Mike Cobb - The Overseas Escape Plan

Mike Cobb, CEO of ECI Developments and author of How To Buy Your Home Overseas & Get It Right The First Time, explores what it really takes to live—and invest—abroad successfully. More than 25 years ago, Mike saw the gap between people dreaming about retiring on a beach and actually making it happen, so he set out to build thoughtfully planned communities across Latin America, including Belize, Nicaragua, and Panama. Since then, he’s helped thousands of expats, investors, and digital nomads turn “someday” into a concrete plan through practical education, on-the-ground Discovery Tours, and real-world development experience.

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Discover how Mike created vocational freedom through international real estate—building a business that allows him to work from the Caribbean, Central America, and beyond.
  
• Learn how he identified a major financing gap for Americans buying property overseas and turned a small mortgage company in Belize into a bank.
  
• Understand the growing demand for living abroad—from retirees seeking affordability to digital nomads decoupling work from location.
  
• Explore the massive opportunity in overseas rental properties as younger remote workers rent long-term in countries like Belize, Panama, and Costa Rica.
  
• Gain practical strategies for navigating foreign legal systems, avoiding corruption, and building powerful local relationships through community involvement.
  
• Get insider insights on international development projects—from beachfront condos and resort communities to teak plantations and second-residency opportunities.

The key moments in this episode are:
 

3:45 From Mortgage Gap To Belize Bank

8:36 The Surge Of Expats And Nomads

9:36 The Global Landlord Opportunity

11:34 Continuing Care Opportunities In Panama

13:18 Navigating Laws, Language, And JVs

19:24 Affordability And Lifestyle Math

22:00 Protecting Buyers: The 30 Questions

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Full transcript here:

Mike Cobb

Two to three weeks out of the month, my office is somewhere in the Caribbean or Central America, South America, right? So I feel very fortunate that I've been able to find this, I would call vocational freedom through real estate. Right. I get to travel, I get to go to these really cool, fun places and and do very interesting things that are that are very unique and for many, like setting up the mortgage company became a bank. I think it was the first time anyone had ever done that, right? And in that part of the world. So these are cool, fun things that that I think have given me a vocational freedom, and it came through real estate.

Mike Swenson

Welcome to the Real Freedom Show. We inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together. If you ever want to get started on your real estate journey, check out our website, freedom throughrealestate.com. It's where we put all of our content, all of our inspiring stories to help you and figure out where you want to go inside of real estate and choose your path. I'm excited today to share. We've got something really cool that we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about going international, going outside the United States. A lot of times I know when we're talking about real estate, it's what's happening inside of the United States, but we've got Mike Cobb here. Mike is the CEO of ECI Developments, also the author of the book How to Buy Your Home Overseas and Get It Right the First Time. For 25 years ago, Mike recognized a big gap in how people dreamed about living abroad and how they actually made it happen. Most folks stopped at wouldn't it be nice to retire on the beach? You rolled up your sleeves and did something about it and helped others across Latin America, um, Belize, Nicaragua, Panama, and a bunch of other countries. So you're helping expats, investors, and digital nomads turn their someday into a reality. And so excited to hear about what you're doing with real estate and uh doing it overseas. So welcome to the show, Mike.

Mike Cobb

Mike, thanks for having me. I I'm happy to be here. I love the title, uh, Freedom Through Real Estate. I uh it's so true. So many kinds of freedom through real estate, right? But certainly financial freedom through real estate, building wealth. And so I think you nailed it on the title. Perfect.

Mike Swenson

You know, kind of share a little bit about your background, you know, and kind of that journey into real estate, why pursuing something inside of real estate and kind of how that all got started, and we'll go from there.

