| An Investor's Success Story |
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| Written by eBook sales and consulting services | |
| Monday, June 25 2007 | |
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You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you this story myself, so I've posted Bobby's version. It will set the stage for my consulting services and serve as proof that not everything in Panama is what it seems. Riding the Happy Camel to Paradise: One American's Trot through Panama Investments I'm an adventurous sort of guy, or at least like to remember myself that way. I grew up in Arizona and as a kid I often frequented the Mexican town of Puerto Peñasco on the Gulf of California. Back then it was a remote, dusty fishing village where I could sleep alone on the beach with no worry of kidnapping or molestation. During the day I'd hang out with a gang of Mexican kids playing king of the mountain on old anchored fishing boats bobbing in the oil slick water. I can still taste those handmade corn tortillas and I'm almost certain Roberto Delgado was joking when he told me the roasted bird was sea gull. I loved Mexico. In later years I worked for a rather creative engineering firm in Texas that sent me on a variety of missions into Venezuela, few of which I was actually qualified to fulfill. But somehow in the hot mañana mugginess of eastern Venezuela, my lack of technical expertise was eclipsed by my ability to make friends among client engineers. They were more than happy to minimize my exposure to real work and maximize my introduction to Cerveza Polar. Urban adventures in Caracas were seasoned with salsa music and open-air Argentine charcoal grill restaurants. All of my youthful Latin experience coagulated into a warm fuzzy desire to actually go live down there someday; Mexico, Venezuela, anywhere south of the USA. I've heard it said if you want to make God laugh, make plans. Instead of going to Latin America, I ended up in Kuwait where I have lived over 8 years. Having a wife from Iran coupled with years abroad, I have made an observation that seems almost universally true at least among my acquaintances in the Middle East. Once you've lived abroad for an extended period, there is a switch deep inside somewhere that gets flipped. Suddenly you discover that you are an expat and when that happens you find you have much more in common with other expats than you do with the folks back home - regardless of where home is. During my first six years in Kuwait I only returned to the US once. I love my country but somehow it just isn't the same country I grew up in and I don't really want to live there anymore. But where can I live? I began sending my fingers out on daily electronic scavenger hunts for potential places we could eventually settle. Essentially, I wanted someplace where we wouldn't be kidnapped and held for ransom. If day-to-day corruption was minimal that would be a plus and I didn't want the president to be one of Fidel Castro's drinking buddies. Everywhere I searched Panama came up, often in comparison to Costa Rica which seemed to have lost some favor with folks for a variety of reasons. Well! I'm no fool; all those folks must know a thing or two so Panama wins! Somewhere along the way I bumped into ExpatExchange.com. It seemed more of a gathering place for folks with common interests in one particular country or another. I kicked over a few rocks there, got bored and caught an electron heading west. When my electron stopped I came upon another site called EscapeArtist.com. This place is much more glitzy and has some very engaging advertisements. I found myself digging pretty deep at EscapeArtist.com. After I climbed all the trees and played on all the beaches I caught the Google Express and that's when I found InternationalLiving.com! Remember when they warned you in school that if you smoked that joint the next thing you know, you'd would be shooting up heroin? It may be a stretch, but the InternationalLiving.com website is that marijuana joint. You start smoking the thing and clicking on links like pepperoni pizzas. Somewhere on that site you will find your weakness. Mine was "The Panama Insider". That's a subscription email put together by, I think, ex-CIA agents that are now on the ground in Panama. For a mere $149 you can be among a small group of elite folks privy to Panama secrets sent to your inbox like greased lightening; just the sort of heads up that would let you act while the rest of the world stood there with their mouths wide open. Now the pusher had me. He knew my address and my weakness. Suddenly I got offers for stuff I never dreamed I might be interested in. E-mail messages in all sorts of international flavors started flooding in several times a day. I would reach for the Delete button but when I raised that index finger over the left mouse key to click I started itching so bad I just couldn't do it. Man, I was hooked. It took awhile, but then the heroin came - a 3-day event called the "Live and Prosper in Panama" seminar. With a generous discount because of my intimate relationship with "The Panama Insider" I arranged for my wife and me