Buying and Remodeling a House in Panama

hello this is jackie with panama relocation tours and thank you so much for joining me for our saturday live stream today i have a really special guest her name is kay um who moved to panama and she bought a house and remodeled it she'll even be able to show you some of the remodeling but before i bring kay on i want to do an introduction for those of you that are new to our live stream my name is jackie lang i'm the owner of panama relocation tours which we started in 2010 last week we finished tour number 182 so we have done a lot of tours and moved a lot of people every month we move a lot of people to panama and we specialize in making your move to panama super easy and smooth and avoid hassles and avoid mistakes and don't get hooked up with the wrong people because there's good people and bad people everywhere so we want to make sure that you have a smooth household-free move by working with the right people we also offer private tours that are just for the most popular places to live so if you know you want to live at the beach we can just do a tour of the beach areas if you know you want to live in the mountains you can just do a tour of the mountain town or the beach town that you're most interested or an island that you're most interested in so our website is panama relocationtours.com we'd like for you to subscribe to our website and we'll send you a 15 part email series for free also remember to subscribe to our youtube channel and then you'll be notified whenever we upload some new videos so with without further ado i now want to introduce our guest who is kay there you are hi kay hi hi thanks so much for joining us today and sharing your experiences about moving from panama so let's start with just a little bit of background where did you move from and when did you move to panama um i'm from california and i moved to panama in october 2021 2021. so by the way everybody we have a little bit of a storm going on right now it's pouring down rain big time and hopefully we don't lose electricity sometimes whenever it rains hard then it loses electricity if that should happen i'll try to get back on and kay will try to get back on as fast as possible but that's just part of living in the tropics that sometimes it pours down rain but we're doing so good so far so you you live from california is that where you live yes i i've been in california since 1954. my family my whole family in 2011 i retired and i didn't know about panama at all and so we didn't sell our house until july of 2021 2021 2020 and we had planned to come to panama the following week and then they closed the country yeah we had to throw all of our stuff into storage and um just waited out and then when they opened the country we took a tour in november we came and took you not with you but i think the tours were still off because of covet so um we took the private tours to volcan and um around boquete yeah yeah originally we just offered private tours and it's really good for the private tours because if you know you want to live in the highlands but you're just not sure which town is avaya or santa fe or boquete you can just tour those towns and skip the whole beach thing if you're like me i don't want to be anywhere close to hot weather i prefer being up in the highlands and then other people they they don't want to be in the rain they don't want to be in the cooler weather they have to be by the beach so the private tours are perfect for helping you just pinpoint and do a deep dive into the areas that you're most interested in so you said i think you said in october of 2021 was when you moved to panama yes we yeah my budget was between 100 and 150 000. um you would said some good things about if you look you might be able to find something for 85 000 and up yeah and so i started looking i went out with many realtors and i was looking at fixer-uppers primarily and stumbled upon this house but um i wasn't sure because the realtors wanted more money and we just couldn't go higher because i knew i'd have to do the kitchen put in a laundry room yeah put in tanks and all kinds of things so we i wound up i kind of walked away because it was just too high and the friend i brought to um look at the house i had him look at the roof and check the septic tanks and um he thought it was okay he said there weren't the house wasn't finished very well but he's a builder so he knows those things he said it looked like a pretty sound house so i walked away because they weren't coming down on the price and a couple of weeks later apparently he and the owner because they're both panamanians were talking to each other i didn't even know they'd exchange phone numbers so a few weeks later he called me up and he said the owner wants you to make an offer on the house so i go well i gave them my talk and um they agreed that's great when you first moved to panama did you just rent a house when you first moved to panama to give you time to look for something to buy yes i rented a house from january through august and i rented a two-bedroom condo a valley of flowers which is a nice perfect place to be to catch the bus and take a taxi and um so i i was able to look around and i i saw a lot of pretty good bargains but there were always things like it was too close to the road i was worried about the noise and um yeah this this location is ideal i'm across from a huge field and the horses and cows come visiting from time to time yeah yeah and then it's going to be a lot more quiet that's one of the things you really have to look out for whether you're renting or if you're buying is what are the things that are all around you because like you said if the house is too close to the road you're going to hear road noise and those trucks with their i don't know what they're called jack breaks or something like that they can really be loud or if you're right next to a school uh whatever they're practicing for the big holidays and parades in november you can hear drums every day for three months straight if you're right next to school so or a restaurant that might have loud music on thursday friday saturday or even more nights out of the week so um you know finding the right house is one thing but finding the right location has to go with it so it sounds like you found the perfect place with where they are if you've got cows and horses across from you they're usually not too much trouble except maybe visiting in your yard once in a while oh a few moves but it's okay yeah and we don't have to have dogs because the neighbors have dogs and that's ours so when i got this house i didn't concentrate so much on um cosmetic items i knew i needed a kitchen number one but i i put in um motion sensor lights i also put in some gating because we're so close to the street but it's a street that kind of dead end so there's not a whole bunch of traffic and so it's