Throughout much of the past 1.5 years, I’ve been actively looking at real estate in Boquete. While Panama is generally much cheaper to live in then the US, the price of real estate in our small mountain town is very high in comparison to the rest of the country (aside from Panama City). This is generally due to the large number of ex-pats living here.
Towards the end of April, I was scrolling on Facebook when I came across someone selling a home that was in our price range. In fact, I thought the price was so good that even though she had posted is less than a week prior, I was sure it was already sold. I showed the pictures and write up to Pete and not getting much encouragement from him, decided I’d just let it go. A few days later, I was still thinking about this house for sale and decided to reach out to the owner. She told me it wasn’t sold, and we made plans to meet and look at the property that Friday. She also sent me the exact location; told me no one was currently living on the property and gave us permission to go take a look ahead of the Friday meeting. We went to look on Thursday and it was love at first sight. I mean, we spent about 1.5 hours looking at the outside of the property which consisted of a main house, a smaller separate casita and about 1/3 of an acre of land. It’s located about 10 minutes outside of Boquete in a quiet Panamanian neighborhood. After we met with her on Friday, we started the purchase process and exactly 4 weeks later…we owned the property! It needs work. (those that know us well, will laugh and say we got exactly the type of home we always purchase). We’re currently living in the casita while we look for an architect and builder to help us rehab the main house. Building in Panama is VERY different than stateside, and Pete and I just don’t have the skills. Our intent with the casita is to have a place for friends and family to stay when they come to visit. We’re not planning on renting it out on Airbnb or any other home share platform.