All Forum Posts by: Henry Clark

Investing/Living in Belize:

I will probably say some things or you might interpret them as callous or elitist.  You might be right.  But my intentions, without you having rubbed shoulders with both locals, expats and business people down there is to give you a sense of what it is like there.

A.  You will leave Belize at some point.  Sick, divorced, the dream isn't true, ran out of money, disillusioned, business idea didn't work, developed a medical issue not treatable there, missed kids/grandkids, or just grew old and found out there are no retirement homes there.  You will leave Belize at some point.  Any comment I make, there always is an exception.

B.  You are just a dollar sign and you are rich.  Your not even human.  Recognize your are fresh meat and a big whale and every one wants to land you.  At first this is uncomfortable.  Then realize no matter who you are talking with down there, the Dollar is King.  You control the power and the decision.  Remember that 10 years later when you go to sale.  You don't have the power.  Don't plan to make money down there, just a temporary lifestyle change.

C.   You can build your exact dream down there, or start with "A" above and adapt and pick up someone else's dream.  Your bargain is if you can "Wait" before investing in your plan and are adaptable.  If you build, it will probably take twice as long as in the US, for many reasons.  If it takes you three years to build and you only live there 10 years, most of your extreme memories will be of building.  Thus do you Buy and renovate instead.

D.  How much does it cost to live there.  The answer is all over the board.  The key is housing and also how far off the grid do you want to live.  I could "easily" live for $500 up to $3,000 per month with housing not included; depending on my live style and housing.  Take a cleaned refrigerated chicken for $2.50; or buy a "Local" live chicken for $20.  Both USD.  Buy a fresh Pineapple for $1 or a can of SPAM for $6.

E.  What kind of social person are you.  This will dictate which town or community you live in.  

San Pedro- touristy and lively, ocean, restaurants, entertainment (stop at the "Truck Stop" for family fun; it was for sale).

Belize City- Don't stay longer than 30 minutes.

Belmopan- Capital, not much going on.

Placencia- this is about a 20 mile peninsula about 400 feet wide.  Great place, not as touristy, more of a local neighborhood.  The best Gelato outside of Italy.  A $1mm house in San Pedro will be about $700,000 here.

Dangriga- go and live off the grid.

Hopkins- rive and beachfront town.  A little grimy, but great value.

San Ignacio/Santa Elena- inland area.  Tourists, but they are spread out.  You make your friends since a lot of people live on acreages.  About 500 feet off sea level, which makes for a slightly cooler temperature and less humidity.

Corozal- haven't been.  Close to Chetumal, MX; with big box store shopping.  Beach front community.

Spanish Lookout- Mennonite community; although they are progressive, it is still a socially closed community.

Make sure you travel around and get a sense of which community will be best for you.

F.  Local versus Expat price-  You will generally always pay higher.  My local contractor bought a lot for $3,000; I would pay $30,000.  Part of this is being in the right place and knowing about the deal.

Where in Belize?

Once we decided on Belize, we had to decide where in Belize.  My wife wanted to walk out onto the beach and I wanted to live inland.

Decided we could live on the beach and I could catch a flight or bus and go to a property inland if we got one to have an interest.

Looked at the beach properties first.  We vacationed in Belize 2 times and then I did another 3 search trips by myself or with my brother, who had been "through" Belize about 20 years ago in the military.  

Most peoples concept of Belize is an Island which is Ambergris Caye and the town of San Pedro.  This is only about 1% of all of Belize.  This was our first vacation and we stayed at a BNB.  Really loved the house and the local.  Will give some background on Ambergris Caye.

