In this week’s digest:
- The “Undiscovered” Beach Towns of Taiwan
- Homes in Mexico’s Safest City from Under $150,000
- Own a Chateau Near the Beach in the South of France
- Plus, Your Questions Answered on Where We Plan to Scout in Africa
My team has been out on the road…crisscrossing the globe…hunting for the best opportunities…
Just this week in Your Overseas Dream Home, you got a report from Oliver Lovett, who rode the Mayan Train in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and explored the colonial city of Mérida. And you heard from Ciaran Madden, who reported on “undiscovered” beach towns in Taiwan in East Asia. (More on these below…)
Touring Taiwan…hopscotching across the Yucatan—that’s a lot of travel for most people. But for my small, committed team of real estate scouts and global adventurers, it’s just another day at the office.
In fact, this week we’ve been nailing down our scouting plans for the upcoming weeks and months.
We’re going to be covering a lot of ground…
Mérida’s historic center is the third largest in the Americas after Mexico City and Havana. It’s also one of the best preserved. A member of my team just had boots on the ground here and sent in this report.
Ciaran is already making plans to return to Italy to follow up on his recent hunt for mega-bargains on the island of Sicily. (Read about his Sicily trip here.) This time he’ll be scouting towns in southern Italy. Then later in the year, a trip to Uruguay is on the cards to look at incredible-value coastal homes in this under-the-radar South American safe haven…
Oliver has already shifted continents. Since he checked in with us earlier this week, he’s jetted across to southern France. He’s spending time with his folks, who’ve retired there. But he’ll also be hitting the road, hunting for bargain properties in southern France and potentially northern Spain. Stay tuned to learn what he uncovers…
Eoin Bassett, one of my most senior scouts, has big plans. Soon, he’ll be hopping on a plane to visit Los Cabos, and he’ll be stopping in Panama too. Then later in the year, he plans to explore Greece’s islands.
Then there’s my scouting itinerary…
On Aug. 23, I’m heading back to my home on Portugal’s Silver Coast. I’ll be taking the ferry from here in the south of Ireland to Bilbao in northern Spain, and then making my way slowly down to the Silver Coast.
Along the way, I plan to follow up on Ciaran’s recent scouting of northern Portugal… (Members of my Real Estate Trend Alert group have access to Ciaran’s full northern Portugal scouting report. Not a RETA member? Sign up here.) I’ll be staying in Caminha and using it as a base to explore other towns in this region with massive potential, like Viana do Castelo.
The northern Portuguese town of Caminha is stunningly beautiful and culturally rich, yet it remains virtually unknown to foreign visitors and expats. So real estate prices here can be shockingly low. I’m about to return to this town to continue our in-depth scouting here…
You’ll be hearing about all of this boots-on-the-ground scouting by me and my team—from Caminha to Cabo, from Panama to Uruguay to the South of France and beyond—right here in Your Overseas Dream Home.
And now that you know our scouting itinerary, let us know where to look. Maybe have an insight on which Greek island is the best for year-round living…or which town in southern Italy has the best bargains or beaches…or where to get the best steak in Uruguay? Share it with us here. We’d love to hear from you.
Below, I’ll be answering a question from one of your fellow readers on scouting in Africa. We have ideas there too! I’ll fill you in below…
But first, let’s recap this incredible week in Your Overseas Dream Home…
The “Undiscovered” Beach Towns of Taiwan
Mention Taiwan and probably the first thing that comes to mind is the potential for conflict with China. That’s fair. Those concerns are very real.
But there’s also more to this island than the geopolitical tensions surrounding it…
This is one of Asia’s wealthiest places, filled with towering, ultra-modern metropolises. It’s the manufacturing base for 90% of the world’s most advanced computer chips, meaning it’s absolutely integral to the global economy and all our lives. And it’s a very beautiful island, with tropical rainforests, soaring mountains, and long golden-sand Pacific beaches.
Ciaran, one of my scouts, knows this place better than most. He lived there for over a decade…worked in Taiwan’s Cabinet building…speaks the language (Mandarin) fluently…
Earlier this month, he was back there visiting friends and family (his wife is Taiwanese). But he also took the time to scout the local real estate scene.
He sent a boots-on-the-ground report, covering the incredible metropolis of Taipei…and Taiwan’s “undiscovered” beach towns. Check it out here.
Waiao beach is in northeastern Taiwan. This tropical island has a surprising number of stunning beaches…though they’ve largely undeveloped, for reasons Ciaran explains in his article here.
Colonial Gems in Mexico’s Safest City from Under $150,000
While Ciaran was bouncing around the cities and beach towns of Taiwan, another of my scouts, Oliver, was strolling the streets of colonial Mérida in Mexico.
Mérida is not just one of the most beautiful cities in Mexico, but on my entire global beat. It’s known for sparkling clean avenues and leafy cobbled plazas, art-filled galleries…live music…amazing restaurants…
Ranked by CEO World in 2024 as the second safest city in North America after Quebec, the colonial city of Mérida in Mexico is clean, art-filled, renowned for its food culture, and stunningly beautiful.
For generations, money flowed in here. Powerful families built palatial mansions. Grand civic buildings and splendid parks appeared as the city grew. Mérida dominated the henequen trade—a type of succulent plant used to make highly prized rope.
