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"From the infrastructure Puerto Rico looks 100% like American mainland, better than many mainland communities"....you have formed the wrong impression of the Puerto Rico infrastructure...in many aspects, it is close to 3rd world quality.
You must visit to gain a full appreciation of how bad it is.
PR infrastructure is ok, given the terrain and the overall density of the island. They tried to have a Mainland-style highway system, and it's not bad...you can get from San Juan to Mayaguez in about 3 hours. The speeds are a little reduced, and it feels like there's always a lot of construction going on.
Way up in the mountains in the center of the island all they really have are winding two-lane roads, many of which at least partially washed out during the hurricane.
The infrastructure I was referring to was the power grid, water, public transportation, telephony, internet access, etc. I agree about the roads... I traveled many, pre-hurricane, that were on par with mainland roads.....now the drivers...that's a different story.
I live in Alabama and have spent a lot of time in Puerto Rico. That's a lazy, facile comparison on your part. Infrastructure in Alabama and Georgia is better than places such as New York or Pennsylvania, let alone Puerto Rico.
2) Inheritance laws are old Spanish laws and many homes have horribly unclear title due to long lost youngest grandchild owning 5% of house that must sign off on the sale or feuding families where one wants to keep the house and others want to sell. MUST use a good specialty in real estate lawyer and only give very small earnest money to hold house while title is in doubt. Also many people try to sell after not paying taxes for years or even decades and you must settle before taking ownership.
3) Make sure property is on the property registry CRIM. Many pre-American colonialization parcels have homes built on very murky ownership basis.
Basically it speaks about that very issue about the unclear titles and why that is...and appears to be nearly as high as 40% of the housing in Puerto Rico with unclear titles.
Basically it speaks about that very issue about the unclear titles and why that is...and appears to be nearly as high as 40% of the housing in Puerto Rico with unclear titles.
Looks like to attract investment PR needs land reforms (among many other things). Property rights are a pretty big deal if you want to develop your economy.
It could be that the issue affects more residential properties than commercial or industrial. The areas of PR earmarked by the government as foreign investment places of interest could have no property rights issue.
The biggest thing limiting FDI in PR is that the Puerto Rican government tries to attract American companies almost exclusively. You also see this in the tourism promotion which almost all of it is done in the continental US. It needs to broaden and go after all the money ready to be invested abroad in Europe, Latin America, Middle East, wherever. Not only in magazines from those places and such, but also attend trade shows in various of those places and make sure PR's stand is one of the largest and flashiest to attract potential investors to the stand. Then all the advantages of PR is presented along with take home stuff like brochures with contact information online, via phone, email, etc.
There are literally billions of dollars ready to be invested outside of their countries on a worldwide scale. That money is going to go somewhere and with strategic attention grabbing promotion PR could be the destination for some of it. PR is a small island, it only needs a small portion of the total FDI of the world to have a healthy FDI attraction, but itsn't going to fall from the sky. Plenty of work is required in promoting the place and often it takes years to reach the levels of FDI that could make a difference. But, I'll repeat again, the main issue with PR is that it's too USA-focused.
It could be that the issue affects more residential properties than commercial or industrial. The areas of PR earmarked by the government as foreign investment places of interest could have no property rights issue.
The mere existence of these FDI zones means that everything is not alright. What attracts FDI the most is if the businesses feel that the court systems and the laws are all in order when it comes to potentially protecting their investment. If you haven't noticed yet, most successful developed countries do not have special investment zones. The fact that the property market in PR is administered like in a 3rd world country (even developing countries have a proper ownership process for property) means that PR will keep receiving third world country-levels of FDI.
Quote:
The biggest thing limiting FDI in PR is that the Puerto Rican government tries to attract American companies almost exclusively. You also see this in the tourism promotion which almost all of it is done in the continental US. It needs to broaden and go after all the money ready to be invested abroad in Europe, Latin America, Middle East, wherever. Not only in magazines from those places and such, but also attend trade shows in various of those places and make sure PR's stand is one of the largest and flashiest to attract potential investors to the stand. Then all the advantages of PR is presented along with take home stuff like brochures with contact information online, via phone, email, etc.
There are literally billions of dollars ready to be invested outside of their countries on a worldwide scale. That money is going to go somewhere and with strategic attention grabbing promotion PR could be the destination for some of it. PR is a small island, it only needs a small portion of the total FDI of the world to have a healthy FDI attraction, but itsn't going to fall from the sky. Plenty of work is required in promoting the place and often it takes years to reach the levels of FDI that could make a difference. But, I'll repeat again, the main issue with PR is that it's too USA-focused.
Most of the tourist money in the Caribbean comes from the US, in all of the islands, simply because US is the closest major economy geographically. You never going to find enough Europeans or Asians to take a cruise all the way to PR.
I've considered the possibility of buying property in Puerto Rico. I've been going there each year for the past 15 years or so. Here are some of the things I've observed.
(1) Speaking Spanish fluently will help immensely. I can get by but I'm not fluent.
(2) If you're not going to be on the island you'll need a property manager. I've heard some stories from property owners about their experiences.
(3) You may find yourself looking for a lawyer to protect your ownership interest and also to deal with governmental actions (e.g. tax policies). This happened to a PR friend of mine that lives on the mainland. The government was trying to get more taxes out of him.
(4) If you're thinking about living there yourself long term, give consideration to medical care.
Basically it speaks about that very issue about the unclear titles and why that is...and appears to be nearly as high as 40% of the housing in Puerto Rico with unclear titles.
at one point, it may have been under Rosello, they launched an initiative to work through several years of backlogged title data to catch up. I don't know whether that effort was completed, still underway, or abandoned when he resigned.
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