to attend the 3-day seminar in Panama for only $1890. Hey! This was the high I knew I had been aching for and I couldn't wait to head for Panama, only weeks away. While I waited for time to crawl by I continued to play on the Web instead of help with dishes. One day I somehow stumbled onto a site called ThePanamaReport.com. This place wasn't so glitzy but it had some pretty amusing articles with titles like Maids in Panama, or Pool Crashers: A Panama Pastime and another titled Grooming in Panama. When I started reading these various articles I found a refreshingly irreverent tone set by a guy named Matt; someone I suspected wore flip flops and didn't tuck his shirt in. This guy Matt was a fun read and his articles on real estate, while entertaining, also rang with the authority of someone with his ear to the ground. When you start bopping about the web peeking at Panama real estate sites you get this overwhelming urgency to run down there and buy something . . . anything! Just buy something because it's all getting bought up and you are missing out. Have you ever been to an auction? I remember a computer parts auction in Texas years ago. Folks got caught in this feeding frenzy of bidding that surely must be the subject of psychology studies somewhere. They ended up paying more for those auction parts than they would have at a department store. "That's how Panama real estate strikes me, with all of those real estate sites out there chumming the water with the blood of Baby Boomers." This guy Matt at ThePanamaReport.com seemed to cut through the horse pucky and actually shine lights where others didn't. You get this sense that, hey, maybe real estate in and of itself isn't so great everywhere in Panama; there are still deals but if you are considering Panama consider it for reasons other than just cheap real estate. Hmmm . . . that actually made sense. Off to the right side of Matt's website, regardless of what page you've clicked into, was an offer of his report for $99 called "The Panama Real Estate Report". AHHhhh . . . so he does sell something, I thought. But then when you click on the ad you find all these glowing reviews by pretty respectable folks. I thought, what the hey, it might be good to have another benchmark to look at other than International Living's "Live and Prosper in Panama" event. So I bit. "The Panama Real Estate Report" is an exceptionally well written report about every aspect of Panama I saw being touted on the various Panama real estate websites. However, it washes the rose color off your glasses and paints a picture that is much more believable. I was so impressed that I emailed Matt and offered a kudo or two for his work. I confessed to my Panama addiction and that I planned to snort a few lines of seminar in Panama City for 3 days; but before I attended the seminar I hoped my wife and I could meet with him for a reality check. I admitted that we were coming to Panama with no idea of what we really wanted, except to sniff around and get a feel for opportunities. Matt suggested an informal consulting session held over dinner; during which he could give us some back and forth guidance on where he sees good investments and where he sees bad ones, as well as potential that hasn't yet surfaced in the public eye. That sounded good and we agreed. At last our adventure to Panama began. We endured about 36 hours of flight time and duty free danger zones from Kuwait to Amsterdam to Houston to Panama. When at long last we arrived in Panama I felt like the last chapter of "What's the Use". My wife Fariba and I feathered a nest at the hotel, arranged to meet Matt over dinner the next evening, and crashed like two bags of frijoles. The following early evening, we limped down to the lobby just in time to see Matt pull up. Sure enough he did not dress the part of a carnivorous real estate consultant. His demeanor was pretty laid back and straight forward. Over dinner later our fingers followed a road map excursion that outlined the good, the bad and the ugly of Panama. No hype, just clean facts seasoned with opinion. As ideas began to solidify into potential action, Matt suggested Fariba and I rent a car and he would give us some contacts at various locations - no charge. I was still on baby food however and not ready for a hunk of steak like that. What about a day rate to take us on a personal tour? I asked. We agreed on a price, time and agenda for a day trip after the "Live and Prosper in Panama" seminar. The "Live and Prosper in Panama" seminar kicked off with a well orchestrated assembly of attorneys, title and insurance companies, investment strategists and other presenters as well as a host of real estate developers. All in all, the seminar was well constructed for the target audience - Baby Boomers who are ready to cash in on years of good financial planning; a position I cannot honestly claim to be in. The assembly of presenters had all been vetted for their credibility and almost all had a service or product to sell. I got the feeling that I would probably pay an exorbitant price for their wares but would be able to depend on final delivery. One thing really did annoy me