The Overseas Property Rule Book

Date: 07/14/2006

International Living Postcards-- your daily escape

Saturday, July 15, 2006
Paris, France

Buying foreign real estate can be intimidating and sometimes risky. If you're thinking about acquiring a second home or first investment abroad, you may be worried about the stories you've heard. You know--the ones where, having written the last check to the real estate agent, local officials knock on your door to inform you that you don't actually own your new house on the beach…you were misinformed and you need to move out right now.

(In fact, you have no guarantee. But you enjoy no such guarantee anywhere…not even, we learned last year, in the good ol' US of A.)

In the international real estate market, restrictions on foreign ownership are many and varied. In Croatia, you must secure approval from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs…in unregulated Fiji, you may need to invoke the Ministry of Lands, the Crown, and the indigenous people of Fiji.

Technically, as a foreigner, you can't buy real estate in Mexico within 31 miles of the coast…in Honduras you can't own land within 25 miles of international borders…and in New Zealand you can't buy more than 12 acres (or less, in some areas). But these restrictions can all be sidestepped legally.

Property ownership in Thailand is carefully controlled. There are several ways you can own real estate, some more realistic than others.

Surprisingly for one of the world's most bureaucratic countries, France imposes no restrictions on who can acquire real estate.

So, where and how can you, as a foreigner, buy, when you buy overseas?

To help you with this, we've put together a new report, available free to you as a reader of these Postcards.

This little report gives you a brief overview of 26 markets. We call it To Have or To Lease: A Global Guide to Property Ownership Rules and Restrictions. You can download it in PDF format here.

Lief Simon
Real Estate Editor, International Living