Dear IPA Friend,
One of the dangers of investing in overseas property, and especially overseas property in emerging and/or unregulated markets, is the bribery and what have you that goes on behind the scenes. We have seen what has been happening in Spain where developments have been given the go-ahead thanks to various backhanders and have subsequently been shown to be illegal. The whole bribery thing is now a hot topic in China. In the first 10 months of this year, government officials have investigated 4,240 bribery cases in real estate and related projects, representing almost half of all of the total commercial bribery cases for the period.
It's all of the usual stuff - giving the go-ahead where it should not have been given - and, no doubt, the consequences will be the same as ever. Be on guard.
That reminds me of an email I received from Peter Esders at the International Law Partnership who has been reporting back on OPP Live.
He writes, "The other big thing is that our message to agents and developers seems finally to be getting through and we have had an increasing number of agents wanting to do due diligence on products before they start selling them. They are finally realising that selling property without knowing whether the developer has planning permission ore even owns the land can come back to bite them." Of course, you need to make sure that you do the due diligence too and employ an independent lawyer such as Peter who will do all the legal work. Don't just rely on the agent who is on commission and certainly don't believe what the developer tells you without checking it!
I've often said that Istanbul is one of the best places to invest in Turkey, not least because of all of the foreign direct investment, firms and infrastructure improvements that are coming in. There are also the tourists, of course! Government stats are coming out showing that 6,006,550 tourists visited Istanbul between January and November. To put that into context, that is a rise of 21.8 per cent compared to the same period in 2006. Again, it's important for Brit investors to recognise that they can sell or let to other people other than Brits - 15 per cent of all tourists visiting Istanbul came from Germany, for example.
That reminds me that we have two articles to come out to you over the weekend. The first, on Saturday, is for Brno. The second, on Sunday, is for Istanbul. At the bottom of these articles, we will be recommending a development in each of those locations. Those of you who have been with me since 2000 will know I don't usually do this but we were doing article updates at the same time as these two developments came in and stacked themselves up nicely so it seemed to make sense to send them out together. So you can either delete the weekend emails, open them and just read the articles or open them, read the articles, and send for more details on the developments.
It's entirely up to you.
The International Law Partnership LLP
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