Why The Recession Is Making Smart Property Investors Look Abroad

Your life is dominated by the recession. It doesn’t matter who you are. The credit crunch involves the moneyed sensation with investment properties spread across the UK and abroad just as much as it does someone who is about to make their first property investment. We all hang on each article in the morning paper and every sombre statement made on the evening news, studying stock values and exchange rates with the same consideration once reserved for football scores and weather forecasts.

Against this background of uniform concern for all matters financial, investors are becoming that little bit more sharp - that little bit more creative - in answering the golden question, ‘where is the best place to buy investment property abroad?’

With the pound not exactly lively against the Euro, the chances are that those places whose very names once sounded like a helpful tip on overseas property investment – places like Spain and France - no longer hold the appeal that they once did.

And here’s the first thing that the smart property investor might notice about the properties in North Cyprus: property in North Cyprus – unlike property in Cyprus, where the Euro is now the currency – is purchased in Sterling, meaning that the UK investor doesn’t discard their wealth in the process of swapping currencies.

The global economy operates on a cycle of boom and bust, and it is only the reckless who dismiss the age old adage ‘If you want the rainbow you have to stand the rain’ as obsolete stoicism. Knowing that the economy swings between these two stages means that – unlike the person waiting for a rainbow that may or may not materialise – investors know for certain that the rainy days underway should be used to plan a strategy for when the weather changes back again.

The north Cyprus property market stands out against those of comparable Mediterranean tourist destinations. Property prices in the Turkish Cypriot north have not developed at the same rate as those in the rest of the island, due to the partition of the island which has divided the island for over thirty years.

Whilst the rest of the island has expanded to become one of the best known destinations for overseas investment in property abroad – and has subsequently become criticised for losing its original charm by becoming over-developed – the north has, until a few years ago, been excluded from international trade and transport connections, thereby inhibiting property prices and leaving them where they are now- between a half and a third the cost of Cyprus properties in general.

With reunification talks between Mehmet Ali Talat, the Turkish Cypriot leader, and his Greek Cypriot counterpart now well underway – and the Turkish side reportedly hoping for a positive outcome to be achieved by the end of this year – the disparity in prices between the two sides of the island will not far outlast reunification. In fact, prices are already rising, and those who stand to make most out of this fantastic investment opportunity are snapping up the plum picks of North Cyprus’s investment properties.

In the UK, nobody is certain how long the current downturn will continue to hammer down property prices. The fact is that property investments in North Cyprus are the very best overseas property investment opportunities out there for a UK investor, because they require a far smaller initial investment than domestic properties and because they are set to continue rising to – at the very least – the level of other properties on Cyprus.