InternationalLiving.com

Best Beachfront Buys Today…and Tomorrow?

Here at International Living, beachfront is our business. We've spent the past 27 years in perpetual search for the world's best and, just as important, most affordable stretches of sandy coast. It's ever-harder to find beachfront selling for reasonable, let alone bargain prices. Even some of our favorite coastal picks of recent years have moved from being irresistibly cheap to, in some cases (the beaches just outside Panama City, for example, and much of the south Pacific coast of Nicaragua), far too expensive considered in context of what and where you're buying.

No problem, we told ourselves. We'll simply set out to find other, still seriously affordable beachfront buys. Our focused search has led us to a new, still-off-the-radar peninsula in Panama, the Gold Coast (that is, Punta del Este) of Uruguay, and the black-and white-sand shores of El Salvador.

Our Panama editors have been tempting readers of our Panama Insider with details of opportunities on that country's Azuero Peninsula, the only place in Panama where you can watch the sun set over the water, on the edge of being discovered.

In the October issue of our IL magazine, we spotlight two other current beachfront bests:

Punta del Este (see page 9 of the current issue) has been attracting South America's well-heeled beach-lovers for more than a century. More recently, it has begun to attract farther-flung attention. Prices here plummeted following the 2001/2002 financial crisis in this part of the world. They've recovered in part over the past few years but remain wonderfully low relative to what you'll pay today for a little spit of sand to call your own in other comparably developed coastal resort regions. How about a three-bedroom apartment with an ocean view for $100,000?

Perhaps a better beachfront bet right now, however, is farther north, where, for a little more, you could acquire not a nice apartment with a view of the beach…but a spacious, comfortable home right on it. Up for the adventure of building your own place? El Salvador offers some of the best bargains going anywhere in the Americas today for beachfront lots. We dispatched Roving Latin America Editor Lee Harrison to investigate. Lee reports on page 24 of the current IL issue his recent findings, including where to go for a half-acre beachfront lot on offer for as little as $63,000.

This is hardly the end of the story. Cheap beachfront is one of the world's most prized commodities, and the last 10 years have seen prices boil over in many of this planet's most appealing sandy sunspots. But we wonder if adjustments might not be forthcoming? Markets like Panama City and the south Pacific coast of Nicaragua that have hit the heights might, we can't help but notice, be preparing for soft (or maybe not so soft) landings.

Now that'd get our attention. Watch this space.

Kathleen Peddicord
Pulisher, For International Living

P.S. Subscribers to the IL magazine can find out about these beachfront deals right now. If you're not yet a subscriber to IL's monthly magazine, you can get instant access to the October issue, and much more, with this link.