Ambergris Caye/San Pedro

Areas of interest:

a.  Downtown and to the north as far as the hard surface road goes, maybe 2 miles at the time, along the Oceanside beach.  The city water, electricity and sewer follow the hard surface road.   $850,000 to $1.1mm

b.  Beyond the hard surface road to the North along the ocean side beach.   $700,000

c.  About 3 miles out and hang a hard left or West to Secret Beach.  $??????, did not really look at.

d.  Way North at the other end of the Island, mainly reached by Water, although you can get there by golf cart, part of the time on the beach.  $850,000

e.  The South of Town, to the east of airport.  Most of the Condo developments.  $250,000

f.  South of Town, to the west of airport.  Industrial and trash hauling.

g.  West side of town-  Locals and Boat dock facilities, on the bay side.   Just barely above water level.  Lower income.  Where the work force lives.

Notes of Interest:

1.  Due to the breeze from the oceanside, very few bugs and mosquitoes on that side.  More on the East or inland side.

2.  Belize really doesn't have white sandy beaches and the beaches are about 30 feet wide.

3.  Belize runs on Queens rule as far as access to the beaches and also your docks.  Anything within 60 foot of the beach, passersby's can access and walk through.  You can't block.  Even your docks can be used.

4.  Most houses even with city water have Cistern water tanks that they catch roof water off of.  They use this for drinking and washing.  Make sure your cistern is large enough to supply water for both your needs and to get you thru the "Dry" season with no rain.  If your doing AirBNB or guesthouses, you have to make sure your water usage is covered.  If they can most people go for bigger 30,000 gallons or double tanks.  Or both above and below cisterns.

5.  The further out you get, the houses start using water cisterns, sewer cisterns, backup electricity and generally are more self sufficient.

6.  The general Island height is at most 8 feet above sea level.  Due to the Coral reef which is about 1/4 mile out, no large waves even during a storm hit.  Your main damage will be from wind.

7.  Although there is "fresh water" if your on this high side, which is generally along the Ocean beach side, you can't pump much water out, or the Sea water will come into your well system.  So no many people use well systems, since they are limited.

8.  Internet, is fairly good even at the northern end of the island since they have a large tower about 8 miles north of San Pedro.

9.  There are crocodiles on the island.  If you have cats and dogs, build a fence around your yard.  If you are on the ocean side, they are just across the street on the bay side.

10.  Transportation will be by bicycle, golf cart or quad.  San Pedro is getting so full that it is pretty hard to find parking anywhere during normal hours.

Real Estate:

A.  Recommend you do 2 or 3 trips before you get serious about buying, whether a house or an investment.

B.  A normal Real Estate agent tour will be two in the morning and another place after lunch.  Be as specific as you can be and they will do a great job.

C.  On the Oceanside.  Your houses will be in this category by price.  Less than $850,000 will be a fixer upper.  $850,000 to $1.1mm will be a nice beach house.  Then you will jump to $3mm and on up.

D.  Don't plan to "make" money with a beach front house or condo.  Treat it as a lifestyle experience.

E.  Prices for Lots on the Ocean side are primarily based on the hard surface road access at the front.  Same property inside the hard surface road area $500,000 for the lot.  Same lot further north will be $350,000.  Here is the kicker.  If your building a house and it is the exact same house on both of these lots, your value or future sales price will be double on the close in lot versus the further out lot.

F.  Build or buy.  How much of an adventure do you want and what memories do you want and YOU are on the CLOCK.  If your not on site, you will probably get robbed, the project will take longer than normal or it will take longer than normal and you won't understand you caused it.  That Italian Marble you picked out had to be shipped in.  Because it took so long the contractor had to pull off your job and go do another job and will be back in 6 months.  Then you find out the Marble got here and is broken and the cycle starts over.

Do your self a favor.  Go on the Real estate tours.  Then schedule a day with Noelle from Under Da Seas adventures.  You rent a golf cart and pay him to take you around the Island all day long.  Noelle grew up here and will know just about every house and any questions you have.  Keep in mind, he is not "selling" you anything. You are paying for his time, thus he will be honest with you.  He is a good acquaintance of ours.  The best thing you will remember about the entire trip will be if you do his all day Snorkel extravaganza.  You will get to go to Caye Caulker also.  Ask him to take you fishing.  His fish is cleaned and scored; ready to be barbecued.  Since there are no tourists during Covid, he was out catching fish for his family's dinner.  Note his head scarf, neck/face scarf and long sleeve shirts.  Make sure you can take the sun or protect yourself.

