Panama Condos - Seeing The Silver Lining
(thepanamareport.com) Panama Condos have been the center of attention in Panama City's real estate roar, though with a glut of construction and development, interest for many appears to be not in the current boom cycle but rather in the impending slowdown, which is expected to decrease prices dramatically.
My first true experience with a condo came at age nineteen, when I rented a unit no bigger than a shoebox from a middle-class attorney in Madrid for around five hundred Euros a month. The condo had been made out to look spacious and roomy in photos featuring my favorite, "a modern kitchen", which turned out to be roughly the size of a doormat.
I arrived in Spain a full week before my best friend Adam and knew, upon first seeing the condo that I'd have some serious explaining to do, seeing as though I had piloted the transaction. So this is a nice entryway? I thought to myself, surveying the room. It wasn't the entryway though at all, it was the condo. In it's entirety.
I was able to stomach the condo's size as quaint and intimate, but when my best friend showed up that first day, it was my job alone to explain that the difference between the "airy living room" and the "master bedroom" was a matter of where you were standing.
It became a habit of mine that semester to misinterpret everything wrong with the condo, as everything right and opportune. And in trying to communicate this, perhaps false sense of optimism to Adam, I found myself starting to believe more and more in the functionality and charm of our new home, not unlike a hardened criminal preparing for a polygraph.
"Look, isn't this convenient?" I said while giving Adam a tour of the bathroom. "You don't even have to walk anywhere if you want to open the door while you're on the toilet." I set myself up and showed him how even the windows could be opened, and the shower turned on from the pivotal seat of the toilet.
"Why would I want to open the door while I'm on the toilet?" Adam inquired. "And look at this closet! You can't have it open without blocking off half the dining area!"
"Oh, that?" I responded. "That's actually kind of a nice way of dividing the room. For privacy, you know? I'm actually surprised they don't make that feature more often in homes."
Granted we hadn't bought the condo, merely inhabited it for a couple of months as kids. But from an early adult age, the ability to see the silver lining in city condos ran through my blood.
Naysayers complain about a number of features in Panama real estate for sale such as materials, increased price of construction, craftmanship, over-supply, and inexperienced labor. But as with living in a Spanish broom closet, there are some positives to be seen in almost any condo scenario.
The condo craze in Panama City isn't all bad news. Sure prices have shot up and the amount of new projects increases every other week. But with such a boom in supply and a projected tapering out effect of demand upon completion, Panama City's condo market will, I believe, sometime down the road, be the perfect place to invest, once again. Panama development will soon be forced to be more selective in its locations and attuned to its target markets, in contrast to the recent past where developers could build anything and have it sell through the roof. We've seen it before in other markets; condo crazes dropping off at the blink of an ojo (that's Spanish for eyeball).
Panama investment condos are all about timing, and while some have joined the throng of speculators snatching up condos, others are waiting patiently for their time in the sun. Already, talk in Panama can be heard of so-called "vulture funds" in which large sums of money are raised during real estate booms, in order buy distressed condos in the midst of a housing bust: a tactic made famous in a Miami condo market very similar to that of Panama today.
Much of this technique depends however on when Panama's high-falutin condo industry will begin to show signs of slowing down. The warning signs are familiar: developers, who are concerned about buyers backing out of contracts, offering incentive programs like assistance with closing costs and free upgrades. The canary in the mine shaft. But for the time being, sales seem to remain high thanks to European and Latin groups all of whom can see, for better or worse, the positives of Panama condos overall.
