[iframe style=”border:none” src=”http://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/2404892/height/100/width/420/thumbnail/no/theme/standard” height=”100″ width=”420″ scrolling=”no”]

Jason welcomes back Matthew Montagu-Pollock to the show, and talks more about international investing. Matthew is the president of Global Property Guide.

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the JetSetter Show, where we explore lifestyle-friendly destinations worldwide. Enjoy and learn from a variety of experts on topics ranging from upscale travel at wholesale prices, to retiring overseas, to global real estate and business opportunities, to tax havens and expatriate opportunities. You’ll get great ideas on unique cultures, causes, and cruise vacations. Whether you’re wealthy or just want to live a wealthy lifestyle, the JetSetter Show is for you. Here’s your host, Jason Hartman.

JASON HARTMAN: Welcome to the JetSetter Show! This is Jason Hartman, your host, where we explore lifestyle-friendly destinations worldwide. I think you’ll enjoy the interview we have for you today, and we will be back with that, in less than 60 seconds, here on the JetSetter Show.

JASON HARTMAN: It’s my pleasure to welcome Matthew Montagu-Pollock back to the show! He is the founder of Global Property Guide, and a fantastic resource for property purchase, sale, and rent values throughout the globe. And he’s a very knowledgeable gentleman, coming to us today from just outside London, England, in a city called Bristol. Matthew, welcome. How are you?

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: I’m very well, Jason. Thank you for that kind introduction.

JASON HARTMAN: Well, the pleasure is all mine, and it’s great to have you back on the show again. You are just a walking encyclopedia. Or at least, your website is. But, hey, let’s start with just sort of your general take on world real estate, world economies, and let’s circle the globe, if you will, and talk about some different markets!

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Well, it’s been very encouraging to see what’s happening in the US with the great revival of property values there, which seems to be having a big impact on the wider economy.

JASON HARTMAN: Well, you know, when you print a lot of fake money, it creates seeming blessings, that turn into curses later, called inflation.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Well, that’s true. Well, this new kind of monetarism has suddenly become fashionable, it’s true. But I’m in Europe, where we’re still stuck very much, and so, the situation is very different. Now, I think one of the things which of course is gonna happen is that people from the US, and also to a lesser extent Canada, are going to recover their appetite for buying abroad or overseas, as they feel a bit richer. And we’re already seeing that. We see an increase in traffic on our site, partly I think because US people are coming on it, and looking at properties abroad. And I mean, one of the things in Europe is, there are opportunities in some of these countries, because things got so bad. We see interest starting in both Ireland and in Spain. In Spain, the Russians are there, because the prices have fallen so far in the south of Spain, they’re now often a third of what they used to be. But the values are quite compelling, despite the fact that the streets are crowded with people without any work, and 56% of people under 24 are unemployed.

JASON HARTMAN: And overall unemployment I hear is around 27%.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Yeah.

JASON HARTMAN: And I’m sure in Spain, and every other country, the government manipulates those numbers to make them look better than they really are. So that’s another thing to be careful of. But yeah, the south of Spain is really quite interesting. I mean, what a gorgeous place. However, the question is, are we at a bottom, or is there going to be a complete collapse? And will things get a lot worse? I mean, with so much unemployment and desperation, that’s not a good sign.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: No, it’s difficult to know. I just think that it will be—it’s gonna be a very different economy in the future, and to some extent, the foreigners will support it if you’re buying in attractive places, rather than mass housing estates, which have been hugely overbuilt. If you go in to buy a peasant villa with a swimming pool which is near some seaside, and near some cultural town—well, I think if you’re buying a third of what it was six years ago, it’s—I can’t say you can’t go wrong, but it’s an opportunity. Russians are not wrong to be jumping in on that. And in a way, a slightly different thing is happening in Ireland, which is probably perhaps not of such great interest to people from the US, but Dublin is beginning to revive. Because again, the crash was so enormous, and you see rental yields up quite high, at sort of 6, 7, 8% in the center of Dublin. And people are beginning to say, well, why shouldn’t I—it’s worth buying, it’s worth buying perhaps to rent out to people, and you begin to see the values bottoming.

