Introduction
Richard:
Good morning, Patrick. How you doing?
Patrick:
I am doing very well, Richard, thank you.
Richard:
It’s a pleasure to have you back on the podcast. I think it’s actually been quite some time.
Patrick:
Yeah, it’s been, I think over a year, maybe two.
Richard:
Time has flown, dude.
Patrick:
It does.
Richard:
You still have the same view though, which is good. I mean, that’s Avenida Balboa there behind you.
Patrick:
Exactly. Yeah, it’s a little cloudy today, but we’re coming to the end of the, the green season here, so. Should be. Should. It’s getting sunnier.
Richard:
Yeah, no, definitely we’re seeing a little bit less rain here, which is kind of nice. I’m actually going to go and we go on the golf course tomorrow at 1 o’clock in the afternoon and see if we can beat the rain in the afternoon. So we’ll see what happens. But. Well, Patrick, I always like to get an idea of kind of, you know, what’s kind of happening out there kind of with regards to volume of inquiries especially, you know, within the world’s political, you know, and it’s a lot of volatility out there, I would say, at the moment. And I think that’s probably here to stay. But I mean, what are you seeing happening on your, you know, end with regards to volume of inquiries and kind of transactions?
Post-COVID Market Demand in Costa Rica
Patrick:
Well, honestly, we just did a little bit of statistics internally here and we, we found in the. Well, certainly since COVID and, and you know, the, the increase has continued since then for people looking to have a plan B or move somewhere else. And we’ve got about a 3 to 4,000% increase in inquiries and purchases in, in our communities. And you know, our biggest problem right now is that, you know, we’re running out of inventory in our communities to sell. And I’m on the constant hunt for the next great piece of land to, to create the next. We. I don’t know if when we were last talking if we focused much on our Veritas village communities, but that’s really. Well, in a nutshell, it’s based on our first philosophy, first, which is freedom, independence, resiliency, sustainability and transparency. And you know, you get an idea from those five words what these communities are all about. And we’re seeing people from all over the world. Last I was up, we have a property in Panama here that’s a Veritas Village Coronado and that one is under a hundred home sites and homes. But it’s all, you know, we only Announced it a couple months ago because it was permitted just a couple months ago. And we’re probably 85, 90% sold out already. Just people from, you know, and there was, it was interesting because there was 10 couples and our demographics are changed a lot since COVID too. Right? Young couples in their 20s or 30s versus kind of retirement people, but retirement folks as well and people in their 30s and 40s all over the map. But the other thing is I found is the like mindedness of people from around the world. We have, well, like I was, I was there a few weeks ago and showing some people around and it was 10 couples in a row, all from different countries like Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Scotland, the uk, Canada, US obviously, but also Australia and New Zealand. And so it makes the communities very cool. Right, because you’re sitting around with like minded people, you’re not feeling like you have any cancel culture or censorship there because that’s what our communities all are all about is right to free speech and all sorts of freedoms. And so it’s very, it’s very cool. You sit there, have a glass of wine and watch the sunset and with people from all over the world that feel the same way.
Richard:
Wow. I mean, you know, I was gonna. What is the price point on some of these, on some of these properties? Just because again, you know, I mean it’s always a lot of people listening to this might be like, you know, the. That sounds great but like how much does it cost me to get involved?
Housing Options and Pricing
Patrick:
Well, we have a wide range so we, we do smaller properties with tiny homes. Well, first of all, these communities are all very self dependent, independent. So you know, we produce all our own power. We’re not connected to the grid yet. It’s luxury living. Like there’s you know, four air conditioners and you know, in our welcome center that’s completely off grid. Three, three fridges and freezers and all sorts of, you know, movie projectors and all sorts of stuff that. But we’re not connected to the grid at all. We’re also not connected to the water system. We have our own mountain spring water wells, you know, our own septic systems and everything. So it’s totally self contained and so it makes life there very inexpensive once you’re there too. Right. Because you know, you really have, you know, you have no power bill and a water bill. Yeah, those sorts of things. But you know, our homes are, we have tiny homes starting that are around 500 square feet and then up to mansions and you know, six, seven bedroom, 8,000 square foot mansions and what, what’s, what I love about it and you know, is people can all get together and like I said, you sit there and have a, have a beer or a glass of wine or whatever. And, and doesn’t matter what walk of life you’re from or which home you live in, you know, you’re all kind of have the same sort of philosophy. And, and so prices started, you know, 150 to 200,000 where the, for the home and, and can go to whatever. The sky’s the limit on what, what you want then. But, and you know, we do a lot of comparisons of North America or European home prices and we did one the other day from British Columbia and Canada. And you could basically buy four much nicer homes here if you sold, you know, for the same price of selling your one in bc. So, you know, it’s certainly within reach for a lot of people because you can buy one home and live in it or buy a few and rent the other ones out for the passive income or buy one and keep that other income invested for life. And you know, so it’s really, to me, it’s, it’s really affordable.