Mike Cobb

Yeah, you know, I I I we were chatting beforehand. I live about 80 miles west of Washington, D.C. And so when I graduated from college in 1986 in northwest Pennsylvania, we were still kind of suffering the Great Recession, the steel industry had collapsed. And so I moved to the DC area just to get a job. And and I got into the computer business, and I was pretty lucky because I get in on the PC side of things this back in 1986, and you know, was very fortunate to be on that side of the equation because as we know, all the mainframe, not all 99% of the mainframe companies are gone, and PCs were the ascendant, right, uh uh type technology. And and so I was in that business, a buddy of mine from college, he was going to Belize, he's a lawyer, he was setting up trusts, asset protection trusts for doctors, right, to to protect them from the ambulance chasing lawyers. He he likes to describe himself as the as the 1%, you know, out there that that's the good lawyers, right? Anyway, but but we we uh we bought some property in Belize. This is back in in 1994, and we started a little mortgage company because Mike, if you were, you know, if you were in Minnesota, you are in Minnesota, and you decided to go to Belize to buy a condo, no bank in Minneapolis, St. Paul is giving you the money, right? Because they can't loan on collateral in Belize, and no bank in Belize would lend to a foreigner, right? So there was this big hole in the marketplace, especially for middle class consumers. Look, if you're really, really wealthy, if you got millions of dollars, you don't need a loan. You can just write a check, right? But for somebody who's a middle class consumer, they might want to put you know 30, 50 down, 100 down on something, whatever it is, but they don't have you know 200, 250, 300, whatever for the business. Uh we actually turned it into a bank in Belize in 2003. We're a mortgage company, mortgage bank basically. And we uh uh but we got into the development business in 1996, and uh I left the computer business in 1998. Uh but the idea was to really build a product that served a North American consumer uh with the kinds of uh standards and expectations they would have when they bought a product and own a product overseas. So that was really my start. Uh really finding needs in the marketplace that were not being served and then finding ways to serve them.

Mike Swenson

Yeah, and to your point, I mean it's something that a lot of people haven't really even thought about is you know, if I do something like that, yeah, there's there's all these big hurdles that when you're we're going overseas and dealing with other countries that yeah, you couldn't even figure out a way to purchase a property without buying the whole dang thing. So those are huge needs to be able to work through.

Mike Cobb

They were. And and you know, I think one of the things that's you mentioned it's kind of cool. And I I've got to say I I feel very fortunate. I love my office. I'm here in Shepherdstown, West Virginia right now, which is my home office, but you know, two to three weeks out of the month, my office is somewhere in the Caribbean or Central America, South America, right? So I feel very fortunate that I've been able to find this, I would call vocational freedom through real estate, right? I get to travel, I get to go to these really cool, fun places and and and do very interesting things that are that are very unique and for many, like setting up the mortgage company, became a bank. I think it was the first time anyone had ever done that, right? And in that part of the world. So these are cool, fun things that that I think have given me a vocational freedom. And it came through real estate, actually. I mean, there are other types of freedom too, financial and and personal freedoms, but uh, but certainly vocational freedom was was one of them.

Mike Swenson

Now, how do you get started with something like that in terms of you know finding finding your consumer? Because that's a very specific type of person you're looking for. Um and so as you're starting to build that out, it's not like you're just gonna, you know, write, do uh Facebook ads or talk to people locally and figure it out. And so how did you go through kind of building and growing that business?