JASON HARTMAN: Two questions for you, before you just move on there. first of all, since a lot of our audience is US-based—certainly not all of it; we have listeners all over the world. But, explain rental yields, if you would. Because US people don’t use that metric. At least not in the same way. Of course, whether you’re using cap rate, or cash on cash return, it all comes down to the same thing, but rental yields—

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Nobody much uses it except the [unintelligible]. It’s basically the same idea as price to rent ratio. Rental yield essentially means the return you get if you invest—if you’ve got a house which is worth $100,000, and you’re getting $3000, would that be right? $3000 in rent per year out of it, that’s a rental yield of 3%.

JASON HARTMAN: Right, right. And I just want everybody to notice that you didn’t have to mention the currency there, because it’s currency agnostic. So if it’s 100,000 Euros to buy the property, and 3000 Euros annually in net income, then it’s 3%. If it’s dollars, it’s dollars; if it’s yen, it’s yen; it doesn’t matter what the currency is.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Yeah, exactly.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah. So, rental yields of 6-7% in Dublin?

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Yeah, often higher, on smaller properties. So, that becomes quite attractive. Especially when you know that the properties are really, perhaps, 45% of what they were five years ago. And often Dublin is not an unattractive place. So, and—it’s true that you still have a big overhand of properties across the country, which—and people who’ve taken out mortgages, and who won’t be able to repay their mortgages. But you could have said that about the US only a few months ago. And we’re seeing quite a big rebound now. And I—I strongly believe that that kind of process is going to happen in Ireland, and you’re going to have to see something like the US experience repeating itself.

JASON HARTMAN: Sure, sure. Now, before you move on even past Ireland—back to Spain for a moment, if you would, because that’s just such an attractive place, in terms of natural beauty. Any particular cities or towns that you want to mention? I know that you—you’re basically looking at the entire planet, so, you may not drill down to that level, I would completely understand. But, just off hand, if you have any—

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Yeah, I’m not very good on particular cities. It really depends what you like, because the Brits—and I’m as representative of the Brits, very fond of the south Spain, they’re also fond of south Portugal. Strong historical associations between the UK and the south of Portugal. [unintelligible]. But as to places….

JASON HARTMAN: Just thought I’d ask.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: I can’t help you. We’re talking in terms of buying, but of course, the other thing, which I always think is attractive, is what I did. And when we were talking the other evening, it sounded as if you were thinking of the same thing. Which is, assuming you’ve got a property in the US, saying, to heck with this, let me go and live somewhere else for a year or two, and rent out your property in the US, and arbitrage it, and use the money, and go and get—and go and rent a property in another country. I did this in Manila, Philippines, when I took a very small apartment that I had in a not very attractive part of London, and I got myself in the center of the capital, in the second most subdivision, gated community, a very large house with a swimming pool, with space for two maids and a driver. And if you’d seen my previous apartment, you would have thought, you know, this guy is almost a welfare case. And then I transfer to Manila and I have this luxurious life. And this sort of exchange is very, very—I think it’s very attractive, and very possible, in many places. I mean, especially if you’re coming from somewhere like New York, where the prices, you know—the rents and the prices are so high.

JASON HARTMAN: Oh, listen, you are absolutely right, Matthew. I mean—and you can even do this within the United States, as well as within your home country, wherever you happen to be listening. You know, I moved from Newport Beach to Phoenix, Arizona, and, sans the hot dry summers, everything is better here. I’m a renter in a beautiful penthouse, and I get much more than I did in California for much less money, and really enjoy the life a lot more out here, frankly. So, renting is a great opportunity, and especially if you’re a person of means who’s renting what in that market is considered a high end property. There’s—I always talk on my Creating Wealth Show about rent elasticity, or the lack thereof. Rents only typically rise to sort of a certain amount, and then the ratio gets very out of whack on a high end property.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: That’s a very good observation. Because what you—the ideal, and I’m sure we’re of one mind here—the ideal is to take a not very good property in a high end city, for which you can get a huge rent, and arbitrage it for a very good property in a less expensive city. Or a less expensive country, where you can enjoy a much better lifestyle. I think this is sort of the ideal.

JASON HARTMAN: Sure, sure. Well, that begs the question, and I think most expats would be very wise to rent before buying, because there are so many dimensions to becoming an expat, and living offshore. What markets really make sense to be a renter, maybe? Do you look at that?

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Yeah, what I was—I was thinking about this, and sort of assuming, again, that we’re dealing with someone who comes from New York.

