Most complete international real estate sources on the internet??

Question

Dear Bigger Pockets community,

what are the best (most complete) sources on the internet for international real estate markets trends, news and analysis/breakdowns for countries/regions from around the world? Residential market sources only.

Your help means the world to me.

Mike Lambert · Answer

@Roe Miller

@Scott Morris

@Benjamin A Ersing

I didn't mention the Global Property Guide website because I think the information there is, in most cases, not very useful at best and misleading at worst. Let me explain.

Like everywhere else, people will want to invest overseas for capital gains and/or cash flow or a combination of both. A collateral advantage of international investing is that it provides diversification to your portfolio.

If you want to get capital gains, you'd invest in places like London, Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore or Sydney but you'll get negative cash flow. I don't think that many people on BiggerPockets have the money or the willingness to do that and, if they do, they have access to much better resources than the Global Property Guide website.

If you want to get great cash flow and capital gains, you'd invest in places that are popular with tourists and where properties are relatively cheap and you'd rent them as holiday rentals. This is what I do and I assume that's what most readers on BiggerPockets would be interested in.

I've been very actively investing in Mexico over the last few years and I came across a recent analysis of the country's market on the Global Property Guide website that looks interesting at first glance but turned out to be very superficial and useless to me. Indeed, the market in Mexico, as in many "similar" countries is divided in two parts, that I'll call the domestic and the international market. The international market is made up of western standard properties and are bought by the Mexican's wealthy and foreigners. These properties are obviously more expensive and trade in US$. The overall majority of the market is for the local population and trade in mexican pesos (MXN). This is the most fundamental characteristic of the market and it's not even discussed in the report.

The report focuses on the domestic market even though the money is made on the international market. Then, the guide mentions that you can earn a yield of between 3.4% and 6.4% in Mexico City and it details this by area. Good luck if as a foreigner, you'd want to invest in the local market but assuming that you could do that easily, why would you take all the risks to invest in a foreign country to get a lower yield than the one you could get at home?

I invest in Playa del Carmen and Puerto Vallarta because I can get several times that yield in the international market. While the report talks at length about the different areas of Mexico City where you can get these subpar yields, there is only one paragraph that talks about the international market, titled "Strong demand from foreign buyers". Puerto Vallarta is barely mentioned in the report while Playa del Carmen deserved a few lines: "In Playa del Carmen, a coastal resort town along the Yucatán Peninsula’s Riviera Maya, a three-bedroom apartment is priced at US$ 460,000. In Playacar, a gated community of resort developments in Playa del Carmen, a four-bedroom luxury home lists for US$1,500,000." These are definitely not the properties I'd buy. What makes the most money in Playa del Carmen are the 1- and 2-bedroom pre-construction condos that are well located and sell for between US$100,000 and 250,000!

Also, the report talks about the mortgage market and the sky-high interest rates. That's the mortgage market exclusively for locals for a loan in MXN to buy a property in MXN. The interest rates for foreigners to lend in US$ to buy a property in US$ are much lower.

Mexico is just an example but it shows you how the information can be of little use and misleading. I remember seeing a table that compares the rental yields of various cities around the world on the Global Property Guide website. Amman, Jordan's capital, was top of the list. That's not the kind of places I'd invest in. Again, that table completely ignored the most lucrative market, the international market and specifically the vacation rental market.

I have to apologize that my initial response to this post, just mentioning that I hadn't come across a useful complete resource, wasn't very helpful because I didn't provide a solution. So, hopefully, this much more in-depth reply makes up for that.

The solution takes work. You need to do your own research. If, like I do, you invest in the short term rental market, you're interested in tourism statistics like arrival numbers, hotel occupancy rates, ... You can generally find such statistics on the website of the country's ministry of tourism. There is also one website in which you can find statistics about pretty much everything: statista.com. You can also do your own analysis. Think about where most people spend their holidays and look at the prices of properties for sale on the internet and look at what that kind of properties rents for on short-term rental sites like Airbnb.

Hope this helps and feel free to message me if you want to discuss further.

Mike Lambert · Answer

@Roe Miller

We’re on BiggerPockets here. Are you really afraid of Airbnb guests trashing your property? It can happen but it’s very rare and you’re very well remunerated for the risk you take. And your rentrer can trash your property even when you rent long term. You can get run over by a car in the street so are you staying in bed al day? Pardon my irony but living your life out of great is never the best strategy.

The strategy you mention (and capital gains) in general is pure speculation as the gains might never come and you could even end up with a loss. You’d need to ride the economic/property cycle, which can be very long so you’d end up with very few properties over time, assuming that you get it right. Not too mention that the probability that you identify the bottom of the top of the market right is very low and the probability of identifying both is even lower.

Don’t get me wrong, I love capital gains and i is invest where I can get both serious rental income and potential capital gains. However, I see the potential capital gains as the icing on the cake.

Mike Lambert · Answer

@Benjamin A Ersing

You're very welcome as always.