with the security the motion sensors um the house is livable and i also put in a water tank so for the dry season so we wouldn't run a reserved water tank yeah that's right and i also had them build a huge drainage ditch at the back of the property it's on a quarter of an acre and i had them put a huge the size of a car out there for draining the gray water and so i i'm pretty pleased with what we've done we haven't been doing able to do that much because we made the mistake of importing our cars so that took a little time and it took a lot of money too oh yeah yeah so you said the top of your budget was to spend about 150 000 on the house but you were hoping to get it much less so you'd have money left over to do any renovations that you've got that's yeah do you mind sharing what you bought your house for 107 107 000 yes 107 000. so for all of you people that are looking on the websites and looking on real estate websites and looking on facebook and you say oh my gosh are there any houses for less than 300 000 well there are there definitely are there's plenty of houses you know or in the 80s and 100s and 200s um but you've got a it's not going to be a perfect house perhaps the day that you move in you're going to want to change the colors or put on a new roof or put in a new kitchen who did and do different things so just save some money in your budget like you did to be able to make those little bit of renovations um and then you can find some great deals and the great thing is um that um then you don't have any rent payments after that you know once you own your home then go your way your house is in alto vocati is that right yes near uh san francisco plaza okay it's perfect location the weather is perfect um it's easy to get to shops and right so for people that haven't been to boquete yet uh san francisco plaza is maybe 10 minutes south at the most of downtown focaccia um and the good it's just a little bit um maybe at 3 500 feet so it's still going to have that mid 70s maybe 80 degree weather at the most and san francisco plaza is a shopping center that has one of my favorite restaurants called the garden i go there a couple times a week and they also have a gym that's only two dollars a day to use the gem they have a jewish bakery bakery um that has the best cookies and they make english muffins and bread and all kinds of really good things there's also a place there to get your hair cut or colored mani-pedis and insurance office uh pharmacy doctor's office attorney's office and a little grocery store called uh called the canister basica which has the basic things that you would need so if you need some milk and bread and eggs and cat food they're going to have things like that at that little grocery store so you don't even it's all real close by and for many people it's even walking distance to get there so it's nice to have that close by so you don't have to go all the way in only 10 minutes but still somebody's oh i don't want to have to go all the way into downtown volcante there's so many things that are available without doing that in san francisco plaza so let's talk a little bit i remember whenever you were in the contract phase that you contacted me and you were a little bit concerned about some of the things that were on the contract and how it was written and you know every attorney has their own different ways of doing things so when you actually wrote a contract on the house um how did that work tell us how the whole contract process worked well that was a little scary and i think that this is a chauvinistic country to be honest and the men kind of do whatever they want to do so this attorney it's not like in the states where you have disclosure and all of those things going on he took it upon himself to because they hadn't i guess paid the taxes on the house so he separated the land and the house somehow right um it bore no resemblance to the original contract but i did take that contract to another attorney because i was concerned about my tax status that it should be tax-free because of my age and i'm a hubellato and he looked it over and i think they talked to each other because the next thing i know he was filing something about my tax status it was turned down because i didn't have my schedule at the time but i went to the dgi myself the taxing authority and i find that they're very helpful yes they are i can't want to make sure everything's right so some of the things that people should know when you're going to buy a house in panama um you're probably if you're coming from north america you're used to the real estate agent is involved in writing the contract and you know and then you go to a title company or escrow office for closing and they create all the closing documents well none of that happens in panama and panama it's um an attorney um it could be an attorney that works with the real estate office or you can use your own attorney but it's an attorney that creates the purchase contract and the purchase contract is if they know they're working with someone from north america it's usually one paragraph in spanish one paragraph in english one paragraph in spanish one paragraph in english sometimes it's not but you can request an official translation but when it comes to a contract it's not the kind of thing you want to just put in the google translate and keep your fingers crossed that um it got an accurate translation um so you start with just um a purchase contract that says i'll buy the house for certain amount of money it's customary in panama that the buyer would put up at least five percent of the purchase price um and give that to the seller at the time that the contract is signed now you can request that it's going to be held in escrow by your attorney but it's customary that you actually give that five percent to the person that's selling the property and the reason for that is when you transfer a property from one person to another person there's two uh transfer taxes that need to pay be paid one's two percent and one is three percent for a total of five percent and that has to be paid and you have to show that it's paid before you can even go to closing um some of the other crazy things that they have is you have to prove that the water bill's been paid before you can go to closing so um and these are things that you want your attorney to be involved in to dot the eyes and cross the t's you know were the taxes paid uh the transfer taxes paid before closing has the water bill been paid um if the property's in a corporation is the corporation current has all the curb uh the annual renewal fees for the corporation been paid because sometimes you can take over another corporation and sometimes you don't want to do that but also if there's a tax exoneration on the property some properties if they were built um before 2012 there's no property taxes for the first 20 years after the house