Mike Cobb

Yeah, great question. Back in back in 94, 95, there was no Facebook, there was no Google, there was no nothing, right? Anyway, um, but you know, it it's a great question because at the end of the day, it is always about the consumer, right? You have to be serving someone in business. Uh, you know, to and and and I would say over the last maybe 25 years, certainly the inner 20, 25 years, the internet's made it a lot easier. But our core consumer uh focus has always been newsletters and conferences, right? There are uh uh companies out there that write newsletters about living overseas, uh retiring overseas, investing overseas. Uh, they have conferences. So I got on the conference circuit. I'm still on the conference circuit. I do a ton of speaking. I'll be down in Mexico uh later this week, uh speaking at a big conference in Puerto Vallarta. So, like I that that has been the way that really still is a pretty big element. Although I have to say, in the last 10 years, it has shifted more towards uh uh uh online, right? Being able to pull people in because you can you can sort through millions of people fairly easily online. Uh whereas in the past, before you had that online resource, you know, we went to people who had, I I use the word distilled, right? Distilled the the people who have an interest in overseas. But but Mike, you ready for this? I mean, this is crazy. I just saw this statistic in December, so it's like two months old. It's a brand new statistic. 40% of women between the ages of 18 and 44 is a Gallup poll. 40% of women between 18 and 44 years old would move overseas right now if they had the opportunity. I mean, I'm just like 40%. Now that's a survey. I mean, you know, whatever. When the time comes, it's a little different, right? But but but but that number has never been anywhere close to that. And about a third, I can't remember the survey company, but about a third of retirees said that they would consider living overseas for uh for affordability and and um health care, which kind of surprises people because we have excellent healthcare in the United States. It's just really expensive. Uh uh but but when you live overseas, as I did for 14 years, my family uh raised my girls in Nicaragua. Um, our health care was phenomenal and so inexpensive, silly inexpensive, uh out of pocket, right? So I think the the world is becoming a lot smaller. Information's a lot easier to gather, right? And so we've got people who are looking to move overseas for a variety of reasons. And then we have that last group, which are the digital nomads, right? Now, for the first time in human history, work and the location of work have been decoupled, right, for so many people. So if home is Minneapolis, well, why can't home be Belize or Costa Rica or Panama? For most, many of us, it can be, right? And so now you've got people who are going overseas and and and they're a lot younger generally, um, and they're not buying real estate, but here's an opportunity for your listeners, right? This is an opportunity that we're capitalizing on as a company, but the opportunity is is monstrously huge. So there's so much room in this for everybody. The person who's 28, 30, 35 years old does not have the money to buy a piece of real estate, usually, but they're going overseas. They have a job that lets them do this all day, right? So they're going overseas. They rent. They rent, right? So the opportunity to be a landlord overseas is huge and growing. It's already huge. It was big before. Now it's huge, and it's doing this. I mean, it is it's and so so there is this incredible opportunity to be international landlord that is that is growing. That probably 10 years ago I would have said it's an okay market. Uh five years ago, right after COVID, I would say, hmm, pay attention. But now seeing these numbers and seeing what's happening, yeah, it is an it's an exploding opportunity.

Mike Swenson

So talk a little bit about ECI and and and kind of what you do and how that's developed over you know the last 15 years.

Mike Cobb

I mean, you know, we we uh again, we started out back in the mid-90s serving a retiree, right? So our product was really geared towards like a beach and golf resort. We've a beautiful beach and golf resort called Grand Pacifica. Uh, and and basically we took a cattle pasture and turned it into a small town, right, over the last 25 years. And and but it was initially geared towards a retiree. And and and and and as that market has shifted younger, right, we've really we've really shifted our focus to uh developing and delivering a product that's more geared to someone uh as an owner in their 40s, 50s, pre-retirees. We're seeing a lot of people who are the digital nomads, but they're 50 something, and they say, well, you know, I don't have to wait till I retire to go enjoy the lifestyle I want. I can go finish out my career somewhere else and do the things I love diving, fishing, surfing, whatever it is, golfing, right? Um, but this younger demographic really is is is where we're starting to focus a lot of our attention uh because it really is the largest segment of the growth in the market. Uh the the the the the retiree market's growing, but this new younger demographic is new and growing very uh very rapidly. Let me let me mention one more place where we're we're we're gonna start pursuing some opportunities later this year, is in long-term continuing care. We have a beautiful property in Panama located uh up in a little bit higher elevation, so it's cooler, but it's still very close to a major city, the second biggest city in Panama, great health care, shopping malls, you know, all the stuff that you would want. But in a long-term continuing care capacity, because in the States, if you if you need to private pay for long-term care, it's you know, six, eight, ten, twelve grand a month, right? Pick a number, but call it eight, kind of the average around eight, right? If you want to have the exact same thing in Panama, you can have it for somewhere between$2,000 and$2,500 a month. So it brings the world of this private, long-term continuing care into the uh world of affordability. So we're really, we're really looking at both ends of that demographic spectrum, the young digital nomad all the way starting later this year to that long-term continuing care uh for the oldest of our you know, baby boomers who are aging out.