2 October 2020, 06:25 PM Beautiful weather. Dry and cool. Concrete construction crew is rolling along.
Got two of the small pads poured and frames torn off.
They just poured the second two buildings footings. It will take them Mon/Tuesday and Wednesday to get the sand, vapor barrier sheet and rebar in place.

Plumber is supposed to come on site next week. They will install the storm outlet drain and the facilities to the office.

Kind of excited to see the plumber tap into the sewer and water lines. I always thought they cut the service off for everyone and then cut into the line and added an extension. But I guess they "tap" or drill into the lines while they are live and attach. Have to see how they do that without getting sprayed.

They are moving a lot faster on this project with the skidsteer to move the trench dirt, removable steel corner forms and the attachment to clean dirt out of the trench corners.

Have one more pad site where the white trailer is, to do, then we will be done with these small buildings at the entrance.

Move on to three larger building pads, 230/250/250 long 40/30/40 widths. Have to check next week on the delivery schedule and the building crew.

Timing:

- Our son graduated and started College.

- I moved to storage fulltime about 3 years ago and my wife retired a year ago from Corporate America.

- Age, I will turn 60 this year, thus between now and 70; having watched my parents, I will have the oomph to get out there.

- Financially, we're good.  We have isolated wealth for retirement, taken care of "Care" issues, identified both long term and near term investments, and have identified "excess" wealth.

- In Iowa the storage business shuts down from December through part of April.  It's also cold and can be nasty up here.  Belize is in their Dry season (temperatures stay around 70 to 92 all year, just the Dry and Rainy seasons are the changes).

-Although we will add buildings to our existing Storage locations, we are in the process of developing our last Storage location ever, which should go on line in Dec/Jan.  We have our Self Service system set up, thus maintenance of our 8 Storage locations, with an end game of about 1,600 units total, will be relatively easy, thus we will have more free time on our hands.  Basically we will have met our, When is Enough target on Storage.  That is the main reason I have posted a lot of Storage Posts, since after next year, we will move on to other adventures, and all of our experiences will become dated.

The main reason I am telling you the above, is it is a large factor of why we are looking at Belize.  If your thinking about it, make sure your ducks are in a row.  If we weren't in our spot now, we probably wouldn't do this.

Couldn't find a place to put this post, so I thought I would stick with Commercial since we do Self Storage and this is one of the benefits of being in Self Storage.

Will take you through our Belize adventure ( its an investment, but not really) over the last 2 years and get you up to date.  Will do in segments, so I might get somethings out of date sequence.  This will be the good, bad and ugly.  If you have a question, ask, but the answer will probably be just because.

Why Belize?

I have had a thought of a foreign home/investment/place to go for about 20 years.  South Korea, Australia, Maui, Brazil, Belize, 

We like Belize because:

- Official language English

- currency is pegged at $2BZD to $1USD

- Property ownership laws are English based since they were ruled by England.  Very similar to the US.

- Living Price- far lower than the Caribbean, but higher than most Central America.

- Crime- Top 10 deadliest countries in the US.  Mainly Belize City drug wars.  Other than that, being a poor country, theft is a normal occurrence.

- Land price- we did look at the Beach, but we went inland to the San Ignacio/Santa Elena/Spanish Lookout area.  Price is all over the board depending on size, close to town, roads, electric, water, sewer, type of ground, size of property, Local or Expat, etc.  All land, housing and rental prices are almost always in US dollars.  The same piece of property could be $500/acre; $1,000; $1,500; $3,000; $10,000 depending on the variables I mentioned.  This is for farm ground and not a house lot.