is built and if you if there's still some time left on that you want that tax exoneration to be transferred over to you so all these things happen before you even go to closing and the seller has to start forking over some money to pay for those things to happen before you ever go to closing and then when you do go to closing it's not a fancy attorney's office it's not a title company or an escrow office it's a notary office so tell them about your closing experience well i didn't really have to go i had to go one place in david i'm not sure what the name of the office was but um he kind of rushed me he said he wanted to go in early so he had me come in i it was only in spanish he said they i could see that so i was kind of rushed that was a mistake being rushed because he actually there was really no closing he said that there was a witness there and the owners and we were all together not a bit of truth in that no that's not good so closing you don't want to be rushed now they're supposed to have if there's a foreigner involved they're supposed to have an official translator there um to translate all the documents they didn't have that there for you he said that that that that person i never met them oh no that's not good oh well it turned out okay the other attorney looked over my paperwork i also took it to dgi and they said i don't need an attorney to get my um tax deferral or exoneration tax exoneration yeah they said yeah when i got my schedule just come back and they will take care of it for me right there i don't need an attorney to do anything so the paperwork's good um i just think that he went about it differently he says stupid american i'll let me just take care of all of these things apparently so yeah it it turned out all right my paperwork seems to be good and i have the original purchase contract so it all worked out did you request this program of your property before you went to closing hey what yeah we've lost you a little bit okay i'm sure we'll come back on in just a minute so the other thing that you may want to do whenever you're buying a property in closing you can request that the seller if they have a survey that they give it to you so you can review it but um you can't always count on that that survey is accurate so if they say that your the lot size is 7 000 you know maybe it is and maybe it's not so you may want to hire your own surveyor to do another survey of the property um so that you know that what you're buying what it says in the contract that you're buying that that's what you're actually getting and if the lot size is just a little bit less or if you find an easement through the middle of the property then that always leaves some room for negotiation also well i wasn't worried about that but i should have been probably um the line seemed to be delineated by the the fence right and he he pulled the document so it was honor to owner there was no company involved intermediary at all so that's good i i think i'm just lucky okay yeah well you know some god was shining on you making sure that everything worked out okay yeah so from the time you signed the contract until the time you went to closing how much time was involved in there because all those other things i talked about had to be done that was three months three months yeah july and i came back to the states in august to pack up get everybody moved my cats everybody moved and in september i called my friend who is a friend of the attorney and i said i want to make sure he clears my title documents i want my documents when i come back in october right and um his friend so he got on him and i had my documents when i returned october 21st the attorney lives a few blocks from here yeah that's good you know whenever you move to panama you just uh you run into people and you meet friends and then that friend and introduces you to another friend that introduces you to another friend and it makes it easier for you to meet people and you know if it especially if it's someone that's a referral then you feel a little bit more comfortable working with people so after you closed on your house did you move in right away or did you decide that you wanted to get the renovations done first well i moved in in july actually i had the owners meet me at the bank and i paid them off and they gave me i told bring the keys and um they brought the keys so i moved in and in fact i had your electrician do some work for me luis he was excellent yep yeah he's good he started before he left and i know it it's breaking the rules but i wanted everything set up before i got back so the kitchen needed to be they came and made measurements and then when we returned they installed all the cabinets for me so you decided to put in new custom cabinets and counter tops in the kitchen uh can you hear me you decided to put in my breaking up a little bit i can hear okay so you put in new uh cabinets and countertops in the kitchen yes i i put in the cabinets first there was a little kerfuffle because they put borders and i didn't want that because i wanted the granite to overlap and just be easy to clean and so those had to come off but i'm perfectly happy with what they've done i was i was very happy with that now the countertops were a little under three thousand dollars and i had to have two slabs of granite and um the guys who came out did a beautiful job with that we were able to use the excess under the tv and on my aunt ruth's buffet i've turned it into a bar so um i i think the costs are so reasonable totally reasonable here yeah so for your custom cabinets um how much did that cost and about how long did it take to have those made well um from july until august i suppose they had plenty time we weren't coming back until october so the cabinets were done when i returned in october and i gave them the specifications for the kitchen cabinet just i emailed it i pulled it up online from kitchenaid and sent it to them and they made it to specs and it's perfect the refrigerator slid right in and um i got i've got a lot of cabinets i had uppers i noticed that they don't put uppers in a lot of panamanian homes and i've got on the other side i've got a lot of storage drawers right so and you just just mentioned that it was a panamanian style house so the house that i bought it was really a panamanian style house and i did the same thing you did is i um updated the kitchen and the bathroom and some of the other places but you can buy a panamanian style house that may not have all the things that you're you would be accustomed to um but you can get it for a whole lot less like she said she bought the house for 107 000 um if it would have already had all the renovations done then the house would have probably been we lost k for a minute but she'll be back um if if it would have already had all the renovations done the house would have probably been more like 160 or 180 thousand