Mike Swenson

And I'd love to hear the dynamics of how you build connections in these locations. Because, you know, if if I was to you know do some development here in in Minnesota, it's like, okay, I'm gonna ask for referrals, I'm gonna talk to people I know, I'm gonna scout out the area, probably somewhere that's drivable. Here, you're dealing with you know, countries and areas where, you know, at least at one point you had never been, now you've been there. But for somebody outside, they might say, Oh my gosh, there's such a hurdle of of uh challenges that you have to overcome. And, you know, we talk about, you know, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? And so you've kind of worked your way through those. And so I'd love to kind of hear how that worked in different countries, different areas, building those relationships and then strengthening them.

Mike Cobb

Yeah, let me start really generally just to say that that that that the hurdles are high. Uh and and and I think they're they're they're multifaceted, right? Different legal systems, like in most of Latin America, it's civil law. Uh Belize is common law, Belize is English. Belize is actually the easy button for people going overseas. It's English and it's common law. So it kind of like works for a North American, right? But you get into anywhere else, Panama, Costa Rica, Argentina, the rest of Latin America, civil law in Spanish, Brazil, Portuguese, right? But but different language, different legal system, right? So the hurdles can be high. I look at that and I say, good, good, because it keeps a lot of competitors out, right? And and and and so, but hey, if you want to come play, come play. Like there's room in the marketplace, right? But but there's some hurdles to get there, and we've navigated those. Uh we do a ton of JV work. And so what we what we find is people who who don't want to navigate what I would call the business of the business, right? Which are things like entitlements, permits, uh, just the kinds of the business of the business. But maybe they want to, maybe they want to be a landlord, maybe they want to build a condo, be a developer, build a condo building, sell condos, or manage or a small hotel, Airbnb, like all of those kinds of things are possible. We do a lot of JV because we can do the business of the business and let somebody else do the piece that they want to do. And it's a great synergy. And so we do a lot of that. It eliminates a lot of the barriers. But but my simple answer to you, Mike, and to anyone coming south of the border is you know what, get involved. Join the Rotary Club. There's my answer. Like it was rotary for me. It could be Lions, it could be Kawanis, I mean, pick it, whatever. It doesn't matter. Join the Rotary Club, join a service organization for a lot of reasons. One, you'll be known as someone who's doing good and then do good. Don't just join and do nothing. Get in there and get your hands dirty and be the be the advocate for a project. Take, you know, take the project, get your hands dirty, do a project, or 10 or 15, right? So people know that you are doing good in the community. But if you join a Rotary Lions Kawanis, you're in with business leaders, right? So now you're building out a local business network, your Rolodex, so to speak, your Rolodex in the local environment. And typically people that join service organizations care about good business, right? I mean, like they they want to be good business people. And that's really important. So you so you you really start to find the people that are committed to professional development, professional association, uh, and then also committed to doing good. And as you get known for doing good in the community, you you build a reputation that that that really lets you maybe ask for a favor. By the way, one of the things people I have a whole chapter, I shouldn't say in my book, but sorry, I said I wasn't gonna say it, but but but like this is so important. And I talk about it, I speak about it at conferences, right? Please don't ever give a bribe, ever. I know everyone was like, oh, everyone else down there giving bribes, I mean you're paying people off, you know, whatever. The first time you give somebody a bribe, just go down to the tattoo parlor and have a big dollar sign tattooed right on your forehead. Turn it green because you are marked as a payer, right? So there's like a really practical reason not to do it. You you will never get anything done without paying. But the sad reality is that you know corruption corrupts two people, right? It corrupts the person taking the money, but it corrupts you. You're giving the money, right? And so I think there's a moral imperative as well as a practical imperative to not bribing. And so the way that we as an organization have gotten things done is we get in there, we work with Rotary Lions, faith-based organizations, we work with a ton of people and we do a ton of stuff in the community. Then when someone at the at the local community, right, Tip O'Neill, Speaker of the House when Reagan was president, right, was from Boston, and Tip O'Neill uh said, All politics is local, right? And if you're in your business and you're looking for permits for your apartment conversions, right, it's local. You need to know the council members, right? And so, like if you're in there doing really good things in that local community, and then someone at the national level doesn't know you, doesn't care, maybe they're maybe they're looking for a little of this, right? And so they're burying your paperwork. It's always at the bottom of the stack. You can call the mayor or the Al Caldi, they call him, but you can call the council member and say, hey, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Al Caudi, can you go down to the central government and just see if you can get this thing off the bottom of the stack? You know we do good stuff. We're just as soon as we get this done, we're gonna be able to, you know, hire more people, pay more taxes. We're a great community member. And they'll go do that for you because you know what? Whenever you build a clinic, and we've built several clinics and libraries and other things, like, you know, we build it, we show up with a cooler of sandwiches and sodas of pinata for the kids. The mayor comes and all the you know, politicians, like they cut the ribbon, I don't get the ribbon. I mean, I might be standing up there, but they get the scissors, they cut the ribbon, they get all the credit. 30 minutes after the pinata breaks and the kids got their candy, we all leave and he stays there for the rest of the afternoon partying with his constituents, right? So, like he gets all the credit for the good stuff, and we don't want any credit. But when we need a little help at the national government to get a permit move from the bottom of the stack to the top of the stack, they'll go do that for you, right? So you you build these relationships that matter. And and and and and all the while you're doing that, you're doing such awesome, wonderful things in communities that in some cases desperately need it. Uh, we are so blessed in the United States with abundance. We have abundance coming out our ears. We just don't even, we just can't even be thankful enough for all we have, right? And when you go to a developing world country um and you just see uh the need, right? And and and you can make a fairly big difference with not a lot of resources. Um, so it's just like there's just a lot of that's a it's a big good stack, you know, good, good, good, good. Yeah, it's all and it man, you know what? And and it's what gets me out of bed in the morning. Yeah, we we do this for our shareholders and for our profit and stuff like that. But you know what? You know, when when you kind of step back and you go, like, what what am I doing? Like, what am I really doing? Right? Like, no, we're we're doing some good stuff here, right? Really good things.

