2010 Will be a Good Year for Overseas Property Investment

2009 was a funny old year for overseas property industry, and I don't mean funny ha ha. While the UK property market had been shaking, rattling and crashing throughout most of 2007 and 08, many overseas markets, mainly those favoured by investors, especially the emerging ones were managing to avoid recessions and property market crashes.

This all changed between the third and 4th quarters of 2008, when it became clear that there would be no survivors in this crunch. 2009 it seemed, was going to be a very dark year indeed. But now that prices have dropped massively in most places, and there are hints of recovery, what can we expect from 2010? In my view 2010 will be a good year for overseas property.

When we all realised that this was indeed a crisis that would affect the entire world -- at the tail end of 2008 -- many still clung to the markets that were doing ok, many more, including myself hypothesised that the biggest problem was fear amplified by the negative press.

But as time passed I converted to the belief that it was going to get as bad as the press were saying, it was a real crisis and we had to just batten down the hatches and hope for survival.

However, since the first signs that the worst of the recession is over for the likes of the UK, US, most Asian countries and many in Latin America, in the 2nd quarter of this year reports have been emerging of increasing demand for overseas property.

This apparently confirmed that fear over just how bad it could get was indeed to biggest hindrance to overseas property sales:

When the crunch really dropped; when everybody realised that this really was an international crisis of catastrophic proportions, there were thousands of people who stopped their overseas property search dead. Not because they had been directly affected by the crisis, but for fear over just how bad it could get; fear that they might be affected down the line. This applied to almost everyone who hadn't been affected by it; they all feared it might hit then as it worsened.

So, when the first signs of a turnaround began to emerge, most of those people -- even those who didn't believe that it was the start of a full blown recovery -- came to see that it was not going to get as bad as feared. The people who had been searching for overseas property before restarted their search, and were joined by thousands more looking to put their money into something more profitable than banks (low interest rates), but safer than the stock market.

What they have found is that the international arena is jam-packed with some of the best buy-to-let opportunities that have been seen for many years, because of the price drops and changed currency dynamics.

In Florida alone there are thousands of spectacular opportunities; properties in touristic areas, and areas set to see rapid growth during the recovery, at a 40-60% discount. There are thousands of repossessed and distressed sales in almost all established markets, which will do incredibly well as buy-to-let and capital growth investments over 2-5 years.

In 2010 we are going to see the international recovery continue to strengthen and eventually this will translate into improvements in the labour market. The more this process progresses the more people will be in a position to consider an overseas property purchase. Alongside this, property values will continue to increase in most countries, and rents will also see some solid growth.

All in all we see demand for overseas property continuing to grow in 2010. We see a massive flurry of demand towards the end of January into February and March, and then levels comparable to 2008 for the rest of the year.

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