Cultural Considerations
Richard:
I mean, you know, every single country is different there. So when someone comes to you, I mean, do typical, typically people come to you guys or getting with a particular country in mind or like, look, I love the philosophy and I want to get involved. Like, how do you then decide which is the right country? Because you guys are in Belize, Nicaragua, Panama, you guys are looking at Costa Rica. I mean, very different cultures, you know. So how do you guys do people come with like, you know, that kind of pretty wide open, you know, choice or have they already chosen the country?
Patrick:
Well, it’s definitely a mix. It’s funny though, a lot of people that do come with a preconceived idea of where they want to be. We, we also have a Latin American brochure to kind of explain different things and do lots of webinars. Even on our website, if they go to Ecovillages Life, the website, there’s, you can watch them a million different podcasts or webinars. But what’s interesting is sometimes they change their mind after they realize, you know, well, you know, this is what I’m interested in. But you know, there’s different, like you said, there’s lots of differences. Belize for instance, English speaking, Caribbean coast. So people are divers or whatever want to get into diving. Obviously that Caribbean side is the, you know, white sand and the turquoise waters and, and all that. Excuse me, I got a sore throat this morning. And but, or if they’re surfers or something like that, they might want to be on the Pacific coast or if they like the little bit cooler weather to be in the highlands. So Panama here, for instance, I’m in Panama City right now in our headquarter offices. But sometimes they’re like, I really want to move to Belize because it’s English speaking or something. And then we, you know, educate them and make them realize. I mean, my own, I’m married to an Ecuadorian, but my Spanish is terrible. Right. And my wife, my wife tells me that every day. And you know, so. But I get by perfectly well. I’ve been down here for a couple of decades doing it. And so it doesn’t, the language doesn’t become the barrier that, you know, people often think it is. And so that opens up their mind a lot usually and say, well, well, then I really like Costa Rica because it’s, you know, got some jungle stuff that I’m really into and parrots or something, you know, so everybody’s got their own little unique thing that makes them want to kind of gravitate to one particular area.
Richard:
Yeah, I mean, again, as you said that they’re very different culturally as well. You know, I mean, it’s very different than the Pacific, which is very different than highland people as well.
Patrick:
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, the foods are different. Right. Everybody claims to have the best food whichever country you’re in, but it’s, you know, so there, there’s a lot of similarities, obviously in, in Latin American countries, but there’s a lot of differences too. And, you know, I would recommend that people visit them. And even, you know, in one visit you don’t always get to know the differences. But I, I mean, I have to do that circle tour all the time. Right. Police. Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, and just doing it over and over. So I’ve lived in most of those countries, so I kind of have a pretty good idea. But, you know, we’re always here to help people kind of discover it too. A lot of people also are, you know, you mentioned the political environment around the world these days. That’s kind of right up our alley. And a lot of people are looking for second residencies or citizenships and, you know, we help with that as well. And so that, you know, each country has a little bit different way of doing that too and, or different, you know, different bar you have to hit for an investment residency, for example.
Residency and Tax Advantages
Richard:
So which one’s the easiest to get?
Patrick:
I would say easiest right now is Mexico. The most popular one we’re seeing right now is Panama. One of the nice things in Panama is you can. Well, I’m not a lawyer and I don’t want to give too much legal advice here, but I would recommend people do check into, you know, Costa Rica, I think is $150,000. Yep. Excuse me. Limit for investment residency. Panama starts at $200,000 for friendly nations and then 300,000 for the gold, what they call the gold visa, which is for pretty much any country resident around the world. And you know, in Panama, for instance, you could set up a. What they have as an international corporation and basically it’s, it’s tax free. You know, an example, for instance, if you’re an architect or something living in the US and you move down to pan Panama and set up the company, then you know you can. And your clients are still in the US as long as it’s a, it’s a regional jurisdictional tax. So as long as you’re not. As long as your clients aren’t Panamanian, that’s tax free revenue for you. So, you know, it can be pretty lucrative for people. Like, for me, I came from Canada, I calculated I was paying, you know, probably higher than this. But if you add up the income tax, property tax, they have a GST and they have a provincial tax, and they have blah, blah, blah, and on and on and on. And you know, I was probably paying close to 70 or maybe more than 70% in my taxes up there. So theoretically, I can come down here and live for 30% of what I was making because I don’t pay any taxes. And then, as you know, in these countries, the cost of living is generally a lot lower to have a better lifestyle. So in my mind, it’s like you can make 20% of what you were making in a country like Canada. And, and if you can keep it at 100% and not pay the taxes, you can imagine how well you’re doing then. So that’s been very lucrative for people too. In addition to feeling like they didn’t like the way their countries handled Covid and they’re kind of waiting for the next event. We just don’t know what it is yet.