though. Sometimes my wife cons me into going to the movies and we pay a good price to get in. We buy ho-hum snacks that cost about the same as a weeks worth of groceries. Then when we settle into our seats we endure 20 minutes of advertisements which really chaps my nalgas. I do not appreciate paying for advertisement. That's my complaint with the "Live and Prosper in Panama" seminar. We paid almost two grand to attend the event. There were some informative nuggets presented but the whole subliminal point seemed designed to land you safely into the arms of an approved (generously compensating?) developer. Nothing of substance was offered in the area of resale properties. I would much prefer to have had all the informative presentations up front with developer presentations offered in like groups at the end - beach projects, mountain projects, city projects. Let me choose what ads I watch if I want to watch them at all. My level of trust dropped in direct proportion to a rise in my suspicion that I was a lamb being led to a real estate slaughter. The day after the seminar ended Matt pulled up in his late model 4X4 ready to venture into the hinterlands of Panama. We wanted to poke around El Valle and see what possibilities were there in resale property. The drive was scenic and the town was rustic. In fact it was way too rustic for a lady from Tehran, a city of 12 million. After seeing El Valle (in spite of Matt's intriguing analysis which my logic receptor agreed with) Fariba made it clear that if I moved her there she would be staring at light bulbs and drooling all over herself within six months. While I may have been content in El Valle, If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy! Well, Hasta la vista El Valle then. We headed toward Coronado, a beach community about an hour out of Panama City. Coronado, while not a city, did have a look and feel more in line with Fariba's perception of civilization; she could handle Coronado she announced. Prices in Coronado started about $280,000 and the place was well established. It was nice but Matt pointed out that there was a cost associated with that level of development and it wasn't his ideal investment location. Matt offered a suggestion. If we liked Coronado why not take a look at Gorgona, the community next door to Coronado. Gorgona, he explained, is relatively undiscovered in the sense that there is almost no finished product available there; it is a buyers market. There was a project in Gorgona Matt felt matched some of what we had liked in Coronado but pricing was far less - investments started at $145,000. Matt had watched prices in this particular development steadily rise over the past few months. He laid out reasons why he thought the property was poised to escalate in value and it all made sense. He also pointed out some potential negatives with the resort. That balanced view is what set Matt apart from other Panama real estate resources that only highlight the sales fluff. In the ruthlessly competitive world of Panama real estate that is a rare attribute to find. At the end of the day Fariba and I felt that we had been on a boat ride with a life guard instead of swimming in what had seemed to be shark infested waters. We chewed over everything we had experienced; the seminar, developer's sales pitches, Matt's field trip and discussions we had with seminar folks still using the hotel as a base for their motley real estate forays. When the dust settled we decided to dip our toe into the shallow end of the Panama pool. We invested in one of the options we saw on our excursion with Matt. Because his service is consulting and not real estate sales, he works for you; you are the client. Because he is not in bed with developers he will listen to your range of interests and craft an agenda accordingly. That includes driving through established areas actually exploring "For Sale by Owner" signs on existing properties; not just developments that have agreed to slip him "something" under the table. If it is a development you are interested in, he can show you that as well but you won't feel you are being herded in that direction. We found his information to be objective and truthful so we recommended Matt to others we met at the seminar. Several of them plan to use him as well. Our story doesn't yet have a happy ending but feels right so far. Shortly after tying up the property, Fariba and I jumped back on our Happy Camel and rode it all the way to Kuwait. From here we will continue to navigate toward eventual Panamanian paradise and when we hit any hiccups we will call on Matt to guide us through it all. So far he seems to offer the least pain and most gain of all the myriad of Panama resources out there. About the Author: Bobby Hitt has spent the last decade as a business process improvement consultant and Quality professional in the Middle East and India. From his home in Kuwait he and his wife Fariba travel often around the region and Europe and recently spent the several days in Panama as described in his article. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, August 19 2007 ) |
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