dollars so if you want to save some money in rent um if you get rent a panamanian style house it's a 50 less than a north american style house that already has the granite counter tops fancy cabinets fancy bathrooms and the same thing whenever you're going to buy if you look for panamanian style houses that may have a kitchen that you don't like at all or a bathroom that you don't like at all or the paint or the ceiling or things that you don't like about it getting work done here and is so affordable an electrician you know they can come and work on your property the whole day and it might be thirty dollars um kay is going to tell you a little bit i think she paid five thousand dollars for all new custom cabinets for her kitchen when i had my kitchen redone the price was very similar for the granite and for the cabinets so if you're thinking about moving to panama we really really advise that you just rent first to make sure that you like the area and that's exactly what kate did she rented in the area that she knew she was kind of interested in and then take your time to start looking for a property to buy if you wanted to be move-in ready just exactly everything is great you don't have to do any renovations then you're going to pay for that but if you're willing to get more of a panamanian style house that might have kitchen cabinets some tile countertops and things that you really don't like too much just know that those can be changed out and replaced at a super affordable price i know kaye is having a storm where she is i'm having it just stopped raining where i am but we're having a bit of a storm here too but she'll get back on as soon as she can so she bought the house for 107 just to recap everything she spent about eight thousand dollars on a brand new kitchen which included appliances custom cabinets granite countertops everything all brand new um and did some other renovations to the house like a reserved water tank and other things to make the house completely and totally livable so now she has no rent payment and because of the tax exoneration she won't have any property property taxes either so you're saving a lot of money but i really advise that even if you want to buy a house don't rush into that just rent plan on renting for at least six months just like kay did just like i did before you rush into buying when i moved to panama i rented a little house for a two-bedroom one-and-a-half bath house for 600 a month and it was on quite a bit of land and i thought well it's good enough well i take my time to find something bigger and better but the more i lived in my little thousand square foot house the more i liked living in a smaller house i loved the area i liked how quiet it was so um about a year after i rented the house and the owner needed to sell and i decided to just go ahead and buy the house and that was back in 2012. i bought the house and shortly after that i changed out the kitchen i changed the bathroom for six thousand dollars i added on a whole other room to my house uh to make it just a little bit bigger so i could have the office in a separate location so renovations even adding on to your house are super affordable i also added to my house they call it here a bodega or storage building and a place to keep all my machetes and weed whackers and all the different tools that you might would need uh to have available uh shovels and things like that so i have a bodega that's attached to my house and it's um i'm not sure but i would say it's probably about 12 foot by 12 foot and it cost me three thousand dollars to have that bodega built um so you can get work done really affordable and the construction is very different in panama because the houses they're not stick built homes like you might be used to they don't use two by fours to build houses they're made out of cement block so the plumbing is a little bit different in panama the electrical is a little bit different because they're dealing with cement block on the wall that also means when you get ready to hang a picture on the wall you can't just put a nail in the wall and hang a picture you have to get a drill and you have to drill a hole in the wall and then put one of those little plugs in and put a screw to be able to hang a picture on the wall so make sure you know exactly where you wanted to go before you start having to drill holes in the wall so as soon as kate can come back on then we will have her talk a little bit more about her kitchen and her renovations meanwhile i'm going to go ahead since she's not here yet i'm going to go ahead and take your questions about buying houses or renovating houses here in panama or going to a closing because closing process is very different so if you have a question about any of those things if you put three question marks in front of your question then i can easily spot it um but it's because there's conversation going on over here and i can't always see all the questions so good question what's the cost of like a two by four sheet of drywall plywood for installing the tanks you mentioned so they don't use two by fours here they use cement block um drywall the last time that i bought drywall for the renovation that i did for four by eight sheet was seven dollars and eighty cents uh this was a couple of years ago so i don't know what the price is right now same thing with plywood they don't use wood and let me tell you why they don't use wood in panama they don't use they use special wood for cabinets to make cabinets out of and of course the doors to your bedroom or your bathroom they use a special wood called sedro usually or sometimes it's even mahogany the reason they use that special wood is because it's termite resistant but they're not gonna you're not gonna find a house that has two by fours or plywood in it because the termites think that's dessert and they're going to just go after it and then you're going to have a little bit of a problem if you do that um the other thing question is about installing the tank so it's a reserved water tank and let me explain what that is in panama we have the dry season and the rainy season our dry season starts about the middle of december until about the middle of april and we don't get hardly any rain at all during that time so towards the end of the dry season especially in some areas like the azura or along the coast they may have really really low water pressure or even no water coming from the municipality so it's important when you're renting a house or whenever you buy a house that you have a reserve water tank at my house in my property i have two 10 000 liter reserve water chains so the way it works is the municipal water comes into the reserve water tanks and it fills it up and there's a float so that it doesn't overflow and then whenever i turn on the faucet at my house some of the water comes out of the reserve water tank it goes through a