Mike Swenson

Now, talk a little bit about the the communities that you guys have set up and the opportunities, both for people uh looking to travel overseas, and then obviously, like you mentioned, your investors. Um, you've got investors. So talk a little bit about kind of both sides of that, kind of the boots of the ground stuff.

Mike Cobb

Yeah, you know, uh right now our biggest project is a Marriott Resort, 202-room Marriott Resort we have under construction in Belize on San Pedro, Ambergus Key. That's our that's sort of our our big project. Um, but we have a uh a gardens community with about a hundred condominiums just off the water, about three blocks off the water there. No new building, it's uh coming online here in a few months. Uh we have an we have a community of over-the-water tiny homes. This is really sexy, kind of like that Polynesian tiki kind of thing going on uh over the water. That's in Belize as well. So those are three existing projects. We just acquired 1,600 acres of completely undeveloped uh land in uh southern Belize. Uh a little bit's on the water, a bunch of it's off the water. We're gonna be doing a basically building a small town. I mean, people laugh when I say that, but 1600-acre greenfield site, like, you know, in in a developing country, you're you're kind of building a small town or a village, right? So so that's gonna get started uh here soon. Um we we've got meetings in March down there with our engineers and our uh marketing team. So stay tuned for that. That and you know, and and just to give an example, we will have home sites uh uh uh for for under$20,000, right? I mean, like it's so like you just start to people just scratch their head and you go, wait a minute, I can be, it's about you know three quarters of a mile from the from the from the ocean, but I mean, three quarters of a mile from the ocean for for you know 20 grand, right? And so the these prices don't make a lot of sense. Oceanfront home in Nicaragua, our Grand Pacifica community, Nicaragua. Um, you know, we have oceanfront homes uh for under a half a million dollars. Oceanfront condominium, you know,$300,000,$350,000, right? I mean, you just times 10 or more in California, right? In Florida, times 10. So like the affordability of product uh just opens up opportunities for people that you know that they they wouldn't have otherwise. Uh and our Panama community uh coming online later this year and stuff in Costa Rica in 2028. So you know, we've we've got you know today four different uh countries that we specifically work in with about seven or eight different types of neighborhoods, anywhere from small. Condos that start around 150,000, up to you know, Marriott Penthouse, uh, two-bedroom, two-bath kind of uh stuff at about 1.5. So we we kind of work the spectrum of of opportunity for for folks. And then one other mic, just real quick, totally unrelated, but I actually think it's probably the best ag uh uh product out there, certainly the best ag product overseas. Uh in 1999, I started a teak plantation. I planted 100 acres of teak in Panama for myself and for my kids and my great-grandkids. It's a legacy investment because you know it's harvested once every 25 years. And uh and people just caught on, and and we now have uh, I think about 800 acres of teak uh uh in forest reforestation between Panama and Nicaragua. Uh and and and that's a product that people can own. A quarter acre of a teak. You own the land, you own the trees, uh for under$9,000, right? And so when you talk about financial freedom, you know, if you if you think you're gonna be around in 25 years, right. So so you know, a$9,000 investment's a little over$100 in 25 years. But but, you know, for kids, I mean, think about financial freedom and legacy, right? So maybe you're around in 25 years and you get the first hundred grand, right? But 25 years later, your kids get the 100 grand and so on and so on. And and this is this is one place where uh we talk about freedom. There's financial freedom for sure, um, but but they also Panama has a great residency program for people looking for a residency outside the US or Canada. Uh it's a backup, it's a second, it's a plan B, right? And we've we've helped hundreds of people now uh obtain a second residency as well. And that's actually become something really, really popular in the last uh few years. And and so just one of those things that offers, you know, real estate offering personal freedom as well through the ability to get a residency outside your home country, a second residency, a backup, you know, kind of thing.

