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HGQ2112
Joined 2009
Posts: 1640

Real Estate Report - Puerto López

12 years ago

I generally release extremely condensed excerpts from real estate country analysis reports on July 1, 2012, for public consumption. This year, business matters and various personal matters have kept me from being punctual. Utilizing the better late than never theory, I offer them as segmented summaries, with each city having its own thread. I wanted to present them in one Ecuador thread, but it would be huge. Frankly, many people won’t even read them and those that do will likely want to focus on one or two cities. I would say that this format will cause folks to have to “hunt and peck” for data, but I still deemed it the lesser of two evils.

This data is presented only for those who have an interest in their real estate purchase, also being an investment asset. For those just looking to buy a pretty house, no point in reading further. The perspectives shared are not for every buyer. Some have different motivations for their purchase, besides sound investing, and those perspectives should be equally respected.

We have a simple system for rating a locale:

Sell - We recommend selling your asset or portfolio as quickly as possible.
Hold - If you have bought already, hang onto the asset and wait for further market developments. If you have not bought already, then do not buy now, but perhaps begin to look around for future opportunities.
Buy - Means that it is a good time to acquire an initial or additional real estate asset in that sub-market, due to favorable long-term market trends.
Strong Buy - Means that an exceptional market opportunity exists and that the time is right for the immediate consideration of an initial or additional real estate asset acquisition in this sub-market. For those looking at portfolio diversity, spreading assets across “strong buy” markets is advised, prior to focusing on “buy” markets, if investment opportunities is your sole or primary reason for purchasing real estate.

We also employ two trending systems. The first is an upward mobility and downward mobility system intended to dictate if this property market is in an upswing or downswing from the last time we reported on it. Upswing markets will be denoted by an ? and downswing markets by a ?.

Also, we place certain markets “on watch”. This is neither a necessarily good or bad thing, but a caution that a pending review to upgrade or downgrade the market is imminent. We try our best to project whether that review is likely to be positive or negative, but some market dynamics are so complex that this projection is not always 100% accurate. it should be used for guidance and not as statements of certainty.

Without further delay...here is data for the market you selected to view:

Puerto López Hold
An area somewhat hard to describe and also to rate. You can look at Puerto López as the resort city of Salinas...40 years ago, if you want to be nostalgic. You can view Puerto López today as an area creating a town identity with a modest, but blossoming Malecón sector and even the rapid renovation of a few areas toward the interior of town. A new bank here...a new store there. Progress...some progress. Still, you can look at Puerto López with an eye to the future - a future which may grow very bright, or seemingly stall in a hodgepodge of start and stop development. It is the latter which I find gives me most pause. If you talked to me 5 years ago, I would have said that Puerto López offered greater future prosperity than the fairly close town of Puerto Cayo, its neighbor 30 minutes to the north. Today, I am witnessing future development trends, which suggest that Puerto Cayo is making more advances, with much less, than Puerto López is making with much more. if you travel there today, maybe you do not see it. If you analyze the future projects planned and the way local government is positioning future development, the distinction becomes more noticeable. Puerto López remains, for now, a fisherman’s town with a vision to be something different. That vision, however, does not seem crystalized in any cohesive fashion. It has an averagely attractive beach, dotted with fishing boats, a Malecón in its infancy, some fairly quaint attractions, such as the multi-colored jitney cabs, which give the town a unique charm and a notably heavy European presence forming the nucleus of the tourism industry. All attractive, just not attractive enough to warrant a “buy” recommendation, but certainly promising enough to avoid a “sell” recommendation. If you visit the town and its allure beckons you, look for value opportunities, with limited downside pricing risk. Mostly, for now, just watch and wait to see if a more clear direction can be ascertained, as to what the future direction of Puerto López holds.

Hector G. Quintana
[email protected]
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell, “1984”

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Real Estate Report - Puerto López

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