REAL ESTATE TREND ALERT
(FOR MEMBERS ONLY)
Friday August 19, 2022
If you missed it yesterday, your latest issue of Real Estate Trend Alert is now available.
As I write, I’m sitting at my kitchen table at my rented home here in Fota Island Resort on Ireland’s southern coast.
Grey clouds and rain have broken a rare spell of hot weather. But no matter, I’m preparing to move on…
This evening, my wife and I will be packing up our clothes and essentials in preparation for a mammoth scouting trip that will take us all the way from Ireland to Montenegro to Panama, and more places besides. We’re so used to this packing routine by now that it takes us no time at all.
I’ve been doing this for almost two decades. Going where I please and working from anywhere I can find a flat surface and a WiFi connection.
This lifestyle was once unusual. An aberration. It would pique the curiosity of strangers and make my friends and family a little envious…
Today, however, it has become the norm for millions of people. The pandemic, combined with the acceleration of digital, flexible work, has taken “work from anywhere” into the mainstream…and sent swathes of new work-flexible folks flocking to desirable destinations around the world.
A recent survey by McKinsey’s Consulting found that, post pandemic, 23% of American job holders can now work from home part-time, while a further 35% have the option to work from home full-time.
That’s the equivalent of over 55.5 million Americans who are no longer tied to an office whatsoever! And that’s just in America…millions of people across the world are in the same situation, with a host of companies letting employees work from home forever—including Twitter, Facebook, Square, Salesforce, Spotify, Zillow and Coinbase.
Some firms are upping the flexibility offer with unlimited vacations (Netflix, LinkedIn, GitHub, Roku, Visualsoft). While others still—like Big Four firm PwC—are allowing employees to take extended overseas trips or “workations.”
I’m already seeing it shape destinations right across my global beat. I’m seeing it in the Los Angeles Times headline announcing that Americans are flooding Mexico City…in a Lonely Planet article about remote workers converging on Tulum…even in news reports of thousands of foreigners flocking from all corners of the world to live and work in Georgia—not the state but the small country on the far side of Turkey.
No longer tied to the workplace, millions of people are traveling to the world’s most desirable places to live and rent long-term.
More than anywhere else, the towns these remote workers flock to are what I call “internationalized” places. They have an established tourism infrastructure and familiarity for overseas visitors. They’re cosmopolitan. They’re easy to navigate…with good access to international airports and a community of expats to plug in to.
In other words, these are inherently desirable places. The kind of places we at RETA have been investing in real estate for years. We’ve done incredibly well by tapping into the booming tourism markets…we’ve seen strong capital appreciation with rising demand…and great short-term rental opportunities.
Now, however, we have an entirely new opportunity opening up in front of us…
We’re seeing demand for long-term rentals explode. Thanks to the remote working trend, more and more folks are arriving in places where we’re already well established with our RETA deals and contacts. These folks are renting by the month or with a one-year lease…and they’re paying rates that until now we would only have seen in the U.S.…
They aren’t looking for cheap, they’re looking for more. More amenities…more space…more sunshine… And they’re willing to pay for it.
They don’t expect to find a standout rental for $800 a month. But they will pay $2,500 or more to get one with a sea view and a large terrace that’s close to a beach.
They’re paying more in places where we can apply our RETA edge to lock in unbeatable RETA deals…which means we’re capturing higher yields than ever before on long-term rentals…
On our Santa Maria opportunity in Lagos, Portugal, we’re seeing gross yields of 10%…
On our Copala opportunity in Cabo, we’re now approaching gross yields of 12%…
We’re seeing another 12% gross yield from the Spanish fire-sale homes members locked down in August 2020…
On our Siempre Playa deal in Playa del Carmen we’re seeing gross yields hit a whopping 16%…
Those are phenomenal returns for long-term rentals. Heck, in most places those would be impressive figures for short-term rentals. But in the desirable destinations where we’ve been investing for years, these numbers are now commonplace.
In your latest issue of Real Estate Trend Alert, I take a deep dive into this new phenomenon and what it means for the future of our real estate deals and destinations across our beat.
This is an opportunity the likes of which I’ve rarely seen. It has already delivered phenomenal gross rental yields on long-term rentals of as much as 10%, 12%…even 16%…
It gets even better when you figure the high-yield opportunities I shared above now list for $173,076…$223,143…and up to $242,844 more that our RETA members-only pricing…
And, thanks to our RETA edge, we’re set to see this opportunity become a major new pillar of RETA deals for a long time to come.
Get the full story in the August issue of Real Estate Trend Alert.
Wishing you good real estate investing,
Ronan McMahon