Appraisals in Latin America
In all seriousness. Please be very aware of the situation wherever you are thinking of going.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world.../6543-juarez-mexico-murder-rate-up-40-percent
Sorry for the delay in thanking you all for your concern and help, but I cannot access AppraisersForum from outside the U.S. Maybe that's why we never hear from foreign appraisers except those from Canada.
Yes, I was working in Mexico City, but not appraising the property in question, which is actually a tree farm in Costa Rica.
I told the client that I have appraised land in Costa Rica but don't have the competency to appraise timber, which would require the skills of a consulting forester. When I later found out that the tree farm only had half the number of trees as previously thought, none of which were teak, I questioned whether such an operation would even be profitable enough to justify the cost of a timber cruise, but I needed to know how much a timber cruise generally costs. There now seems to be an oversupply of timber, particularly teak, being produced in Costa Rica, due to the numerous tree farm investments being sold to foreign investors.
As with any market for "investment properties", distortions are created when properties are developed in response to investor demand rather than consumer demand. For instance, great surpluses of “rental homes” were developed in Las Vegas and Kissimmee, Florida, not in response to a shortage of housing in those areas, but to sell to out-of-state investors. Costa Rican tree farms are now repeating the same concept all over again.
I go into more detail in my blog at
www.InternationalAppraiser.com.
As for my work in Mexico, I was appraising residential land at the northern periphery of the Mexico City metro area. (About half of my work deals with residential subdivisions.) I will blog about this in a few days.