Mike Swenson

So are you looking to get started or scale in real estate investing but don't know your next step? Are you overwhelmed thinking about finding deals, analyzing deals, doing due diligence, and managing properties on top of it? Go ahead and push the easy button and invest with us. Real estate investing is what we do full time. We've done dozens of deals with hundreds of doors. We have the knowledge and experience to handpick the best deals that most investors can't find. We've at large off-market deals all the time where you can hopefully find returns and economies of scale that you just can't find on your own. The best thing is it's 100% passive to you for less capital than you put down trying to acquire a property on your own. Don't let this year go by where you don't make the leap, add to your portfolio, or you just sit in analysis by paralysis. To find out more, visit freedomthroughrealestate.com and click on invest. You can book a call and learn more there. So get to scaling your portfolio now with us by your side. That's freedomthroughrealestate.com and click on invest. No, that makes total sense. And like you said, for people that yeah, have the opportunity to work digitally to be able to do that, and yeah, you're getting up an aid. And like you mentioned, the the digital nomads, like there's yeah, some really cool opportunities for really affordable prices to be able to do something that you can't do in the United States, depending on where you live. Certainly not for the cost that you could do in the United States, for sure.

Mike Cobb

Exactly. And you know, the acquisition cost is one thing, but then once you're there, the the cost of living is anywhere from a quarter to at the most a half. I mean, you can spend as much money as you want, right? I mean spend money, right? But if you had if you were just looking for a comparable lifestyle, say in in Belize uh or Panama or Costa Rica to the US, you'd be anywhere between a quarter and a half of what you're spending on a monthly basis here to have the exact same lifestyle there. So it's it's it's just incredibly less expensive. And and and that is a big driver, right? For for folks who are looking at maybe a pretty fixed budget on Social Security, small pension, whatever it is, you know, you're gonna be tight here in the States. You might even be kind of like poor, right? By whatever standard that is, right? Um you might feel poor, but if but living overseas on two grand a month, um you're gonna live really, really well.

Mike Swenson

Now I like to ask people that that write books, tell me a little bit about the inspiration for for putting together a book and the process and and how it kind of came together. Because yeah, as entrepreneurs, you know, you've spent time gaining experience in a certain area, and now you want to be able to share that with others. And so I just like asking them about kind of what's what's the seed for the idea. Tell me more about it and and kind of how it all came together.

