Overseas Property Investment: Nothing Has Changed

Last year overseas property was being hailed as the best investment man had ever come across, especially off plan property in emerging markets. I was one of the biggest advocators of investing in emerging market property.

The truth is: the only thing that has changed is the level of difficult with getting overseas finance; overseas property is still a good investment and it always will be - well throughout my lifetime anyway.

Last year, I was promoting emerging market property as an investment like my life depended on it. Among the countries I was going for was the Philippines, Albania, Tunisia, and Brazil.

I was saying that these countries were good investments because they would avoid recession, and for various other reasons. They are all still expected to avoid recession, but that is not the main reason I still recommend them.

It is the prices of property, which has been the main reason overseas property investment has always been a good idea. You can buy a like-for-like property in any of those countries for a fraction of what it would cost in the UK. But buying cheap is no good if it stays cheap.

That is true, but those countries are all on paths of rapid economic growth and development. All set to become fully industrialised nations, with fully developed economies. As this growth takes place over the next 5, 10 and 20 years the properties will grow massively in value, just as UK property prices grew massively in the last 20 years.

After the war when Britain began to recover, property prices grew by over 100% between 1952 and 1962. Properties in all the above countries will grow similarly as their economies grow.