-Victim- if you are a victim, act like a victim, set yourself up as a victim, you will be a victim in Belize.  No matter whether it is petty theft, your groceries out of the back of your vehicle or buying a beautiful condo overlooking a white sandy beach on the ocean.  Note, Belize does not have White Sandy beaches.

- Flight time- 2 to 2:30 hours from Houston or Dallas for your connection.

- Variety- Inland farming and fishing, snorkeling, golf carts on the Beach fronts, deep sea fishing, Mayan ruins, local people.

- Weather is a perfect offset to Iowa Winters.  Belize dry season is January thru May.

- Bugs/Snakes-   I'm originally from Louisiana; and Belize has far less bugs, Mosquitoes, and snakes than I ever grew up with in a Creek bottom in the middle of a National Forest.

- I love nature and trees.  Gives me a chance to learn a whole new area of the world.

If I don't reply to you, its because I'm telling an adventure and trying to keep it in sequence.  I'll cover all of the Real Estate angles as I go through the path we took.

At the top:

Bigger pockets; Forums; Education; Then Network.

Not knowing your situation (income stream, kids, family, job security, housing cost relative to locale, etc) I'll throw out darts at the board, which most will not apply since we don't know more.

1.  Dave Ramsey budget plan.

2.  Your on a Real Estate forum.  Your $2,200/month; try to get it down to zero.  House hack or Apartment hack.  Look for a 6 to 10 unit apartment complex to live in and own.

3.  I probably misread, but your utilities are running $3k?  

    -  Communications and internet, move to Whatsapp.  Cut who ever is using excess internet service and phone, back.

    - Electricity and Gas, insulate.  Most peoples utility bills are the highest over the winter.  Insulate the pipes, windows, doors, etc.  Put more carpets on the floor.  Put heavy drapes over the windows.  Check all equipment, hot water heater- old?  turn it down.  insulated?; furnace- are ducts air tight or need insulated; HVAC;  Turn heat down at night.  Etc.  Do a youtube on insulating your house.

    - Water,  the biggest water uses.  Bath, clothes, kitchen.  Bath, everyone does quick showers.  Clothes, don't wash unless full loads.  Kitchen, don't use dishwasher- get a dish drying rack and wash from sink.

4.  Food- Eat out only once a week for fun, even for lunch.  Sorry for the lengthy food section, I love food.

   -  Shop at Asian or Spanish grocery stores.  

   - Don't wait till your out of food, actually buy ahead in Bulk.

      -  Buy 50 lb rice ($.65/lb actually in 3 lb bags on sale) and/or beans.  About 1/2 price of 1 pound.  Get some tupperware and seal up in 10 lb increments.

      - might sound gross.  Go to your local animal feed store.  Ask them for a 50 pound bag of green split peas.  This is super cheap and edible.  I love soups.

      - Buy 50lb bags of potatos, carrots, onions, etc.  This is incredibly cheaper than off the shelf.  Talk to the Produce manager and special order.  

       - Meat, I love meat.  Buy big Pork Tenderloins.  Cut a 10 pound, into several 2 pounds into freeze bags.  Hamburger- look for Arm Roasts for sale.  Have the butcher grind it up into hamburger for free, package at home for freezer in bags.  This will be the equivalent of 93% lean, for about $1.50 per pound cheaper.  Chicken- buy Leg/Thigh 10 pound packages and break up into smaller freezer bags.  Right now a lot of Beef cuts are on sale, since the restaurants can't use them.  I can buy 6 to 12 pound restaurant packages of steak for really cheap.  Tbone $7.99;  Rib eye $8.99;  Tenderloin $8.50- this is $20 at the grocery store.  Brisket for $3.00 per pound.

   -College days.  Buy a huge cheap ham.  Cut it up into smaller freezer bag 2 pound sizes.  I used to live on ham for 2 weeks, breakfast/lunch/dinner.  With eggs, sandwiches, soups, chili, pasta, you name it.

