needs and reading blogs for news and opinion.

And what is in cyberspace today is only the beginning, says Mark Lesswing, chief technology officer and senior vice president of the Chicago- based National Association of Realtors, which recently entered its first international joint venture with its Mexican counterpart.

“What we’re going to see goes beyond listings,” he said. “We’ll see blogs take off, maps take off, research-driven things like trends in the market, more tools on social networks.”

Chatty online forums like those at Internationalliving.com, Yahoo and Google already have had effects on international real estate, but the blogging “gold rush” is just beginning, Joel Burslem, who blogs about the future of real estate marketing from Portland, Oregon, believes.

In the United States, blogs like Curbed.com, started by an under-30 New York journalist chronicling his own neighborhood, started attracting attention just three years ago, Now, real-estate-blogs.com provides a directory of dozens of blogs related to the real estate industry in the United States and Canada, and encourages visitors to vote for their favorites.

Web activity by international real estate professionals and laymen started picking up only last year. Sam Taliaferro, an American developer in Panama, now spends three hours a day on a half-dozen blogs that range from events in his highlands development to general investment trends and life in the country.

“I am reading anyway, and it only takes a few minutes to add commentary and post,” he said.

Links to his blogs can be found at Primapassport.com, a marketing organization that he founded in 2005 to encourage North American and European investment in Panama. Housed in one of the new towers in Panama City, Primapassport also publishes a glossy magazine, produces video commercials, conducts surveys and offers travel incentives, all available through the Web site.

Taliaferro is working with the National Association of Realtors in North America and with Overseas Property Professionals in Europe to expand his marketing and blogging activities throughout Central America and Mexico in the coming year.

Kunle Campbell started blogging from Oxford, England, almost two years ago while researching his master’s thesis at Warwick University.

Campbell’s study — carrying out an e-marketing strategy for Property Frontiers, an international real estate consultancy — led him to set up an international property blog, www.overseaspropertymall.com, a kind of “news diary,” to help himself understand market dynamics.

After graduation from Oxford, he began a more specialized blog — bulgarianproperptyblog.blogspot.com — because he had been bitten by the real estate bug.

“I was priced out of the U.K. and looking for a Bulgarian ski apartment as a first step on the property ladder, and also as an investment vehicle to jump-start my entry into the U.K. property market,” said Campbell, 26, who was born in Nigeria.

He found a place, but then decided it was not a good investment. Now he is looking for a French leaseback or an apartment in Berlin, but he remains bullish on Bulgarian real estate.

His blogs only recently started earning money, what he describes as “a pittance” from Google advertising, but he is redesigning them this month to make room for banner advertising. He also plans to include commentary from a real estate researcher.

Podcasting, a format that has skyrocketed in the past couple of years thanks to the popularity of Apple’s iPod, also are proving popular for information related to real estate.

“Podcasts are a huge medium at the moment for many media consumers who like to digest their information in other ways than reading,” said Felicity Quigley, property editor at Buy Association, www.buyassociation.co.uk property. The site was started in September as “an impartial buying guide,” featuring fact sheets, articles and surveys as well as podcasts.

“A podcast, being audio, is quite personal. You can do other things on our site whilst listening or take it away to listen at your convenience,” said Quigley, an Australian journalist who ventured into international real estate herself six years ago, buying and reselling a Florida condo to pay for her wedding.

“It’s about gaining your information the way you want it, when you want it, all to suit your needs, rather than the needs of the media provider,” she said.

Podcast topics range from Cyprus to South Africa and run for 30 to 45 minutes.

The host is Adrian Mills, a British broadcaster who owns property in Thailand and Dubai. He interviews international property experts, often agents or developers, but Quigley says topics are based on consumer demand rather than plugging advertisers.

The audio programs also are syndicated in an online network that includes Aol.co.uk, Tiscali.co.uk, Rightmore.co.uk and PropertyFinder.com.

Quigley says the site plans to add forums, blogs, competitions and polls in the next few months; video will be added during the summer.

Video has started appearing on professionally designed real estate Web sites, offering a kind of virtual walk- through, but many people around the world are excluded from making or from playing such videos by a lack of technical resources and English proficiency, according to Tony Grey, a former Microsoft group manager.

For some months now, he has been developing software to make narrated videos available in several languages and to expand a multi-lingual Web site called Forsalebylocals.com, which he bills as a “new real estate approach.”

