I am looking at a retirement visa for one of the countries, but have until 2017-2018 to decide. I may live in one of both countries for 2-3 months to see which I prefer.
I may decide to sell one, or both - or may hold them as pure investments.
The good news is my total risk is limited to something less than a downpayment would be for a similar flat in HK. Yields are much higher too
Delfin Lee of Globe Asiatique who is currently in prison. He is arguing his arrest was politically motivated but given that he sold many of his properties twice and pocketed the money seems a bit far fetched. Luckily this did not happen on our property but his developments have been tarnished and are half empty. Probably worth 10% less than we paid for it 5 years ago.
I recommend only buying new properties from two or three of the Top developers, and I am most comfortable with Ayalaland. They developed Makati, are financially very sound, and have a first class reputation. They now have something like 15 CBD's under-development, but I prefer Makati, BGC, and maybe Circuit, since these are the blue chip areas.
Manila recently announced that they will build a MTR system, connecting Makati to BGC and some other areas. That sort of infrastructure is normally a signal that a city is moving to a higher level. I live in HK when it completed its first MTR, and that was a big step up, for the whole city, and especially the prime areas, and the areas around the stations.
I've been looking at property in Malaysia with my fiancé.
$1.4m hk for a 5 bedroom townhouse in Ipoh. Bargain considering a car parking space in HK is that amount!
I was looking at Malaysia as well as my (at the time) pregnant wife and I were visiting KL, it is a great place to live; good quality of life/education/lower cost/higher quality of living and seems to have less corruption than TH/PH also they have a good scheme called my second home Malaysia My Second Home Official Portal - MM2H Official Portal
compared to other things yes I agree, but given if we had bought another property we could have doubled or more.....so it is not so much the loss on this one but the lost opportunity. Still it does come with a very large communal pool that no one else seems to use. 8 weeks and I will be swimming in it which given there is snow on the ground here now seems very appealing.
Lohas has a poor gross to net area ratio. An 840 sq. ft. net costs 7.5 M. As I mentioned, once you taxes (e.g. 280,000 in stamp duties) and commission (e.g. 75,000 in agent commission), and the higher mortgage rate (I pay 1.5% on my existing loan, now I would need to pay about 2%) there would be little difference. Actually it would probably cost more in Lohas, and I would be disrupting the life of my young daughter, who is starting to develop friendships. No thanks.
The thing with downsizing is that most people can't bear living in a flat smaller than they already live in. I certainly wouldn't like it. That's why your thread was ignored.
As for living in the Philippines and Thailand, most people actually do one thing called "work". You should try it. It's horrible! (joke!). But yes, I certainly am not planning to retire in HK (unless my daughter plans to spend the rest of her life here).
You are lucky.
Foreign buyers in Malaysia must now spend a minimum of MYR 1 million,
and cannot buy foreign property - I believe.
We started on the purchase of a property in Malaysia a few years ago, and the developer ran into trouble. We were lucky to get our money back, but it is now stuck in MYR, a weak currency.