filter and then it comes through my house and then of course the tank is a little bit less so more municipal water comes in so if there were a water shortage of low water pressure or no water coming from the municipality you wouldn't even notice it if you have a reserve water tank and some houses just have little bitty ones um some houses have you know five thousand ten thousand later water tanks but then that ensures that you're always going to have a good supply of water so here's another good question talk about homeowners insurance so in panama it's not necessary to have homeowners insurance a lot of people don't even bother to get it i guess if you're getting financing then the bank might require you to get homeowners insurance but most people just pay cash for their properties in panama or they buy with seller financing perhaps and they don't use bank financing because it's so complicated so for my house which is now about 12 1300 square feet including all the contents and everything i pay 230 dollars a year for my house insurance so when the price is so cheap for house insurance then why not go ahead and get health insurance now i do have my house insurances with the same company that i have my current insurance with so that helps keep the cost a little bit lower in our um complete panama relocation guide we do have a list of several four different insurance brokers that we work with and they can give you a quote on house insurance now they did come out the insurance agent did come out and take pictures and do some measurements of my house before they gave me my quote when i first bought house insurance after i bought it i think it was like 190 dollars for the whole year and now it's like 205 dollars for the whole year so in 10 years it's only gone up ten dollars so that's super affordable and another question uh when buying a house or condo in panama do you get a time period where you can have a professional home inspection and change your mind without losing your deposit so it all depends on what you write into your contract uh sir first of all professional home inspection that's kind of non-existent here in panama they do have usually it's an architect that you would hire that can go and do an inspection of your property sometimes they might miss something but they don't have professional home inspection companies here in panama that you can hire um so you can write your contract that you do have you know two weeks or three weeks um that you're going to have an inspection of the property and time to review the survey uh before the contract goes active so sometimes people are willing to take their house off the market while you're doing that inspection but a lot of sellers they're not willing to taste it take their house off the market they're going to continue showing it until you're ready to put your money where your mouth is and put down that deposit that's non-refundable so um how can i be sure the neighborhood is safe so most neighborhoods in panama are very safe and one of the reasons there's a few places that i would say there's no i wouldn't you couldn't pay me to live there because they have a high incidence of crime so one of the ways to know that you're in a nice safe area is to rent there first just rent if you know there's a certain area you want to live in then just rent in that area first and that'll give you a good sense of what the noise is like what the traffic's like the docking barge the dogs parking or their roosters crowing we've got k back there she is hi queen there you are asking me a couple of questions i told him i know she'll be back anyway i was asking a few questions um so this is on my phone yeah so the majority of places of panama are super safe someone asked how can you know that the neighborhood is safe the other thing is knock on doors and talk to neighbors if you don't speak spanish take a translator with you and just you know talk to the neighbors and say hey i'm thinking about buying this house what can you tell me about the neighborhood or this house uh sometimes the neighbors might have some horror stories oh they've had drainage problems forever or you know they've had you know they had a fire two years ago or something like that so whether you're buying in panama or buying anywhere else um i was a real estate investor for the last 30 years so i would always go talk to the neighbors and just kind of find out the inside scoop on that particular property things that you might not find out because like kay said in panama there is no disclosure statement you know and actually my next-door neighbor is a marine and they have about three dogs oh there she goes again she'll be back so in panama in the u.s or in canada whenever you buy a house and there's this long disclosure statement have you ever had any septic problems have you ever had any roof leaks have you ever had any of these problems well they don't have any of that in panama there are no disclosure statements that are required um and nothing nothing has to be disclosed you know did somebody die in the bedroom um that has to be disclosed if you buy a house in the united states or what was there ever fire things like that have to be disclosed but it doesn't have to be disclosed in panama but that's the kind of inside scoop stuff that you'll get if you talk to the owners so i'm sure kale be back in just a little bit i'm going to take this off until she comes back i mean while i go back to some of your questions so what do a lot of homes have dropped ceilings rather than sheetrock so the reason that a lot of homes have a drop ceiling which i absolutely hate instead of sheetrock it's because it's cheaper and easier to put that in if you buy a house and it has a drop ceiling it doesn't cost very much to change it into a regular sheetrock or a gypsum ceiling you know where they do the tape and bed and all of those things but that's the reason also so that if they have easy access to anything that might need to be fixed in the roof but some houses have that i hate it i just there's no way i could live in a house that had a drop ceiling so i could rent it for a little while but if i was going to live there i would that'd be one of the first things i'd be changing out so mars said i just joined and this question might have been asked how does owner financing work so owner financing works did you find um a seller and they're usually there's no real estate agent involved um at all whenever it's seller financing or owner financing but just talking to people you will find out about some people that oh so-and-so you know their wife died and they want to move back to the united states or you know so-and-so's got some health problems and they need to move right away and they like to sell their house and so um and they're flexible so they could be flexible on price or flexible on terms or either one so when you hear about someone that we call