REAL ESTATE WARNING

The Real Estate market in Panama is a crazy one.
As soon as you put your feet in the city, you´ll be amazed by all the skyscrapers you will see. The skyline is amazing and will instantly make you think that you have reached the United States, instead of a little Latin-American country.

All these buildings represents a great opportunity for business for a lot of people from Panama, and abroad. There are literally thousands of brokers in Panama. Must of them are people who just arrived in the country and realized that there was an opportunity in Real Estate, so they jumped in the train. They have no background or experience in Real Estate, nor they have the license to work in the field either. What is worst, sometimes they don´t have the ethics needed to do the job in a professional way...and that could lead you, as a buyer, to a very painful situation.
Fortunately it is not so difficult to find out when you are dealing with a real professional and when..well, not so. There are some signs that should trigger your suspicion, like:

- The lack of a professional email address: Do you see too many professionals in your country that dont have a company´s email address?....hotmail, gmail, or yahoo accounts indicates that there is no company behind the person. If the guy or girl is not from Panama..you have 90% chance that he/she wont have a valid real estate license and so, he/she is not authorized to work in the Real Estate sector.

- You go to visit a property and the broker shows up wearing...shorts and flip flops. Does that look professional to you?....

- Once you visit a property, the broker do his/her best to make you give a deposit, saying that if you dont do so, the property will be gone...without you even knowing anything about the property or the contract you would sign!!. It´s true, the real estate market is very active in Panama..but, a real professional would never tell you to give your hard earned money to someone you dont know, and without having some relevant information first.

Sure there are good freelance professionals and respectable companies doing business in Panama, you just have to find them using your common sense and instinct.

Yanko Pla
CEO & Founder
P Investments Real Estate
yanko@pinvestmentsrealestate.com