The Mexican Revolution of 1910 marked the beginning of the end for Mérida’s henequen age. It struggled under the new social and political conditions, and the historic center fell into decline.
But over the last few decades Mérida’s historic core has undergone a renaissance, driven by the many North American and European expats who flock here. Today the whole city is thriving. The locals are entrepreneurial and forward-looking. That’s a big reason their city today has modern infrastructure and first-class services attractive to investors and expats.
It’s been a while since one of my team had boots on the ground in Mérida so I asked Oliver Lovett to check it out as part of his trip on the new Mayan Train. (He wrote about that train experience last week.)
You can read his full report from Mérida here, which includes a video walkthrough of a property he toured there that’s listed for under $150,000…
Oliver record this walkthrough of a home on the market in Mérida for under $150,000 when he had boots on the ground there recently. Click to view…
Following the Path of Progress to Progreso
While in Mérida, Oliver also took the short, 30-minute drive out to Progreso…
Progreso is a stunning beach and port town on the Gulf of Mexico where I was able to bring members of my Real Estate Trend Alert a brilliant opportunity to buy in Yucalpeten Marina in July 2021.
Our RETA-only price started from $209,800 for a two-bed condo. Today two-bed condos in the community list for $560,000 and up. Albeit not identical, they give you an idea of how incredible the deal was!
In Progreso, Oliver scouted the latest developments in this stunning beach town, including how a $250 million investment by the federal government has helped transformed the area and how visitor numbers are soaring…
This is place that need to be on your radar. Details in his full report here.
Progreso boasts a breathtaking coastline. Members of my Real Estate Trend Alert group are sitting on huge uplifts from our past deal here. Learn more in this article.
Own a Chateau Near the Beach in the South of France
Elsewhere this week, I asked my team to dig into beach opportunities in France…
You see, August is a special month in France. During this month, a whole host of businesses there reduce their hours or close their doors entirely to give workers time off to relax. Many of these workers then head to the beach…
And France has a lot of beaches to choose from.
From the wind-swept Atlantic beaches of Normandy, where American boys fought to free Europe of tyrant on D-Day, to the impossibly glamorous Mediterranean enclaves of Cannes, Biarritz, and Saint-Tropez, France has beaches for every taste and budget.
France even has a host of overseas territories in the Caribbean Sea and Indian Ocean…places with postcard-perfect coastlines that enjoy the same political status and rights as mainland French regions.
This week, my team dug into real estate in all these locations and found some very interesting listings, including the rare opportunity to own a chateau near a Mediterranean beach!
All the details are in the full article right here.
In the South of France you can live in an actual chateau, but still be a short drive to the Mediterranean Sea. Learn more in our full article here.
Questions and Feedback
Have a question or comment for me or my team? Share it here. Here’s one I got from an Overseas Dream Home reader…
Thomas J. asks: Have you considered scouting anywhere in Africa for real estate?
Ronan says: Hi Thomas, that’s a great question. Africa is somewhere I’d love to add to my global real estate beat…but it’s a big place! My team and I have been researching some countries on the continent looking for opportunity. And everyone on the team has a different idea of where we should start when we put boots on the ground there.
Eoin Bassett, one of my most senior scouts, likes the idea of Botswana. It’s a small, landlocked country in Southern Africa and is known for its stable democracy (important in this part of the world). Botswana gained independence from Britain in the 1960s and today folks are drawn here by the rich variety of wildlife. A large portion of the country is dedicated to national parks and wildlife reserves.
Botswana is famous for its wildlife and it’s a place where I’d like to dig deeper for real estate opportunities.
The country is welcoming to foreigners and has a growing expat community, many of whom work for multinationals, NGOs, and within diplomatic missions. It also has one of the best healthcare systems in Africa.
Another team member, Colm O’Dwyer, thinks I should take a closer look at Namibia, also in Southern Africa. It’s one of Africa’s newest countries, having gained independence from South Africa in 1990. Similar to Botswana, wildlife tourism is a big driver of the economy in Namibia, along with mining (it’s the world’s largest producer of uranium) and agriculture.
The vast Namib Desert in Namibia is home to some of the world’s highest sand dunes.
Interestingly, Namibia has a significant German-speaking community, a hangover from its times as a German colony from 1884 until 1915. After World War I, many Germans remained in Namibia. Today you’ll find German place names, restaurants offering traditional German dishes, German bakeries, and Namibia holds its own Oktoberfest festival every year.
My pick in Africa is Cape Verde, a volcanic archipelago off the west coast in the Atlantic Ocean. These guys were under Portuguese rule until 1975. But today, the country has a stable democracy and a growing economy…with a big tourism industry.
Praia, on the island of Santiago, is the capital of Cape Verde and the largest city in the archipelago.
There are 10 islands that make up Cape Verde and all have varying landscapes that range from sandy beaches to rugged mountains. The islands are also a melting pot of cultures, with influences from Africa, Portugal, and Brazil and are known for their warm hospitality. This is definitely a place I want to check out.
If you have a suggestion for somewhere in Africa that you think the team and I should investigate, I’d love to hear about it. Drop me an email here.
Ronan McMahon, Founder, Overseas Dream Home & Real Estate Trend Alert