-  Eggs are really cheap right now.

-  Asian stores, buy large frozen resealable bags of Gyoza, mondu or pot stickers.  Make a soup of vegetables, carrots, cabbage, onion, green onions, bones from above and cook for a while.  The last 5 to 10 minutes turn the heat way down and put the frozen Gyoza in.  Don't stir to much or they will break.  This makes the best and easiest soup in the world.

Key is to set the budget so you know where your biggest costs are.  For example, I talked about food above. But if it is only 5% of your total spending, your wasting your time on it.

29 September 2020, 03:03 PMGreat weather so far, plus next 14 days. Going through a drought which is good for building. Luckily temperatures are going down and the crops are finishing for the season.

Thus far we have the footings for the Office done. We will not pour the pad on top of it until the Plumber digs his drains and waterline up through the floor. Just marked out all the sinks, commodes, shower, drains, hot water heater with flags. This will be the first building we put up, so the Electrician, plumber, security, etc can start putting their main switches and boxes in the office.

The next two small buildings they have poured the footings and now have: a. placed rock grit on the ground, b. put plastic moisture barrier down, c. laid rebar across. If you can tell the rebar is a green color. They have switched to using Fiber glass rebar versus metal. Its stronger than steel and doesn't rust which can cause problems with the concrete bonding to the metal. Costs a little more, but easier to handle, stronger and doesn't rust. These are ready to pour the pad, but all of the concrete plants and trucks are backed up till Wednesday.

In the mean time they are trenching the next two pads. I have already showed you the machine they use to dig the trenches. After they are done trenching they have to dig the loose dirt out at the corners. Since last week, they have a machine shop and just bought a skidsteer; over the weekend they made an attachment on the skidsteer so they can drag it on the bottom and clean out the loose dirt at the corners. This saves a lot of time since the dirt is about 40 inches down in a narrow trench. Hard to get it out with a shovel.

@James Walker

Check this product out.  "Universal Storage Container".  

Is your ground already hard surfaced?  

Year 1 tax writeoff.

Can add as you need or are successful.

@James Walker

Not to squash a dream, but maybe re-direct it.  Within a mile of you, you have three of the largest indoor storage companies with brand new, great looking facilities.  Within the next mile you have another 3 large nationals.

I would call them all and tell them your redoing your house in two months and ask how far ahead you need to reserve a 10 x 15 unit and what the cost is.  If they are all full then maybe pursue your idea.  If they have units always available, then I would pass.  You could also do a walk tour through the facilities any ways to get a feel for the competition.

The good thing, if as everyone has noted to you, check zoning; you are closer to the population than all of them.  Thus it becomes a "location" question, is yours visible and accessible.

These National companies are playing the Average of numbers game.  One location is bad they have others to average out.  You will only have one location.  

SEO power.  They will always have better SEO power than you.  Even on Sparefoot they will always outrank you.

If you do this, ask for a Construction loan with interest only.  Then a rent up phase interest only. Example 18 months or until 65% occupancy.  The problem with in door storage in multi level buildings, is you generally have to build it all at once and it takes longer to get to break even.  I build outdoor access.  When we need more buildings, we build more.  Or you need extra cash sitting on the sidelines to help if your rent up phase takes longer, or it you get into a Price war with deeper pocket companies.

a.  Go for it.

b.  Sell to one of the nationals.

c.  Sell and if you want to do storage, go further out and do a B/C/D location.

d.  Like everyone said, check the zoning.  Be careful on setbacks and Storm pond requirements.  This will reduce your footprint and units.  .5 acres is a really small footprint.  Your build out cost will be less competitive for the elevator systems, fire sprinklers, exterior parking spots- unless you do drive through load zones, and exterior wall surface.

e.  You might go a different way and consider a Car dominium.

f.  Do contractor garages or incubators.  Look up Kansas City contractor garages for a model.

Great area.  Best of luck.