JASON HARTMAN: And spending a lot of money, in other words.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Spending a lot of money. Or getting a lot of money, if you take your apartment and rent it out. And, we have on our side a comparison between rents around the world for apartments of 120 square meters. Which is—square feet is about—

JASON HARTMAN: About 1200.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: 1300. Yeah, 12 or 1300.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah. Just multiply by 10, generally. It’s close enough for government work, as the saying goes.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: And, for your 1200 square feet apartment—I mean, I’ve just been doing a round of various places. If you wanted to go to Lisbon, Portugal, you could get nearly 6000 square feet, rather than 12000 square feet. Now that is a very substantial improvement. I mean, or, just by renting out one, and getting the other. If you went to Cyprus, you could get 7700 square feet. It’s—you know, you can get six times the space for the same money. So, you probably wouldn’t rent an apartment. You’d probably rent a house with a swimming pool. And in terms of upgrading your quality of life, of course, the other element is what kind of country you go to. You were talking about Santiago, Chile. And I would imagine—I haven’t—do you know Chile?

JASON HARTMAN: A little bit. Sure. Yeah. I think Chile’s one of the countries I really want to talk about. I’m hearing such good things about Chile lately; that they’ve really gotten their act together, and just a lot of good stuff. So please, tell us more.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: By my calculation, you can get five and a half times in Santiago, the capital. Oh, I’ve got it wrong. Three and a half times, in Santiago, the capital of Chile, than what you could get in New York. It’s quite an upgrade. It’s not an enormous upgrade, but it’s quite an upgrade; for your 1200 square feet, you get four and a half hundred. 4500. So, I mean—and the other thing, I don’t know about Chile because I don’t know the country well enough. If you’re moving to some countries, you also get much cheaper personal services. So, you could probably afford to have a maid, or two maids, you know. If you are going to the third world. And this is—this makes life easier. I don’t know if that’s the case in Chile, because it’s quite a developed economy. It may be that that era, that time, has passed already. But it certainly would be the case in Uruguay, in Ecuador, probably in Costa Rica, probably in Panama, certainly in Peru, that you—you not only find your rent is—I mean, Lima is, you get six times as much space in Lima as you do in New York for the same money. No surprise. But you also get probably a couple of maids and a driver, if you happen to want a driver. So, your whole style of life takes a huge upgrade. Which is attractive to some people. Attractive to me, certainly.

JASON HARTMAN: Fantastic. Well, no question about it. And, the other part of that upgrade, that many people don’t notice, that I noticed in moving from California to Arizona, is that in California—maybe you’ve heard the saying: even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat. It’s kind of a funny saying. But I think it holds a lot of truth to it, Matthew. Because you know, living in California, I was very successful, and I felt like I had, in a sense, won the rat race. You know. I mean, certainly there were people much more successful than I. But I felt like I was doing well. I was ahead of things. But what you don’t realize a lot of times is that everybody living around you, pretty much, is struggling to live in such an expensive place. So the resources are very scarce. And those people are very stressed. And so, they become less friendly, and more insular to some degree, and things are just tougher. It maligns motivations. And then, when you look at how much it costs to run a business in a given place, fewer new restaurants open, or entertainment venues. There’s less shopping opportunities, and less convenience, less parking at the shopping center, and the restaurants are more crowded, because there are fewer businesses when it becomes restrictive and expensive to run a business. So, as a customer, your customer experience declines. So, there are a lot of interesting interconnected issues with this. But, so, it’s not just about space and the area in which you live, although those are very important factor. But talk to us about some other maybe highlights, as we go around the globe.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Right. When I—I mean, I’m a sort of third world junky, which I think is a little bit different to you, because I like—I very much appreciate the sensation of stepping back in time, in a sense.

JASON HARTMAN: Well, go to Cuba. That’s the perfect place for it. And probably Myanmar, now.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Actually, yeah, Myanmar of course is—

JASON HARTMAN: It’s open.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Is open, an extremely attractive. There’s a sort of—amongst people I know here, there’s just a sort of pilgrimage of all my friends to Myanmar, because they enjoy it so much, and they find it’s—but a lot of that is sort of European nostalgia for the cities as they were in colonial times, or before modernity hit them. And of course, poor old Myanmar hasn’t got much modernity, because it’s been preserved in stone by its terrible military regime for 45 years, or however long it’s been. But that, for the vulgar tourists, I’m afraid that has its up sides. And you are seeing people coming in and enjoying that. So, I mean, I think it would be interesting—I think Cambodia—would you believe that the scene of the massacres, Phnom Penh, is a charming city? The Cambodians are very attractive and pleasant people, the city has been rebuilt in a new world—it’s spotless, but it’s not a modern city. It’s not crowded, and again, you get a six-fold increase—for your New York apartment, you get a six-fold increase in living space, and all the rest of the amenities. If you happen to want to go and bury yourself in Phnom Penh. In Asia, you could choose modernity, and brave the pollution of Shanghai and all its many attractions and terrors.