a motivated seller someone that has a reason that they would like to sell quickly then you just make an offer to them and say you know if i gave you 10 down and monthly payments would you sell me your house and they said well how does that work and so the way that it works is you would actually get your attorney involved that would create that purchase contract just like i said the attorney always creates the purchase contract and then your attorney would also create the closing documents which would include a note that the seller would have that says you agree to pay them 600 a month until the house is paid off and we didn't mention the word interest because i usually when i buy with seller financing i don't pay interest i just every single payment goes to principal but it's just whatever you mutually agree to you know some of the sellers might say well i have to have some kind of interest and so you might add two percent interest but they have a note and you have to pay them every month if you don't pay them then they can foreclose on you and they can get the house back so question from anita the water from the municipality is a drinkable or do you need to treat it so it depends on every municipality has different water so just in vocation we have 10 different water departments so the answer is it depends on where you live some of the municipalities are going to have water that is it's already been filtered a lot before it comes to your house but what most people do in panama is they have additional filtering of the municipal water some people use a berkey water filter um but i use in boquete i hired a company called grupo agua and they set up a water filtration system for the water that comes out of those reserve water tanks and it comes to my house plus i have an extra a filtration system underneath my sink that's super um uh filtered for things that i might make iced tea or if i'm gonna make coffee or things like that then i'll use that super filtered water but then you just and they i have an annual contract with them that they maintain they come every single month or maybe it's twice a month that they come and they clean the filters or change the filters check the reserve water tanks check the filter underneath my sink because i'm not um i don't know how to do all that stuff i don't anything that requires tools i'm not involved in that so i just paid them and i think i pay them 300 a year for them to maintain that entire system for me so another question are houses in algebra cate within walking distance to baja bocce that's a good question and the answer like so many things in panama is it depends is a very large area um so some places in algebra are much closer to baja or downtown bokete than others and the other thing it depends on your ability on what you can walk it's going to be mostly downhill going into bajo bokeh but walking home was going to be all uphill so some people would walk into downtown boccate or baja bocade then get a taxi to take them home instead of going up that hill so once again we're waiting for kay to come back and meanwhile i'm going to answer your questions so how about building a home so that's a good question and i actually have a live stream that's coming up um in next month i believe it's next month i'm interviewing two different people that had a house built one is a canadian lady that lives in los tables and then and i'm also interviewing a couple that built a house right on the beach so um until you've been in panama for a while and you absolutely know that you like the area and that you've gotten a lot of references and referrals i wouldn't advise building a house in panama but stay tuned for a live stream about building houses that's coming up real soon so um do i get a tax credit for a prefab home be prefabricated i don't know what you mean by pre you mean already built um so you can get a home a tax credit for an already a home that's already built if it falls under the guidelines of the tax exoneration and um we actually in the complete panama relocation guide we have a whole section on taxes and a brochure about the taxes that you have to pay it all depends on when was the property built it was built before 2012 there's one set of rules for tax exoneration or tax credits if it was built after 2012 there's a completely set of rules for tax credits and we have those details in the complete panama relocation guide let me post it right up here so right here you go to panama relocation tours and in the very top you click on online guide and then that's where the information is um so i just did that question what are the main reasons people don't want to stay once they make the move to panama that's a good question and i wrote a complete article about the top 10 reasons that people leave panama so if you go to our website panamarelocationtours.com and just in the search bar which is in the upper right hand corner just type in the word leave l-e-a-v-e panama and you can see that article but let me just give you like the top two reasons one of the top reasons is usually some kind of health problems either spouse dies or somebody has some serious health problems and they want to go back and be closer to family so that's one of the main reasons that people leave um the other main reason that people leave and is i found that expats in general or people that move to another country are a lot more adventurous than the people that live across the street from you where you live right now so very often people that are expats they'll live in one country for three to five years then they want to go try another country for three to five years and they'll try another country for three to five years and they don't want to just put their roots down in one place they want to go and explore while they're still healthy enough to be able to do that so let me tell you a story that's kind of related to that i think it was in 2007 or 2008 some of my real estate investor friends and i we went on a 21-day cruise around the horn of south america and i never been on a cruise around the horn of south america so i went on that cruise also so we started out in buenos aires and argentina when we went to uruguay and chile and i was i was surprised that going around the horn was kind of a non-event there's like this dirt hill with a flag at the top but whenever we had all these different stops along the way you know how you go on a cruise and they have the cruise excursions of the the excursions you can go on there were so many people said that in their dream for years and years and years to go on this big cruise around the horn of south america where a lot of the people were older they were 16 in the late 50s 60s 70s or even 80s and some of them they waited too late their health was in such poor condition or their circulation wasn't good so that either they were in a wheelchair or they were using a walker or some