“We are building a Web engine that can create personalized user experiences in multiple languages across dozens or hundreds of Web sites,” he said on a blog associated with the site.

The number of videos narrated in English, Portuguese and Spanish on Forsalebylocals has been increasing steadily since the Beta version of the site was started in October.

The downloadable videos often have a YouTube home-video quality to them, but the accompanying commentary lets visitors know about the neighborhoods, whether a house roof can support a second floor, what amenities are included and agent contact information. Few of the residential properties on the site cost more than $100,000 and some are priced as low as $20,000.

To date, most of the featured properties are in Bolivia, where Grey owns property, but the site is to expand to Costa Rica this month. Anyone with a miniDV tape can post interviews and narrated videos on the site, which does not charge for video titles, digitalization and conversion to Internet format.

“We’re not trying to be agents,” Grey said in a telephone interview. “It’s really about building community.”

Panama is at the top of our list for the most secure, diverse and promising real estate destination in the region.

Security - Panama provides real estate investors with a strong sense of security based on its dollar based economy; stable political situation; transoceanic Canal, and its standing as a regional headquarters for many multinational corporations.

Panama has established a facilitative taxation framework to encourage foreign investment.  For example there are no real estate taxes for twenty years on any new construction and the tourism master plan exempts tourism related businesses from income or capital gains taxes for twenty years and allows the importation of a wide variety of goods duty free.  Financing on real estate purchases is more widely available than in other Central American countries given Panama’s position as a international banking centre.

Diversity - Panama combines a sense of the first world with an experience of the exotic. Within its borders visitors and investors can enjoy a Miami style capital city, tropical rainforests, beautiful mountain refuges, Caribbean-style beaches, living Indian cultures, historical sites as well as the Panama Canal, an 8th Wonder of the World.  Own an apartment in the rapidly growing Panama City, a villa in a private residential community in the mountains, a lot on the Caribbean or surf real estate on the Pacific.

Panama city skyline

Promise - In many areas, particularly outside Panama city itself, the real estate market is still at an early stage of a typical development cycle.  Here high levels of capital appreciation are possible - within a relatively low risk environment.  Elsewhere, in more mature markets, such as Panama city and Bocas del Toro, for example, the value proposition is less favorable than in the past, although investors can draw comfort from the fact that the positive price trend is well established. 

During the past several years, Panama has been consistently rated by a wide range of commentators in the top ten for the best retirement locations worldwide. A strong tourism and retirement trend is fuelling increased interest in real estate in Panama.  As with elsewhere in the region, tourism and real estate are inexorably linked and this trend bodes well for the Panamanian property market.

by Chronicle Staff
Despite a new, leftist government led by President Daniel Ortega, executives in Nicaragua’s growing real estate industry remain bullish.

“The real estate market outlook continues to be positive,” says Claudia Gonella, director of the Nicaragua offices of U.S.-based real estate agency Coldwell Banker.”We are selling well out of both of our real estate offices, at approximately the same rate as this time last year.”

Timothy Thomas, owner and broker at ReMAX Monteverde, agrees. “I think [the government] will be OK,” he says. “Our investors met with Daniel Ortega after the election and he wasn’t the Danny Ortega of the 1980s, that’s for sure.”

Nicaragua is one of the key growth markets in Latin America outside Mexico for U.S.-based First American Title Insurance Company.  “The market has not slowed down as people seem to be optimistic about Ortega staying the course when it comes to investments in the country,” says Turalu Brady Murdock, vice president of First American. “From an investment opportunity there are still very good opportunities in Nicaragua in the real estate market.”

The colonial city of Granada, Nicaragua

Promises property rights

Ortega has vowed to respect private property rights, the free trade agreement with the United States (CAFTA), agreements with the International Monetary Fund and continue with the same macro-economic policies of his predecessor, Enrique Bolanos. He has also gained some praise for appointing Arturo Cruz, a well-respected economist, as his ambassador to the United States. His new pledges stand in contrast to his last government (1979-90), when private property was expropriated, inflation skyrocketed and the economy went into freefall.

“The Sandinista party has actually been one of our strongest allies in the resolution of title claims caused by the 1980 confiscations, so I do not foresee any problem with property rights during Ortega’s presidency,” says Murdock.