Richard:
They keep us waiting. I mean, I think that the, you know, Costa Rica is probably the most expensive country to live in of all those countries. You know, it’s not cheap here.
Patrick:
I, I agree. Costa Rica is, you know, really kind of. Well, Costa Rica marketed itself very well for the last 40 to 50 years. So a lot of These countries did not. And so they’re kind of playing catch up with Costa Rica. So Costa Rica has, you know, in a lot of cases, better infrastructure. It’s also, to me it’s one of the most beautiful countries, you know, in, in the region. Like Nicaragua to the north is a little bit drier, but it, you know, doesn’t have that jungle life that you can have in Costa Rica to some extent. Panama is obviously here in Panama City. It’s much more urban and you know, more of a financial hub for, for the, for the Latin American region. Yeah, but so everything’s got its little bit of differences, but yeah, Costa Rica is, you know, it’s super beautiful, but it is one of the more expensive places, but it’s probably one of, if not the most popular one for people to move to as well. And you know, like I was saying earlier that, well, our, our Veritas villages are, we’re expanding them as fast as we can just because of the demand for, for kind of a freedom and self sustainability oriented community. And that really is, you know, right now we’re looking at, I mean, I’m on the hunt every day, every hour for property in, in Mexico, Costa Rica and Argentina. And Argentina we’re looking at a vineyard version, you know, where people that want to make their own wine and live in a community like that. It’s kind of a cool thing. At the base of the Andes, near Mendoza.
Richard:
I was just there.
Patrick:
It’s, it’s a beautiful spot. I really love it. And so yeah, we’re, you know, we’re, we’re doing a lot of things to, to expand and give people even more choice than they have now. A lot of developers, I guess, you know. Well, first of all, developers don’t tend to focus on a very, what I guess is a niche, freedom oriented community. But in addition to that, they’re often kind of very, very focused on one area. They say, well, you know, this is the Guanacaste beach area and that’s where I’m going to make 15 different developments. So we’re a little different than that. We, we spread ourselves out over different countries to give people more choice, but they still have the same philosophy behind the communities.
Development Challenges
Richard:
How do you guys manage that? Because I mean, every country is different with regards to the ways of doing things because I mean, and you know, land segregation, developments of condominiums and stuff. I mean, how do you guys make sure that, you know, your products successful on that front? Because you know, it’s trust but verify everything in Latin America.
Patrick:
Yeah, Absolutely.
Richard:
You know, because you’ll get told three different ways to do this one thing.
Patrick:
Yeah, exactly. You know, you do kind of get a sixth sense about it after a while when you’re being told the right thing versus something somebody’s just making up. Well, you know, Latin Americans typically don’t like to say no. Correct. So, you know, if you ask a construction guy. Are you a plumber? Yep. Are you electrician? Yep. Are you a structural engineer? Yeah. You know, nobody ever says no, so you kind of got to figure it out for yourself. I guess the biggest differences are really between Belize and the other countries because Belize is based on common law from the UK and the other countries are based on civil law originally from Spain. There is a lot of similarities, but there’s a lot of differences too. And so you’re right there. You know, we really need, we have lawyers and we have project managers and everything in, in each of the country countries. But there are more similarities than differences. But you know, once you’ve done one, you know, you’ve kind of gone through the school hard knocks and figured it out.
Richard:
Yeah, yeah. I suppose once you have kind of like a master plan or a sense of what works, you can kind of print that if that makes sense with, with its differences based on the land and you know, what it has, etc.