of them they couldn't even get off to go explore some of the cra the beautiful places that we got to see or walk on a blue glacier like i got to do um so don't wait if you wait too late and your health goes downhill then you might not be able to enjoy all the things that this beautiful world has to offer so that's one of the reasons that people like to maybe live in panama for three years and live in mexico for three years and live in portugal for three years she's back what do you want to say i'll just listen in yeah no that's okay that's okay so um so one of the questions um that i was going to ask you is i believe i know the answer but how did you find the contractors that you used that were going to build your cabinets and the granite countertops was it referrals from the person that helped you find the house your neighbors or how did you find them well the builder i rented a condo from helped me he found the cabinet maker for me um you found the electrician and the granite countertops i just i was on my way to um bocachika for a mini vacation and i saw the granite on the street i just had the our driver i said stop and that's how i found them and um they had a great price it was half the other quote i received and they came out right away they looked so young i i was a little worried but they seemed to know what they were doing and i had already purchased my sink from amazon and my faucets from elmec so i had all of my items ready to go and they did a beautiful job they did a great installation the lmac is uh it's a really nice store for picking out um your knobs for picking out faucets for picking out a new toilet new sink for things like that so there's an mx store and in david and they have some really great uh products there one of the things you have to be careful of is you say oh i want that faucet and they said oh we don't have that in stock right now we'll have to get it from panama city and it'll be here next week or something so you have to whenever you're doing a renovation you don't go to the store to get the faucet the day before you need it when the plumber's right to install it you need to start thinking about hmm i'm putting in a new sink and i might want a new faucet and sort of plan that a month or two in advance so that you have time to look at coaches and you have time to look at do it center and elmac and find the one that you like the best and then hope keep your fingers crossed that you can get it before you actually need it yeah it took about a month to get it but yeah so that's never in a hurry so here's someone asked did you have to prepay for your cabinets or did you just pay like 30 up front and the rest when it was finished i paid initially for supplies and then they sent pictures as they were completing the job and i didn't pay until they were all installed yeah so um yeah well the cabinets were maybe 5 000 so i i was so happy at the price because i know what i would have paid in the states because i've done a few renovations so i was delighted and with the work too yeah the quality um yeah that there's some really really good craftsmen that are available in panama to build cabinets and furniture so some people might be thinking they're going to ship all their furniture here you might consider taking a picture of this piece that you really really like and getting it priced on having it built here in panama you might find that it's a whole lot cheaper than it would cost to ship in here well i i did ship quite a bit of furniture but i still have a 20 unit waiting to come so that's i've got my dining room table but i don't have my dining room chairs and i'll tell you something the wood gets damaged here because of the moisture so um i'm going to have to have i've got old furniture i'm going to have to have someone put a varnish coating on it for protection because what i find myself eating is oiling it almost every week having to oil everything down and and take the moisture off so and depending on what kind of wood that it is you may need if they have a termite treatment put on it also um if it's a soft wood like pine um then termites will find that and you'll find little bitty holes in it eventually so yeah so you have to be really careful with pine furniture uh that you ship to panama because it might get damaged so a couple i'm going to go ahead and go with a couple of the questions that are coming in so is it common or even expected to negotiate the real estate price in panama yes yes it's common they expect you to negotiate and you know you can um don't be afraid to lowball people um way lower than what you thought and then there's a little bit of room for negotiation so it's very common so another question considering the termites in panama i'm assuming cabinets are not made out of wood so no cabinets are made out of wood but they use special wood in panama they're termite resistant so your comments are probably made out of sedro is that what they use for your cabinet it's the cedar is that is yeah um i thought it was called cedar but it's probably what you're saying yes yeah and also they put a good coating yeah and then they put a good finish on them yeah that's termite resistant so the the people that build cabinets and doors in panama they know what kind of wood you use so you're not going to have to worry about termites so another question uh one fear about renting is not doing if or when the owner will raise the rent or sell the property um i'd hate to get all settled and then have the house and go all over again so that's one of the things that um here in panama it's really not real common once they get a good tenant that pays on time that doesn't call them a lot with oh the screw you know can you change the light bulb in my kitchen if you make those kind of phone calls then the landlord is going to raise your rent because they want to get rid of you because you're they consider your problem tenant but if you are a tenant that pays on time you don't bother the landlord a lot they're going to keep you as long as they possibly can there's someone that moved to panama after getting the relocation guide and i helped them find their rental and breezes which was also south of bocce and they lived there for a year and they really liked it and they told the landlord that they would like to renew it and they're those kind of people they always pay on time they never call and complain about anything so the owner said would you sign a five-year lease and so now they're locked into that same lower price for five years i had the same thing that happened to me um so all of that depends one of the things you have to be careful of when you're renting in panama is some properties that might be a six-month lease and it's only a six-month lease because some owners they go back to canada for six months out of the year and then they come back to panama for six months out of the year so you need to