Ortega assumed Nicaragua’s presidency last week, vowing to forge closer relations with Venezuela while continuing the country’s close relations with the United States. “The release of pro-Chavez rhetoric, which we expect to continue through the term of the new government, is unlikely to undermine a working relationship with the US as long as democratic principles are upheld,” Gonella says. “These next six months are crucial and provide an opportunity to sweep away once and for all the ghost of the Sandinista party that has hovered over the country for the last 15 years.”

Thomas sees the next two months as key to determine whether Ortega means what he has said. Gonella expects price stability for a few months and, assuming the new administration keeps to its verbal and written commitments (in support of DR-CAFTA, private property rights, tourism, free market etc), the market could come back strongly in the second half of 2007.  

A new costa rica?

Nicaragua has seen significant growth the past few years, partly helped by inexpensive prices, a reputation as a safe country, growing tourism and increased flight connections with the United States. Some realtors dub the country “the next Costa Rica.”

“It’s close to America and one-fifth of the price of Costa Rica for the same properties,” Thomas says.

The real estate market is driven by both residential and commercial properties. On the residential side, many baby boomers from the United States are discovering Nicaragua as a less-expensive alternative to Costa Rica and Mexico, while banks and factories are helping the commercial market.

Banpro bank is constructing a new $15 million building across the street from Thomas, while a Korean investors is planning a $100 million factory to manufacture Levis. Meanwhile,  a client of Thomas plan an ethanol plant in Nicaragua, while another one is expanding a chain of coffee shops in the country. Meanwhile, local real estate group is developing a major resort, Gran Pacifica Beach & Golf Resort, with hotels, apartments and gold courses on the Pacific coast.

Laguna de Apoyo, Nicaragua

Prices don’t fall

While the asking prices from developers and owners usually increase during high season (which runs from December to May), that did not happen this time. However, neither have they fallen, according to Gonella. “The major developers are continuing to roll out their master plans with no delay,” she says. “This is a sign of confidence.”

Another reason for optimism is that tourism also is seeing stable demand. Hotels in key tourism towns such as San Juan del Sur and Granada are experiencing high occupancy levels as would be expected at this time of year and tour operators have bookings well into 2007, according to Gonella. “Real estate and tourism sectors are closely linked here,” she says. 

As more tourists visit Nicaragua, more people plan to come back to buy property, says Thomas. “Tourism is huge…and just getting bigger,” he says. This weekend, some 5,000 tourists visited San Juan del Sur thanks to four cruise ships, he points out.

Most of the real estate sales will take place in the residential sector focused primarily in key tourism destinations. “Investors will be looking for capital appreciation, but also for properties that they see as good candidates for rental income,” Gonella says.   “The strong outlook for tourism visitors for 2007 will support this trend.”

Commercial investors wait

Coldwell Banker expects less activity in the commercial sector in the early part of 2007, as many investors  will take a wait-and-see approach.  “Commercial investors tend to invest on a larger scale than the residential buyer, and for the longer term,” she says. 

In terms of geographical areas, the more “established” markets for foreign real estate investment such as Granada and San Juan del Sur are likely to be where most investor activity will continue to be focused, while newer, more speculative, cities and areas for investment such as the colonial town of Leon and Inland Mountains around Matagalpa, are likely to see less activity, at least for the first part of 2007, Gonella predicts.  “Investors are likely to feel more comfortable investing in areas where a positive growth trend is already established,” she says.

Coldwell Banker has also seen good demand for its four-day real estate tours to Nicaragua scheduled for each of the next three months. The tours typically have between six and twelve participants to better tailor the group’s requests. “The tours offer a great way to make sense of real estate opportunities here,” Gonella says.

So far, the participants are mainly from the United States, but Coldwell Banker plans to boost its marketing to Europe to take advantage of the strong Euro and British Stirling, she says.

Source: Latin Business Chronicle

By Greg Brosnan

MANAGUA (Reuters) - Cold War leader Daniel Ortega returns to power in Nicaragua on Wednesday, giving Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a new ally as he tries to steer Latin America to the left and away from the United States.

Ortega, who first took power in a 1979 revolution and then led a Marxist government for 11 years while fighting a brutal civil war against U.S.-backed Contra rebels, completed a remarkable comeback by winning a November presidential vote.

The balding 61-year-old says he is still a socialist but has dropped many of his radical economic policies from the 1980s, saying he has learned from his mistakes.

Ortega promises to respect private property and the free market this time around even as he fights extreme poverty. He preaches reconciliation and has gained the trust of the Roman Catholic Church and some former battlefield foes.  Click here for the full article.