Patrick:
Yeah, we have a, we kind of, we try as much as possible for basically for time to market, to copy and paste what we’ve done before that we, you know, and every time you do another community, you learn something that you want to. So they, you know, they continually get better in my, in my impression. So that, that’s a, that’s a good thing. And you know, it, it’s, it’s a lot of work. I mean, I, I think I probably a, in the last decade, I’ve probably aged 200 years. But you know, as you know, it can be a little frustrating. I love, someday if I ever get the time, I’m going to write a book about, you know, what development in Latin America is like. And I don’t know if anybody will ever read it, but it’ll be cathartic for me anyway.
Richard:
I mean, I’ll read it. I’m in the thick of it, you know, and yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s frustrating and you’ve got to have a lot of patience and you know, as I always say, just surf the wave.
Patrick:
Yeah. And you know, what, what that’s led to. Like, I could tell you some crazy Horror stories from 15, 20 years of ago Building homes in Nicaragua, for instance. And you know, I actually had homes built on the wrong lot because I wasn’t there. And you know, it’s like, you guys are killing me. But, and I’ll preface by saying we’re not control freaks here at all. We’re building freedom oriented, freedom oriented communities. But we now build all the homes on our communities because, you know, it’s so easy for people from first world countries to think, oh, I’ll just, you know, contract with the local builder, he’ll build exactly what I think he’s going to build. And then they come down and they’re disappointed and then it reflects poorly on our communities because they got a crappy house. And so we don’t want that happening. And you know, I’ve seen that happen with other communities and other resorts and it kills them, right? So the, the word of mouth becomes, oh, it’s all junk here in this community. And so we know people are a little surprised sometimes. We have a couple rules even for a freedom oriented community and one of them is that you have a two year build period. You don’t have to finish a home within two years, but you have to start within two years. And that’s really to avoid, you know, just property flipping and the community never becoming a community. What we see, and I’m sure you see it a billion times in Costa Rica, is you get gringos coming down having what I call Margarita madness. And then they, they see, wow, this big tract of 100 hectares of land or whatever is so cheap, I’m going to buy it and I’m going to become a developer. They have no idea what they’re doing and what they’re getting into. So they sell to their sister and their dentist and that’s where it stops. And nobody’s paying HOA fees and the community just collapses. And I get calls probably three times a week like from people like that going, hey, can you come down and rescue my community? And it’s generally, no, I can’t, you’ve gone off the rails. But so we don’t want any of those kind of situations. So that’s why we sort of take a pretty hard stance on the control of you have to start building within two years or we have the right to buy. If you don’t, we, we just have an option to buy the property back at what they paid for it.
Richard:
Yeah, well, I think that’s smart though, because as you said there, I mean, what you guys are creating is a community and if that, if there aren’t homes it’s not a community. Like, people need to be there and like, there needs to be a sense of place and like. Yeah, I mean, it’s, I think that’s smart. I really do.
Patrick:
When we put an awful lot of money into these communities, like we, you know, the one in Coronado here in Panama that we’re just releasing now is, you know, it’s got a tilapia pond and tennis courts and a little school, a little clinic, music studio, woodworking shops, farmers market, amphitheater, hiking trails. I mean, it’s loaded right with stuff. And, you know, if you do that and only have three people living in the community, then it’s a, it’s a complete disaster. So, you know, we’re lucky. We’ve, we’ve got, like I said, probably 85, 90% sold out, you know, and we’re, we’re more on the crunch to find more property than we are to try to, you know, we’ve been, we’ve been lucky. We’ve kind of hit the nail on the head with our, you know, our communities in terms of that first philosophy. And so it’s been super popular and, and, and you know, when you feel that way too, as a developer, you know, we get a lot of people that come to the communities and say, oh, this is just so relieving to talk to somebody that gets what I’m thinking. And, you know, then they instantly want to be part of that community. So it becomes very popular, which we’re lucky because it, then it supports all those amenities and we don’t have to sit back and go, oh, you know, we don’t, we don’t do any. Build it and hope they will come. Like, that’s not our thing. So.
Richard:
Yeah, well, I mean, congratulations, dude, because I know, you know, I do it myself, so I know how difficult it can be. And through multiple different countries, you know, someone was like, hey, Rich, will you do one in another? I was just like, no, dude. I mean, it’s complicated enough here in Costa Rica. How am I going to do it over the, the region? So kudos to you, sir.
Patrick:
Well, thank you. I, I guess maybe if I’d known how much work it was 20 years ago, I wouldn’t have started doing it.
Richard:
But, man, you know, I always say, look, if it’s, if it’s going to be tough and difficult, do it, because most people won’t do it. So, you know, and it’s worth doing so.
Patrick:
Well, as you know, our, our barriers to entry in this line of work are enormous.
Richard:
Like, Correct.
