Identifying Your Strengths - International Edition

I was lucky enough to be born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area - known to many of you as one of the most insane housing markets in the world and perennial vacation hot spot for domestic and international travelers. Everyone loves the idea of California and lots of people want to live here. 

After college the idea of overpaying for a place in the city lost its appeal and I currently live in Burlingame. My apartment is 20 minutes from SF in no traffic but theres still not a single house on the market in my city for under 1 Million dollars. 

I also happen to work in a profession that doesn't offer much in the way of compensation - my 70k-ish a year paycheck doesn't go very far in the Bay Area and most of the people I know in my industry live paycheck to paycheck. This doesn't sound like the promising start to making moves in real estate does it? Well, as @brandonturner would say there's always a way.

My advice to you: be bold

I do not personally have any money. None. But in the fall of 2016 I started asking myself: What do I have? What are my strengths? Where do my personal skills make up for my lack of financial resources?

The List: I am very well traveled, I speak spanish, I've spent huge chunks of my life in Latin America, I am a truly tenacious personality and I am really independent. My career (journalist) has given me the ability to strike up conversations with strangers with complete openness and a total lack of fear. 

To me, the natural conclusion was that I should focus on buying initial property in Latin America and after a while I whittled down my list to the places I was personally most interested in vetting: Mexico and Costa Rica. I reached this decision in November of 2016 and with the support of my fiancé (who does make good money) booked a flight to Costa Rica in January of 2017. 

(One of the many dirt roads I wandered down...)

I had a rough itinerary and a rental car and spent 7 days driving a lot. I did the international version of driving for dollars, stumbling down every dirt road that looked promising, knocking on doors of houses that were obviously owned by foreigners about how they came to own their property and how long they had owned it. I met people from Canada, Great Britain, Israel, Italy, Argentina, Costa Rica, Colombia and a few Americans but the majority of people we Canadian. I took notes and pictures and slept very little. 

I met up with three real estate agents in various regions and toured lots of houses. I probably walked through 20 properties or more not counting the ones with For Sale signs whose fences I jumped to peak through windows. (I operate under the assumption I can talk my way out of things.) And by the end of 7 days I found several houses I loved (but that didn't make sense as rental properties) and a few places that were really really promising. 

(A house that didn't work for what I was looking for, but look at that ceiling!)

The initial offer process was slow and painful (American style mortgages essentially do not exist in Costa Rica) but we are currently in escrow on a condo in a very touristed area for 67k. And we should close in the next 10 days! If we successfully close I will write a follow up post on issues with financing in Costa Rica and how we made our deal work.