Something I didn't mention is that nothing replaces traveling on the ground and getting the information firsthand from contacts that are in the business. When you deal with investor money like me, it is your duty to get the best information available. Of course, this doesn't work for everyone because it's costly and you have to find the time to travel.

The cost aspect shouldn't be too disturbing as the cost of traveling is much smaller than the cost of making a wrong investment decision. While my investors benefit from my travel without incurring the cost of traveling themselves, I'm sharing as much information as possible here so that pretty much anyone can benefit without having to pay for travel costs just to uncover that a location you were interested in isn't actually a good one.

The timing aspect is a little annoying. For example, I can't progress further on my Puerto Vallarta project until I travel there, which I couldn't do before the second part of March. I'm far from complaining though. Anybody should expect that investing overseas happens less quickly than at home and nobody will complain when they get the rewards.

Benjamin A Ersing · Answer

@Mike Lambert thanks for the perspective and for clarifying. Super insightful and helpful as always.

Mike Lambert · Answer

@Roe Miller

You're welcome.

Certain parts of Europe are awesome for short-term rentals but beware the regulations.

Knight Frank, Savills, CBRE, PWC or Deloitte are great for commercial real estate. Are you looking for something like that?

The concept of multifamily doesn't exist like in North America and neither does the refinancing. Apartments are generally either owned by landlords individually or they are part of big complexes that belong to REIT-like structures.

Also, if you want to rent a place long term, don't forget that European countries are social democracies (some Americans would say socialist countries) so the laws are even more in favour of the tenants that they are in the most tenant friendly US states and Canadian provinces. Also, everything is much more bureaucratic. It's already not easy for locals so think how it would be for a foreigner.

To me, this is the most essential information that you don't find in the Global Property Guide website, as far as I know.

Trying to apply North American strategies overseas doesn't work most of the time. If you want to be successful, you have to do what works in the places you want to invest in.

Personally, I have no plans to do anything other than short-term rentals in Europe.

The real estate investment "culture" is something typical of Anglo-saxon countries. I'm not even sure you can include the UK but it certainly covers North America, Australia and New Zealand. In developing countries, only the wealthy has the means to invest in real estate. As a result, (free) (online) resources in the rest of the world are hard to come by. The solution is therefore to do your own research, which includes on-the-ground research.

If you find something though, don't hesitate to let us know. I've given up looking and, in any case, I've now developed my own personal network whereby I don't really need it.

Scott Morris · Answer

globalpropertyguide.com may be worth looking at

Melanie McDaniel · Answer

@Roe Miller I wish I knew, so following! I met a group at Joe Fairless’s event last weekend, BEC20, who does some international stuff, small, but cool concept. LifeAfar if you want to Google them. Definitely not what you are asking for, but they are a good start.

Roe Miller · Answer

I do not know, but in my mind all the renting out for cash flow purposes seems great in theory, but unwise in reality. Cash flow of course is a great thing, but the problems I see are as follows

1) It only takes one idiot to destroy your property and the internet is full of countless horror stories even if the property  was insured and the tenants had excellent recommendations, but in the end, Airbnb and the insurance do not pay up and a fortune is lost

2) When it comes to Airbnb, no matter what anyone else claims, I have heard tons of times from property owners that they have had to wait for the guest all day and sometimes late into the night even if and when a time was agreed on or even worse, no time was mentioned at all. In addition, there is tons of work involved when renting out an apartment via Airbnb.

For all these reasons, my mindset is as follows. Would it not be much wiser to avoid all the headaches mentioned above by buying a property at a perfect time (as was the case here in Europe around 2015), wait for it to increase in value as for example by now that same apartment has doubled in value since 2015 and sell it while looking for exceptional deals and use that profit from selling the apartment for buying a second apartment and keep doing the same.

In other words, just going for capital gains and eliminating all the potential disasters and unnecessary work mentioned above.

What are your thoughts?

Roe Miller · Answer

Thank you. I also came across the Global Property Guide early on as well and indeed it is the best free source I found. The only downside being that the reports in many cases are from 2018/2019 and therefore not current. Also, one source can never cover it all.

However, other than that, the Global Property Guide is perfect and goes into the most essentials facts and right to the point. I mean in contrast to the major real estate report from KNIGHT FRANK, SAVILLS,CBRE, PWC, DELOITE etc. that can be useful, but consists of 50 pages that cause you to get lost because of information overload as they give you too much of what you do not need. Very inefficient. Same with typing in countless of searches on google (Trust me I have done that)

Therefore, I was hoping for more results like the Global Property Guide. What other free sources are out there on the internet that are similar/comparable?

Thanks so much for your ideas and suggestions.

PS: I am particular interested in the European market.

Benjamin A Ersing · Answer

The World Bank and the IFC also have some data on local market housing conditions, but they're fairly high-level. Worth a look though.

Feel free to DM me if you want to discuss.

Most complete international real estate sources on the internet??

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