Commercial Property Investment Overseas
I’ve been asked by quite a few people about the potential for investment in commercial property investment overseas.
The big worry expressed by most of those contacting me is the poor reputation overseas property has gained over the past number of years, primarily due to media highlighted investments that have gone wrong in areas like Bulgaria, Morocco, Spain, Florida, Cape Verde and particularly ongoing issues with French Leaseback Property.
If you’ve read any of my articles in the past you’ll have noticed that I have never been an advocate of purchasing ‘leisure’ or ‘holiday’ property for investment purposes, long before any of these areas started to throw up unwanted issues. Neither have I ever been a huge fan of purchasing French Leaseback or off-plan property for investment purposes. I very much like investment property to have been there for some time so that it is possible to see its financial and legal history. From that point of view I am not particularly surprised at the devastation that has been caused to property investors across Ireland and the UK because I’ve always voiced the opinion that far too many were investing in properties and areas that didn’t stack up financially and were never appropriate for investment purposes – most markets had too much hype and too little substance.
In any case, overseas property has, in my opinion, wrongly been given a very poor reputation. The Irish and UK property markets have performed no better than most overseas property markets you could mention (see Knight Frank report below if you doubt this – it is residential, but commercial follows much the same trend). In fact they have performed markedly worse than most. Ireland, in particular, has been an absolute disaster for investors – a fact the mainstream media is very keen to avoid, otherwise they’d have nothing to put in their advertorial property sections. As long as you see idiocy like this in the Irish market, things are unlikely to improve much.
Commercial Property Investment Overseas
Commercial Property Investment Overseas has, in the main, been very successful for investors that took the time and effort to research markets that were likely to perform considering the investment environment in which they were operating.
This explains why a lot of investors took their money to countries with strong and stable reputations like Germany, Sweden and the North Eastern US (Boston, New York, Washington, etc.). Being in the industry I know a fair amount of investors in all these areas and, in the main, they are very happy with how their portfolios have performed over the past number of years and how they are currently performing.
It suits local media to beat Commercial Property Investment Overseas with a big stick because it is an area that is never likely to provide a large supply of advertising. Local property, on the other hand, still holds out the prospect of a return to the halcyon days when property sections were larger than the newspapers that carried them. When reading property sections you should keep in mind that everything in them has a lot to do with advertising and nothing much to do with informing readers.
If you are looking for some real advice on profitably engaging with commercial property investment overseas then please do drop me a line on info@diarmaidcondon.com and I’ll be happy to guide you in any way I can.