verify before you sign a lease that could this be renewed at the end of the six months and sometimes the answer is no and sometimes it would be there also could be some language in the lease that says um you know that they could renew it and the rent wouldn't go up more than three percent or something like that but typically the rent's not going to go up it's not like other places so you don't have to worry about that so um are you gonna be able to show us some pictures of your beautiful kitchen okay well i'll try to walk over there um he's gonna give it a try with the phone so let's see we're going a little dark all right we're getting back in the light look at that let's see [Music] all right by the way your living room is huge oh here we go uh that that's the refrig okay that's my window that's the refrigerator and the and the cabinet okay i don't i'm not i'm not seeing that there's right now and dennis is cooking oatmeal and we lost the connection again this is what happens sometimes in panama whenever we have a storm um she'll be back in a little bit also whenever i post the replay of this video then i'm gonna to show some pictures of her beautiful kitchen that she had some redone so you'll be able to see it at that time so this is another good question do leather goods or leather furniture hold up well there um the answer wouldn't be like so many things in panama that it depends on where you are because it's the tropics humidity is much higher so there's a good chance that you're going to get mold on your leather furniture leather belts leather purses leather shoes so you just have to treat it um every week you know clean it and treat it every single week if you want to prevent having mold on it especially if there's leather on your car seats i work and get real hot inside then you might have a big mold problem you're going to have to definitely treat it often so um let me see so if you guys have any questions for me okay i'll be back in a little bit but if you have any questions about buying a house uh closing finding contractors or any of those kind of things about buying and remodeling then please put a three question marks in front of your question and i will take your questions i don't know can you guys see me let me know in the chat room if you can see me or if mine is frozen also here comes kay again she's back in just a little bit she'll be back so monique has where k is located and k is located just a little bit south of boquete there you are come on correct right well um you saw a little bit of the kitchen and yeah a little bit of that it came out very nicely and for such a low budget i thought it was pretty well done for having such a low budget so it's very happy with it yeah it's very well done the other thing i've noticed is your living room is quite large and i love the ceiling that they put in someone whenever you were offline a little bit ago then someone asked why do they do so many drop ceilings and patent mine i said because it's cheaper than doing um a sheetrock ceiling or the kind of ceiling you have but i love that ceiling that you have um it's a pvc and it's um mold resistant so i love it and we've got put in or did it come with the house it came with the house this house is built in 2019 it's not an old house and it has a raised foundation and tile floors i don't know if you can see let's see can i show the floors let's see if you can see the floors it's a little yeah i almost hate to move because the signal maybe yeah let's see but the floors are tile yeah oh i can see it now very nice it's very spacious i would have preferred white but i can i can settle for what we've got here i'm willing to settle for that so and like i said my furniture is there she goes again well listen um we've been on this live stream time flies when you're having fun we've been on the live stream for an hour i'm going to take one more question that i think is an important one so what are the lawyer fees run for closing so the lawyer fees for the closing are typically going to be about one percent of the purchase price so if you're buying a house for a hundred thousand dollars your lawyer fees are usually going to be about a thousand dollars from for them to create the purchase contract and all of the closing documents there's also an additional fee of 100 that i've paid the last time i went to closing of a hundred and forty dollars at the notary office for their services and sometimes that's paid by the seller sometimes it's paid by the buyers sometimes it's split fifty fifty um so kay's back let me ask her i can get her back on she's not coming back on yet so that's typically so about one percent of the purchase price is going to be the lawyer fees for creating all of those closing documents and they don't just create the documents your attorney that you use for creating these documents they're going to dot the i's and cross the t's so remember that 5 transfer tax that has to be paid they're going to verify that that was paid and get a receipt for it before you go to closing they're going to verify anything else that's listed in the contract like if you say oh the sellers have to give me a copy of their survey well they're going to verify that all those things happen before you actually go to closing so it's not just a document prep that you're paying for you're paying for them to dot the i's across the t for closing so let me see i'm going to try to remove her and bring her back on for some reason i'm still not getting k on the live stream but kay if you can hear me i want to thank you so much for being on the live stream and sharing your experience about buying a house getting a really great deal and doing the renovations on your property and i want to thank everybody so much for being on this live stream on saturday i'm sorry though we have a storm going on and it caused some problems with the reception and the wi-fi um but we're going to try it again next saturday with some new information actually next saturday we're going to do a q a here on the live stream i've been doing the q and a's on a conference call and they seem to last you know two hours i've done three and a half hours and it's just too long the replay is too long and everything's too long so next saturday i'm going to try doing the q a right here on the live stream so all you'll do is type in your questions over in the chat area and then i'll answer them so thanks again everybody please subscribe to our youtube channel so you can get a notification about our next live stream and we have a new video coming out about living in san carlos that you don't want to miss have a good weekend goodbye

Channel: Panama Relocation Tours

Views: 14,808

Keywords: Panama, Retire in Panama, Move to Panama, Living in Panama, Panama Relocation Tours, Expats in Panama

Id: QJdyIN3LrJg

Length: 66min 6sec (3966 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 17 2022