Introduction to Panama Real Estate

If you found this page and are reading this I assume you are from one of the following countries: USA, Canada, UK, Northern Europe, or Australia. I further assume you are thinking of investing in Panama and/or living here. In this introduction I am unashamedly trying to give you a cold harsh blast of reality shock! This article is mostly written from an American perspective but a lot of it is applicable to other countries as well.

State of the Union - Your Home Country

What you see in your own country (if you are reading this page it should apply to you) is not encouraging economically. The economy basically is receding and has been getting worse for a while. Inflation has been destroying your purchasing power. Unemployment is at a dangerously high level. Health care has been diminishing in quality for the last 25 years and the costs have been rising steadily the last 10-15 years at an alarming rate. Prescription drug costs are becoming staggering and insurance coverage is dropping, by the way prescription drug costs in Panama are about one third of the USA price. Hospitals are closing all over the USA in record numbers. Taxes are at an incredibly high rate while government benefits are at an all time low. America and many other countries have wobbly economies with massive debt loads. As of November 2005 the State of Vermont has taken official steps to secede from the Union, no kidding do a Google search for Vermont secession. I understand Hawaii and Alaska are right behind.

Now let's look at rising interest rates. Imagine what those variable rate mortgages will look like in a few months! What about all those mortgages in excess of three hundred thousand dollars - what are these people going to do? Sell, no way the new buyers will never qualify because the interest rates have pushed up the payments so much. So they hang on and suffer. Okay now let's look at rising gas prices. In the cold areas home heating oil costs are going to be $300-$400 per month higher this year (2005-2006 winter) than last year and they were high last year. So now the mortgage payment is up and so is the home heating cost. Now let's add in the rising gas prices. Take a family where there are two commuters going an hour each way to work in their SUV's. This is a common scenario in many parts of the USA. These people are spending an extra $400 - $600 a month on gas combined, and this gets added into the rising mortgage rates, the rising home heating oil costs, the rising health care costs. Wait it gets worse. When the food and hard goods manufacturers bill the supermarkets, stores etc. for food and goods they are adding in a fuel surcharge which gets added into the price you pay which means your cost of living is inflating again every time you buy anything in a store. Let's look at credit cards. Lots of people are maxed out on their credit cards. If they read the terms of agreement with their credit card companies they will see that if their credit scores get adversely affected or they are late in payments the favorable low interest rates they got will go to the marginal credit interest rates (think 18%+). The real bad news is that when the credit card companies run their credit reports and see that they are maxed out on their cards that reduces their credit scores and thus the high rates will kick in. Have you noticed that America recently changed in Bankruptcy laws making it very difficult for a person to use the protection of the Bankruptcy Courts anymore, this is not a coincidence.

More and more jobs in America are moving overseas. Levi Straus no longer makes any products in the USA. Yikes!! Do the big corporations know something we don't?

More and more jobs in America are moving overseas. Levi Straus no longer makes any products in the USA. Yikes!! Do the big corporations know something we don't? Loss of jobs means that in turn more jobs will be lost since purchasing power diminishes when one is unemployed. What will happen when people can not afford the extra gas costs for their SUV's. If they go to sell their SUV's they'll find the resale value is thousands of dollars below what they owe due to declining used car prices on gas hogs. So selling is not an option for the average cash strapped family. Have you ever heard of an employer increasing wages due to rising energy costs, me neither. This winter you will see families walking around inside the house wearing down vests in America. People are already making fewer trips to the supermarket to save on gas. Carpooling is about to make a big comeback. In any event do you see rising housing prices in the USA as a likely outcome? I don't. I can find no reasons to make me think housing prices will rise in America for many years. Do you see declining housing prices as a likely outcome - I do. Hurricane season has now become a six to seven month event. Those that can move out of hurricane zones will do so and I expect they will be selling cheap and thus buying into lower price areas. Hurricane insurance costs will be skyrocketing after this season as well and the banks will take that into account decreasing the amount of mortgage a person can qualify for even further. Those in the cold zones will be suffering from those big heating bills this winter and this can only serve to drive down housing prices. The banks will take the rising energy costs into account when qualifying people making it harder to quality for the same value house one could qualify for two years ago and without the cooperation of the banks real estate prices decline. Rest assured the banks are quite scared about now.

For more information, please visit:
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Jean Bouttet is a researcher, with years of experience in finances and real estate.

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