Buying into the real estate market on Margarita is somewhat different from the U.S. or other well-developed places, and it pays to understand the differences involved before wiring large sums of money.

The basic choices are three: You can buy an apartment, a house, or find a lot or a "knock-down" house that will give you a good spot to build on. If you're looking for a good building lot, buying a knock-down is often substantially cheaper than buying a bare lot.

Making the decision on what to buy should focus on three things:

1. How much time will you spend away from your home each year? If you leave for a few weeks each year, your housekeeper or friends can keep an eye on the place. If you plan on only being there for a few weeks or months each year, you need to focus on finding a good apartment in a secure building. Don't even consider buying a house.
2. How much work are you willing to do (yourself, or hiring someone) to get your place just the way you want it? If you want to buy it and live in it, and your tolerance for having tradesmen in your home working on it is low, you need to focus only on the expensive "finished" places. They're out there, and the price tag reflects the work that's been done.
3. How important is it that the place be completely done to U.S. standards? Nothing is really done to U.S. standards. I may look like it, but it's usually just illusion and window-dressing. If you really want a high-quality electrical system, a water system built the way you really want it, lighting and appliances installed correctly, pipes wrapped so they don't make noise, insulation so that you aren't cooling all of Margarita, and other basic features of the U.S. building industry, you're going to have to build it (have it built) yourself.

If you want control of your surroundings, don't bother with an apartment, go with a house. With a house you can put in a huge water tank and install a backup generator, or even go with a solar/wind generation setup to take advantage of the sunny days and stiff breeze that are the hallmarks of Margarita. With your own house, you can choose and install your own security devices, and arguably you can be far more secure in a house than in an apartment- as long as you're present. Houses are cheaper (as a rule) because of the advantages of an apartment building on what is essentially a tourist island. Apartments have drawbacks, though.

An apartment will be at the mercy of HydroCaribbe (the water company) during the tourist "high season" and if they ration water you'd better be able to conserve and make do. When the power goes out, you can light candles and wait for the power (and air conditioning) to come back on. Of course, if you want to leave, you just lock the apartment door and tell the concierge that you're leaving. You can contact them and let them know ahead of time when you're coming back and they can clean the place before you arrive. Meanwhile, the place is watched and the environmental systems are maintained.

If you want to move to the island, and you're looking at a minimum 5 year committment, our advice is to build. The cost of labor is incredibly cheap, and we know a good architect (a German) who can provide planning and project management for building your house. In the end, it will be far cheaper than a similar place in the U.S. or Europe, but it will still require spending quite a bit of money if you want the job done right.

As with moving to the country in the U.S., we advise anyone who is thinking of moving to Margarita to rent a place here for 6 months to a year before making a decision to "take the plunge" by buying into the real estate market.

Bargains Are Out There

As we've said before, there are some real bargains in the real estate landscape on Margarita. Part of this is the result of political unrest with Chavez now firmly settled in power and preaching "Christian Socialism" for the future. What that means, we don't know, but we don't believe that he's stupid enough to kill the tourist industry goose that keeps laying golden eggs- especially when it's mostly confined to a pleasant offshore island.

In order to get the the recall election, many people signed a petition. The word we hear is that if you signed the petition, your name is mud as long as Chavez is in power. This is just politics as usual: friends get rewarded and enemies get punished. Some of the people who opposed him are now quietly liquidating assets and looking for greener pastures. One benefit of this asset liquidation is supply of real estate for sale on Margarita that wouldn't normally be on the market.

We were offered a house on the beach last week, and the owner wants $42,000. Of course, it would need to have about $30,000 worth of work done to it, but it's on the beach and has great sunsets. These are the kinds of bargains that you have to be present in order to find, but they're out there. What's funny is that 5 or 6 houses down is a place priced at a quarter-million dollars, and it isn't even that great of a place. The difference is that one guy knows what the internet is and has an idea of what the global housing market is- so he wants big bucks for his place, and the other guy doesn't know anything except that he wants to sell his house... and he thinks it's worth about B100,000,000 (USD $42,000).

We've said before that we believe Margarita is changing. Everything goes through cycles, and we think that Venezuela is headed for an "up" cycle in general, and Margarita in particular. If you can find a good place and hang on to it for a few years, you might find it valued in line with the other Caribbean islands... and you'd still have had the enjoyment of living in it.

There are opportunities everywhere... you just have to look in order to find them.

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