Steve Case is building on beachfront property right next to where I stayed.
If you don’t recognize the name, he co-founded AOL in the late 1980s and sold it to Time Warner in 2001 for one of the largest deals in corporate history.
He’s been one of the most active tech-money investors in the United States for the last 25 years.
And he just picked a lot on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica to build his next project.
That’s a trade, not a lifestyle decision.
He didn’t come to Costa Rica because he wanted a spot on the beach.
He could’ve bought beachfront property in any country he wanted.
The reason he came to Costa Rica is the same reason I just spent a week there with the team from Real Estate Trend Alert: the numbers worked.
I spent five years as Agora Financial’s research director for emerging markets and traveled to 105 countries during that period.
The single most consistent pattern I saw across all of them is that Americans refuse to invest beyond their borders even when the math is overwhelming. Steve Case is not making that mistake.
The U.S. dollar has lost about 40% of its purchasing power since 2000. What cost a dollar then costs roughly $1.67 today.
Meanwhile, during the same period, the euro appreciated by as much as 80% against the dollar. The Swiss franc nearly doubled in value, and the world’s most attractive emerging real estate markets compounded at 6% to 10% per year.
When you keep your savings in dollars and your assets in U.S.-denominated investments, you are making a single concentrated bet on dollar strength.
Every position in your portfolio, including your stocks, your bonds, your cash, and your domestic real estate, moves the same direction when the dollar weakens.
Goldman Sachs projects 3.6% annual returns from the S&P 500 over the next ten years. Strip out 2.5% inflation and you’re netting 1.1% in real terms, which is closer to treading water than to building wealth.
Look at where the money has been compounding instead.
Portugal home prices have climbed 48% over the last five years.
In Athens, Greece, some neighborhoods are up 126% since 2017.
Medellín, Colombia, has been compounding at 8% to 10% annually over the last decade.
Costa Rica is projected to deliver cumulative growth of 25% to 35% over the next five years.
These are not speculative microcap moves…
These are hard assets that produce rental income while they appreciate, denominated in currencies that have not been systematically debased.
Costa Rica is one of those places where the trade is set up but the broader money has not arrived yet. The country recorded $4.32 billion in foreign investment last year, up 14% year over year. Q4 GDP growth came in at 4.59%.
Tourism arrivals hit 1.9 million, and direct flights now run from a dozen U.S. cities into Liberia airport, which wasn’t there when I first visited the country years ago.
The Central Pacific corridor is averaging $1,500 to $2,000 per square meter. The same property in coastal Florida or California would cost three to five times that. Property values are growing 6 to 10% per year in the best zones, and the infrastructure money is going in right now.
This is what Path of Progress looks like. You buy where the infrastructure is going, not where it’s already arrived. By the time the broader market figures out which region is the next hot destination, the people who got in early have already made their move.
My trip last week was to review the next round of properties before they are added to the official Real Estate Trend Alert list.
RETA tracks markets two and three years before the broader money arrives. The team negotiates group-buying power on pre-construction projects and gets members in at prices not available to a retail buyer walking off the plane.
I covered all of this and more today in a special Monument Traders LIVE session with RETA founder Ronan McMahon.
If you’ve been waiting for the right way to put trading profits into a hard asset that will outlive the dollar, something that produces rental income while it appreciates in a stable country with real demand drivers, I urge you to check out the replay of our conversation.