Patrick:
I was in the software business before and I gotta admit, it was a lot easier. Even though the dog eat dog world of Silicon Valley is not an easy one. This one, you know, outranks that in difficulty 100 to 1. And so nobody wants to get into it or if they do get into it, they quickly fail. So it’s tough.
Richard:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, you guys don’t have a project in Costa Rica at the moment. I mean, what are your plans for Costa Rica?
Patrick:
Well, I really want to acquire property. We’re, by the end of this year, we’re looking at a few different ways of doing that. Obviously the best one for, for us would be somebody’s already gone through the headaches of permitting.
Richard:
Yep.
Patrick:
And you know, but they, they are one of these margarita madness folks that don’t know what they’re doing. But now they’ve realized, oh man, I’ve spent two or three years permitting this property and I don’t have anybody to buy it so, or to move into it. And that that’s the ultimate best situation for us because as I said, we’re lucky to have the following. And you know, the time to market to us is more important than anything. Well, other than finding the perfect piece of land. So I’ve been to Costa Rica three times since August, up and down, searching for something and I really, you know, really want to have something nailed down by the end of this year. I think we’re fairly close with a couple, a couple spots, but we have a, we have a pretty stringent checklist of, you know, because these are, you know, self sufficient communities, we have to be able to grow everything. So we kind of look at. All right, the elevation needs to be somewhere between 200 and 600 meters or 250, usually 600 meters in elevation because you know, right on the beach, as you know, you got salt spray and super heat and you know, it’s hard to grow lettuce and things like that, you know, at the, on the beach. So, you know, we like to be close to the beach so people can have that few minutes of driving down, spend the day at the beach, but come home back into the highlands to, to have a bit cooler. You know, for instance, our community here in the Coronado that I’ve been talking about, it’s about 5 degrees Celsius. What is that, about 9 degrees Fahrenheit? Probably cooler than being at the beach. So on a beach day, a hot day, it’s always 32, you know, we’re kind of at 27, 28 during the day. So it’s still warm enough to use your pool. You know, it’s comfortable. The nights get down to like a room temperature. So you can sit outside or you can sit inside without too much air conditioning. And it’s just all around kind of the sweet spot for not only for people but for animals and plants. Like we have stables there too with livestock. So you know, we have to, you know, make comfortable for everybody and we want to be able to grow as much stuff as we can. We just planted the orchard there a few weeks ago and I think there’s over 50 different varieties of fruits in the orchard now and coffee and cacao and all sorts of stuff. So we’ve really try to make it like if shit hits the fan frankly. And we want to close the gates. Yeah, you know, we can, we’ve got everything right inside.
Richard:
Well, again, I mean it’s, you know, at the moment I’m looking for land myself just because you can see out here. My, my garden is pretty full at the moment. I don’t mind. My neighbor keeps complaining about my avocado tree even though she gets free avocados. But anyway, the leaves keep going in a gutters and stuff so I have to clean our gutters out, you know, two or three times a year. But good problems to have, I suppose. But I mean, I’ve kept you long enough here, Peter. But I mean my last question for you, which I love to ask everyone is if you inherited $500,000 and you had to invest into a business or real estate, I usually say in Costa Rica, but I’m going to say Latin America here, what would you invest it in and why?
How Would You Invest $500,000 Inheritance in Costa Rica?
Patrick:
Wow, that’s a loaded question with so many potential answers. Well, I think you know, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama are all great locations right now to, to invest in. You know, I, I, I think what we’re, what we’ve seen in terms of a property wave bubble, whatever you want to call it in U. S. Canada, parts of Europe is probably virtually peaked in, in that’s in my impression. Yep. I think what we’re going to probably see regardless of who gets in is the president. Next we’ll probably see a stock market correction. Okay. So I mean I would honestly, I would put it into land into, in one of these countries or I, I would put it into bitcoin, frankly. One of one of those two options because I think that’s where the, you’re going to get see the biggest bang for the buck.
Richard:
Yeah, definitely. Well, Patrick, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you back here on the podcast next time, we won’t leave it so long, and it’d be interesting to catch up and see how your Costa Rica, you know, when you guys start to, you know, really break ground on that to get you back on and. And talk a little bit more about that.
Patrick:
Absolutely. And maybe we can, you know, see each other in person in the next few weeks when I come do some property shopping.
Richard:
Definitely, buddy.
Patrick:
All right, no worries.
Richard:
Take care.
Patrick:
Thank you, Richard.
Richard:
Bye.
