Why Belize is a solid investment bet

Hello and welcome to the Someplace Else blog.

Someplace Else has been selling in Belize since 2004 and our resorts and offplan developments have been hugely popular with clients, with the Belize Reserve easily being our most popular project to date. The purpose of this blog entry to remind Irish clients why we feel Belize still has enormous untapped investment potential.

Belize, formerly known as British Honduras, was the UK's last colony on the American mainland, gaining independence in 1981. Nestled between Mexico and Guatemala on the Caribbean coast, it is an adventurer's paradise and as far as Europeans are concerned, it is possibly Central America’s best-kept secret.

The coastline comprises many salt and freshwater lagoons, palm-fringed white sandy beaches and idyllic small islands, all surrounded and immersed in the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean. Rare and exotic species abound in Belize's fertile ecosystems; birds, mammals, fish - they all thrive in this pristine environment. And they will continue to thrive, as almost 42% of Belize's land is under protected status. Among some of these guarded treasures is the world’s only jaguar reserve (Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary), the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, the Community Baboon Sanctuary and dozens of ancient Maya sites.

The sub-tropical climate in Belize is like a doctor's prescription: lots of sunshine and fresh air - no smog and no stress. The average annual temperature is 26° C. It is a democratic, stable, English speaking country, with a small population of 291,800, a booming tourist industry, good standard of heath care and a legal system based on British common law. Foreign tourism is booming (25% increase in just four years) and Belize is receiving huge interest from both foreign and local investors, with the real estate market rocketing over the past 12 to 18 months and annual capital appreciation upwards of 20% per year.

If you'd like to learn more about Belize, please feel free to email me or visit our website.

Kind Regards

Colin Murphy
Director
Someplace Else Ireland Ltd

Global Credit Crunch & Property Markets

Hello and welcome to the Someplace Else Ireland blog.

Let’s start this post with the elephant in the corner that a lot of estate agents will try to avoid discussing with you – the global credit crunch. Started by the subprime lending mess in the USA, it’s now causing great concern among investors and financial institutions all over the world.

It will take time to untangle this complicated financial mess and discover the extent of the damage that’s been done to property markets, but we can forecast that outside the USA, it will probably have the biggest impact on the European property markets that have expanded quickest using an abundance of cheap credit – i.e. Ireland, Spain and the UK. Anybody trying to lure investors into these property markets in 2008 is going to have a very tough time doing so as I simply can't see any point investing in them. It will take years for these markets to recover, and those suffering most will be young first time buyers facing negative equity and increasingly difficult mortgage payments.

With the worlds biggest and most developed economies (USA, Japan, UK, France) all performing woefully, isn’t it ironic that we are now relying on the new emerging market consumer giants of China, Brazil, Russia, India and the Central & Eastern European countries to drive the global economy in 2008 and beyond? The concept of what is risky and what isn’t has completely been turned on its head – investment experts across all financial categories now consider emerging markets to be safe havens!

What is certain is that investors will have access to less credit in 2008 than they had in 2004-2007. This certainly won’t stop them investing, although it will probably mean that they invest a little bit less in total. Overall however, we will see large increases in the amount of capital flowing into emerging property markets and the opposite in the troubled Western European and US markets.

So, how are the markets Someplace Else promotes likely to fare next year? Argentina is on a roll at the moment, with consumer confidence reaching new highs and its robust recovery set to continue with the election of Cristina Kirchner last October. 2007 was a great year for Someplace Else’s Belize operation, with our Bella Maya resort winning Gold at the Homes Overseas Awards. Following unprecedented sales of land plots and cabanas, construction is also due to begin shortly on our 1000-acre ecological resort – The Belize Reserve.

Romania is going to be huge in 2008, and the investment activity in the last six months has been simply unbelievable. Outside of Bucharest, the secondary cities of Cluj, Brasov and Iasi will all be the lucky recipients of larges amounts of foreign capital. What about Berlin? In my opinion (with the possible exception of Buenos Aires), this is the most undervalued capital city in the world. It definitely falls into the long-term investment category, but the capital city of the world’s third biggest economy will not always contain property that is five times cheaper than London, Paris and Dublin.

Kind Regards

Colin Murphy

Director

Someplace Else Ireland Ltd