Real Estate In The Twilight Zone!
One of my favorite shows is called International Home Buyers. It’s a show that travels to different spots around the world where you follow an English-speaking real estate broker as he assists a buyer (usually American, Canadian, or English) in purchasing a home in a foreign country. I’ve already seen buyers snatching up properties in Northern Spain, Southern Spain, Italy, Greece, France, Belize, and Argentina, to name just a few, and the other day I started working my way through their latest location: the Bahamas.
Watching those buyers looking for homes in locales outside of their home country is a real eye opener. I’ve seen people looking at homes in France and Spain, exclaiming how beautiful they are, while at the same time I noted that many of these “beautiful homes” had little more in the way of a kitchen than a wood-burning stove and a cold-water hand pump bringing water into the kitchen (which, incidentally, the real estate broker called “indoor plumping”). And many of these kitchens still had the original rotted wood from the 600-year-old roof of that quaint cottage. And that “perfect stone fireplace” that was original from when the house was built in the 1300s—yup! just what they were looking for.
After going back and forth deciding which location and which style home is right for them and how much they wanted to spend, you continue on to the next part of the show where the couple has already bought and moved into their new home and have been living there four to six months so you can see the before and after photos of all the renovations.
Now, instead of the original kitchen with the cold-water hand pump and the wood burning stove that was “just what they were looking for,” there’s a $75,000 (of course, converted from Euros) brand-new, top-of-the-line kitchen installed in its place. I never did find out what happened to the cold-water hand pump and the wood burning stove with the solitary cooking plate on top.
So, I figured now that we’re working our way through the Bahamas, this is where the fun really starts—beautiful beaches, great weather, gorgeous landscaping. I sat back ready to see what houses they were going to show the foreign homebuyers today, especially since they had a purchasing budget of $1 million to play with.
Our couple of the day wanted to purchase a 4-bedroom, 3-bath home, and I said to myself, “Sounds good, with that kind of budget, we’ll see some nice stuff.” The broker, all excited, brought them to the first house of the day, which in my eyes looked little better than a painted shack, and declared, “Here’s a beautiful place with 1,600 square feet of space and 3.5-bedroom house listed at $1,200,000.” I sat up and looked at this place that I could not have given away in the 5 Towns if I offered a monthly allowance to go with it! Then I listened as the real estate broker went on to tell them that although it lacked an eat-in kitchen and dining room, there was a lovely patio outside and anyway, eating outdoors was way more preferable anyway so long as you had a nice canopy in case of rain! The couple nodded (as if they agreed!) and worked their way through the rest of the house to check out the bedrooms. The master bedroom looked no larger than a 9×12 room. The half-bedroom was literally a room with just enough space for a single bed and a little walking space next to it plus a window. As they continued to plod through the rest of the house (which didn’t take more than 5 minutes), the real estate broker brought them to a ladder attached to the balcony on the second floor and they all climbed up to a flat area of the roof where he declared “Can you believe this view? It’s worth the asking price of the house alone!” The couple agreed, and bought the house!
I’ve decided that I must find this guy and bring him here to sell all the homes that nobody wants. It will be mind-boggling to see at what prices he will decide to list them all!
Anessa Cohen lives in Cedarhurst and is a Licensed Real Estate Broker (Anessa V Cohen Realty) with over 20 years of experience offering full service residential, management and commercial real estate services in the 5 Towns of Long Island as well as the tri-state area. She can be reached at 516-569-5007 and encourages readers to send any questions and scenarios by email to [email protected].