JASON HARTMAN: Well, you could in China, for example, but if you want a modern, clean country—I mean, clean is their middle name, almost—how is Singapore doing? It’s probably very expensive, I assume.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: It is quite expensive. But of course, still, you’re doing a lot better than New York. For good reason. So, you’re still getting quite an uptick. It’s—Singapore is never on Hong Kong level. I haven’t got the figures in front of me, but I would imagine you get about 60 or 70% uptick in space for your money. Perhaps a bit more.

JASON HARTMAN: That’s pretty significant, compared to Hong Kong.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Well yeah. Hong Kong’s just gone crazy, these last two years. But of course—and Singapore has many, many chances. It’s culturally rich now, it’s becoming more liberal, the air is clean, you can get a bit of domestic service, and you can—you can get out to the rest of Asia very easily. All the tax rates are low, all those things are attractive. It’s a little bit intense for my taste. But. I never find that culture very relaxed. I’m—in Asia I’m more a Southeast Asia person. I prefer the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, as cultures, because the people are so incredibly relaxed. I mean, an example from the Philippines—there was a time when the Filipinos were sending troops in to help the US and the rest of us in Iraq. And the terrorists, or the opposition, however you want to call them, kidnapped one Filipino soldier and said, we’ll kill him, unless the Filipino army withdraws, and takes its troops back to Manila. What happened? The Filipino army withdrew.

JASON HARTMAN: Wow.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: And the strange thing was, that this was the most popular thing in the country. It was a hugely popular—in a corrupt presidency, this was extraordinarily popular. And for me, this is very reasonable. These people seem to me extraordinarily reasonable people. What were they doing fighting in Iraq? It’s got nothing to do with them. And they didn’t want their people killed, and they—and they made it clear. And I find the Southeast Asians are very reasonable in that way. This has got nothing to do of course with property. Let’s talk about property. Where shall we go in the globe? Of course, there is—

JASON HARTMAN: Well, I’d like to explore maybe a little bit of Central and South America, and definitely get into more of Europe. For example, you’ve got an article on your site about Ukraine, Hungary, some of the eastern countries are somewhat interesting. You could almost argue that some of them are second world, maybe not third, but—and I wonder what’s going on in Belarus. I mean, that’s almost as mysterious as North Korea. Well, not that bad. But.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Yeah. Well, I think both Ukraine and Belarus are very tough and difficult places. And I’ve tended not to find out too much about them, because what’s the point?

JASON HARTMAN: Well, yeah. But Ukraine isn’t like Belarus in terms of its government.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Right. No, that’s—

JASON HARTMAN: There’s quite a significant difference there.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Yeah, yeah. Then there are the Hungary’s, etcetera. Of course, Hungary’s going through a bit of a bad patch, with a sort of nearly Fascist government. The Czech Republic is very attractive. Slovakia very attractive. And I think you’re going to see—my hunch is, with the whole of Eastern Europe you’re going to see a recovery there before the rest of Europe, because—especially in the ones which are not pegged to the Euro. Because they’ll be able to depreciate their currencies, and they’re becoming—and the scale of the crisis being quite significant, but I think that the history of communism means that they are more open to the whole—in a way, they’re more free market, because they were once communist. You see this very strongly in the Baltic States, in Estonia and Latvia particularly. That having been communist, Estonia is now this absolute exemplar of liberal adjustment. It has downgraded its wages, it’s spending less money, and it’s becoming much more competitive. And I think you will see that throughout Eastern Europe, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the recovery in Europe is led by Eastern Europe.

