Panama Real Estate Investment

A recent article in NaturalNews listed several ways to avoid becoming a victim of a real estate scam in Central and South America. The author created a list based primarily on experiences purchasing land in Ecuador and Panama. Here are a few of the scams to look out for:

Resort Real Estate Broker Scam

In this scam the author describes a situation where you see a notice advertising property at the front desk of a resort or hotel. The real estate broker at the resort then tells you the price for property, which could potentially be increased by as much as $100,000 in excess of the price the property owner is actually asking. The author recommends hiring a good translator to insure that the property broker is not asking for an exorbitant fee.

After The Fact Zoning Changes
In this situation the property that you have bought from a developer was initially shown to be part of a 50 unit community, yet as time progresses the developer continues to subdivide the parcels of land surrounding yours. In this case you may have thought that the land adjacent to your property would remain untarnished, yet in reality it has become densely developed. To avoid this situation the author suggests signing an agreement with your developer to assure this doesn’t happen, and to make sure that you are well acquainted with any local zoning laws, or lack thereof.

Inaccurate Property Surveys
The author recommends either surveying any land you are considering purchasing yourself, or contracting your own surveyors to do it for you. It is not uncommon for land surveyors to be bribed by sellers to overestimate the size of a plot of land, and as a result buyers frequently end up with a parcel that is significantly smaller than the plot they paid for.

Hidden Liens
Titles can be extremely complicated in areas of South and Central America, and there have been situations where real estate brokers sell land that someone else already has a lien on. It can often be difficult for foreign investors to make sense of these laws, so the author recommends hiring a good bilingual lawyer to verify that the property being sold is legitimate. He also advises never to use lawyers hired by the real estate brokers themselves, as they are often part of the scam.

Those are the four major scams the article discusses. While it is impossible to completely avoid any risk of being a victim of a scam, taking steps such as hiring your own translators, lawyers and land surveyor’s can go a long way.

Source:

How To Avoid Real Estate Property Scams In Ecuador and Panama (NaturalNews.com)