Mike Cobb

Yeah, you know, I I have to say I'm I'm uh there's a little bit of a uh bifurcation in my mind. The first is it it would it it did, it still does. It breaks my heart to see people come to actually it's anywhere outside your home country. When you leave your home turf, you're you're going someplace foreign. It could be you're going to Canada, right? Or you're going to Europe or a European coming to the US. So it's not just Latin America, but you know, I watched people come to Latin America and just get either get margarita madness, they just they on their very first trip, they got out their checkbook and they bought a condo, and sometimes it works out, but most many times it doesn't, right? And it's just sad. Or or they get ripped off, right? Because they don't understand that that you know, there's different kinds of title. Again, we're in civil law, which is different, right? There's rights of possession, which really isn't title, although, you know, scammy uh uh real estate agents might go R O P title, rights of possession title. They throw the word title in there, but like it's not, right? And so people would get ripped off, and I would watch this happen, and it would break my heart because a lot of times, you know, these were the nest eggs people had built up, right? They were they were they were following a dream. Like I can live in, I can live in you know Panama for for you know$1,500 a month and absolutely, and you can live well on fifty, depends on where in Panama, but you can live well on$1,500 a month in Panama. So they have this small nest egg and they come down, they buy from scammy person and they blow it. And now they're screwed because now they don't have their nest egg and they don't have a place in Panama, they got to go back to the US and right. It's just it's horrible. So there was the what I would call the the emotional piece of just feeling bad. But then there was the practical aspect of I was losing those sales to scammers, right? I'm just like, you know, this is BS. Like I'm losing sales to people who are ripping people off. What can I do to educate the consumer to say, hey, just ask these questions? By the way, here are here, and and there's 30 questions in my book, right? Here are 30 questions that you should ask when you buy property outside your home country, right? They're due diligence questions that we might not think to ask, right? Title like, is there really title, right? Because in the US, you just assume there's title. I mean, like, of course there's title. Who doesn't have title in the US anymore? But that's not true in Latin America. 90% of the properties, and probably more than that, have title, but 10% don't, or some, but but the scammers are working that 10% angle, right? Not the 90%. And so I put together this list of 30 questions, uh, and and they have to do with, I mean, is there is there hot and cold water in all of the bathrooms? You have to see these beautiful homes, and there's no there's no hot water in the bathroom. And you're like, like, how can that be? Because hot water is not a thing down there for you know, right? So anyway, so and I I always said, look, here are 30 questions that you should ask everyone, including me. I think I have pretty good answers to them, right? You know, and and if you can, if, if, if you find five people who give what I would call good answers to all these questions, now you're gonna pick from one of five, and I'll probably be one of the five, right? I like those odds, right? But when I'm competing against someone who's a a scammer, like I don't stand a chance, right? And so there was a practical reason to come up with the book, but it really evolved out of just these heartbreak situations where I'd watch people kind of lose their nest eggs and and just have horrible experiences, and they were in some cases tragic, truly tragic.

Mike Swenson
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And it's you know, I think about as an as a my previous life as a real estate agent, right? It's our job to educate about you know what you do as a good professional agent to hopefully keep people from choosing bad agents that they don't necessarily know. And so we had interview questionnaire, like when interviewing your agent asks these questions, right? Anything else that you want to to share that's uh noteworthy here before we wrap up?

Mike Cobb

Well, you know, Mike, I I just would love to give anyone listening today a free copy of my book right here, you know, how to buy your home overseas and get it right the first time. If if people will just send an email to info at ecidevelopment.com, info at ecidevelopment.com, and in the in the subject, I just say, you know, Mike Swenson podcast, you know, free book. I will send them a coupon to uh go to Amazon and download a copy of my book on Kindle for free. Um if you're thinking about a property overseas, please, you need you need the information. You need the 30 questions that are in my book. You need them. My gift to you, uh, please come come ask for it. We'll send you the the the coupon to download the book and and uh yeah, really appreciate you having me on today, Mike. Great, great conversation. This is good stuff.

Mike Swenson

Awesome, and I'm happy to share it. Yeah, it's it's a great story of somebody doing something very different than what we typically have on the show. And you know, it creates opportunity, and there's there's more opportunity in real estate, it's all over the world, and so excited to hear you share how you did that and and inspire somebody else to do the same, or inspire somebody else that might want to partner up with you in some way, shape, or form. So I just love telling these great stories. So, Mike, thanks so much for coming on and sharing, and excited to hear about you how you continue to grow in the future. Thank you.