JASON HARTMAN: Very interesting. Are there any eastern countries you want to mention? I remember being in Bulgaria a couple of years ago, shortly—well, a few years ago, after it joined the EU—and seeing all of their new road project, and going out to—I just knew that market was a total bubble. It was unbelievable. And of course it did crash, as I predicted. I went to Bansko, probably the poster child for their bubble, and wow, that really had a correction. Pretty significant. But, anything in these countries, in these eastern countries, you want to touch on specifically? I don’t know how Romania’s doing. And then, I don’t want to forget to talk about Italy, another country on the verge of an economic mess. But physically, and brand-wise, as a tourist, such an attractive place.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Oh, very attractive. Unfortunately for the property market, it hasn’t had its crisis enough yet. It hasn’t sunk very much. So, I don’t think you’re getting wonderful deals in Italy, and I’m not sure that you ever will. Because who would refuse a house by the lake in Italy? This is such an obvious value that you can hit the economy as much as you want, and those properties are always going to be attractive to international buyers. So, I don’t think—Palermo may collapse, but I don’t see that Umbria is gonna collapse. I’ve always been attracted to Hungary, because we’ve always noticed that yields are rather high in Hungary. And at the moment, the recession is hitting it rather hard, and we’ve noticed particularly that all these—the old communist bloc type apartments have collapsed in value this year particularly. But the newer ones are going up. So there is obviously some kind of transition happening, that new money is coming in. And I think that—I suspect that you will—you buy there and you’re getting 8, 9% yields in Budapest.

So, I would be very surprised if we don’t see a rebound in Hungary. Of course, it does depend how unpleasant the government becomes, with a sort of policy of persecuting gypsies and such. And then of course, there are places like Cyprus. Cyprus is going to be an interesting one. I suppose that there is a place where you would get for your 1200 square feet in New York, you’d get, by our calculations, nearly 8000 square feet. So you’ve got a tremendous uplift in rent. And it’s very attractive. Despite the crisis. But—and then we have this puzzle of London, and these huge values in London. We reckon that London is now the most expensive place to rent—in central, real central London, the high end London—the most expensive place to rent property, bar none. It’s more expensive than Monaco, even.

JASON HARTMAN: Wow.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: More expensive than Hong Kong. Now, can this continue? Does it make sense for—I mean, this is Russian money, and Chinese money, and Middle Eastern trophy money coming into London. But I don’t know that it really makes sense for a capital city of a slightly failing country which has no export industry, to be valued so much.

JASON HARTMAN: I would agree. I would agree that cities like London and New York are largely built on a smoke and mirrors economy. The financial services economy. Which isn’t real. You mentioned the export issue. I agree. I think ultimately, that economy will continue to have scandals and problems and yeah, I mean, you look at the derivatives issues nowadays, and wow, you just think—what a house of cards this is. There’s a big difference between the Wall Street economy and the real economy.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: We were talking about, would you be attracted to come and live in Europe?

JASON HARTMAN: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Where would you choose?

JASON HARTMAN: I don’t know. I don’t know, Vienna’s a nice city. There are so many attractive places in Europe. Even though it’s on the verge of collapse.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Vienna’s not on the verge of collapse. The economy’s been going up for the last eight years, Vienna’s been going up. But it’s still not so expensive to rent. You could also choose Copenhagen, which is also very, very attractive. Of course, more boring, probably. Less centrally placed.

JASON HARTMAN: Well, tell us what else is going on, and let’s look at South America again. We touched on Chile, we touched on a couple of other places. Argentina’s always in the news. It’s so corrupt it’s almost part of its charm. But, any other South American areas?

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Well, in terms of prices, we sort of assume that the Brazil boom is coming to an end. Although it never seems to end. We keep predicting it’s going to end, but it steamrollers on.

JASON HARTMAN: The thing that concerns me about Brazil is the violence and the crime. Great place, other than that. You know? That’s a pretty big detail. It’s pretty important.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: It is pretty important. Well, Uruguay is kind of very safe, and you get, in Montevideo, you get quite an uptick in your rental values. You get about four and a half times what you would get in New York for the same money. So your arbitrage pays off there. And Panama, I don’t know what you think about Panama—

JASON HARTMAN: Well, you know, I think it’s probably the best place in Central America. Which isn’t saying a whole lot, for me. But again, I’m different than a lot of people. I may be the opposite of you. I mean, people love Belize, they love Costa Rica. Those places just don’t do it for me, personally. But it just depends what you want. If you want to spend your life sitting on the beach, hey, more power to you. It’s just not my kind of thing.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Yeah. Well, I’m quite fond of the beach.

JASON HARTMAN: Well, there you go. You live in London, so that’s no surprise really.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: You wouldn’t want to be on one of our beaches.

JASON HARTMAN: We always want what we don’t have. That’s kind of the point.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: No, I would probably—you know, have you ever been to Ecuador? To Quito?

JASON HARTMAN: I have not been to Ecuador, but I’ve interviewed, and I’m really interested in going there ASAP. I’ve had Gary Scott, the sort of Ecuador expert—he’s a real guru—he’s been on my show a couple of times, and I really enjoy Gary’s writings.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: It’s supposed to be a very, very charming city to live in. And easy to get out of into the countryside and all that sort of stuff. And it—it also has the attraction that it is the—on our list, it is the cheapest place to rent, per square foot, of any capital city on our list. Which is not saying everything in the world, because there may be some African which are not on our list. But it’s extremely low cost. So, for your 1300 New York square feet, you can get 10, 11,000 square feet.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, it’s amazing.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: So, that’s something to be said for it. so, if you were combining the fact that it’s said to be very attractive—I haven’t been there, so I don’t know—with the fact that it’s very low cost.

JASON HARTMAN: Right, right. Speaking of which, and just a curiosity—there’s probably not much to talk about, unfortunately. But Africa—such a vast continent, vast resources, culturally and politically, so many places are kind of a mess. But any highlights there?

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Yeah, I don’t, I’m afraid, cover it enough. Because there isn’t the interest. We already cover so much of the world, and we began to cover Africa, but there just wasn’t—our website is very dependent on traffic, and there just wasn’t the traffic to reinforce it. And plus, it was incredibly difficult to do the research. For instance, in Nigeria, we could never, in Lagos, get the prices of secondhand buildings, which is what we concentrate on, to do our pricing. And I put this to a Nigerian friend, and he said, oh, no, no, no, people won’t buy secondhand stuff. They’re afraid of the spirits.

JASON HARTMAN: Oh, wow.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: So, old buildings have got spirits. And, it was just impossible to get pricing. I don’t know if that’s still the case. But we sort of gave up. if we couldn’t get pricing, what could we do? And so, we haven’t done a lot in Africa, outside South Africa.

JASON HARTMAN: So, anything else you want to wrap up with? Any sort of big takeaways? I mean, we’re seeing the US market going through literally a bit of a boom, in so many places in the US, our investors are trying to buy everything they can get their hands on right now.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: But of course that US boom is going to transfer into mini boomlets in all those satellite places.

JASON HARTMAN: Sure.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: The bits of Caribbean which are satellite to the US, the bits of Central America which are effectively sort of satellite. All those property values, which have all been slumping. You already see that in the Caribbean. But I’m sure there’s a long way to go. So, I do think it is the—it continues to be the time to buy. Perhaps in some places in the US no longer, but I still think there’s a long way to go, and I think people can look abroad around them, in those satellite zones, and buy there.

JASON HARTMAN: Fantastic. Well, great to have you back on the show. The website is www.globalpropertyguide.com. Are there any other resources that you want to mention to people, or any things on the site specifically that might be—

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: —the thing is, for sites, is that it’s really designed for people that are buying with at least at the back of their mind, the idea of investing in properties abroad. So, we’re very strong—we’re uniquely strong on the financial aspect, and we have gone out and done our own research. Every year we do research on 100 countries, 105 countries, on how much it costs to buy a certain size apartment or house, how much you can rent it for, how much the transaction cost is—how much you’re paying in the whole process of buying and selling again. Are you paying 5%, or are you losing 18%, as you do in some places. And plus we have extensive legal guides and practice guides. So, it is, I think, the most informative site for the overseas residential property buyers. That’s all we do. We don’t do commercial. So we’re not at all like these big international real estate companies. We concentrate on the buyer of houses and apartments who is a little bit interested in the financial side of things.

JASON HARTMAN: Fantastic. Well, keep up the work, and let’s have you back on the show with new updates on a regular basis, okay?

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Well thank you very much, Jason. It’s been very nice talking to you. And call me up and we can talk while we’re not being listened to by your very large audience.

JASON HARTMAN: Fantastic. I’ll certainly do that, Matthew. Thanks for joining us today.

MATTHEW MONTAGU-POLLOCK: Okay, bye bye.

[MUSIC]

ANNOUNCER: This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. All rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.HartmanMedia.com, or email [email protected]. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, or business professional for any individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own, and the host is acting on behalf of Platinum Properties Investor Network, Inc. exclusively.

Transcribed by David

The Jetsetter Show

Tags: Global Property Guide, international investing, Jason Hartman, Matthew Montagu-Pollack, The Jetsetter Show