I just wanted to talk about two things that we're noticing frequently here in Paraguay. It's coming to us in various ways, not the least of which is through correspondence that we're receiving from people who are planning to come to Paraguay or who have recently arrived. There are two things that I think we really need to talk about because we are seeing increasingly the ramifications of these two issues and they're coming together in a way that is really detrimental to a lot of people.
So we just need to unpack them and just have a chat about it. The first thing is that we are noticing that people are acting with a irrational amount of haste. People feel as though they're running out of time.
Whether it's events going on overseas or things happening here, people are coming up with the theory that they need to move at warp speed and get everything in place in record time. You need to take your time. It is really essential that you don't rush the process.
People are rushing so much that they're thinking several steps ahead. And that can be a good thing if you're thinking about it, but when you act on those things, it can come unstuck in spectacular ways. For example, we are speaking to quite a few people who haven't yet arrived in Paraguay, but they're already doing property negotiations and they've identified particular properties and they're speaking to people here.
They're even making moves towards purchasing property here in Paraguay. It is such a risky thing to do. When you arrive in Paraguay, I don't care how much property you've purchased anywhere in the world, how many transactions you've done, how astute you are, this property market will teach you a thing or 10.
It does not operate in the same way. But when I think about it, anywhere that I've lived in the world, it would be crazy for anyone from any other country, whether it's developed or uh third world country, to think that they could look online and buy into that market without coming and seeing what they're looking at. I don't suggest that it's not possible.
And I'm sure on some occasions people have done it and it's come off well and so these stories get around. Oh, we just looked online and brought somewhere sight unseen and it all worked out really well. I've heard about those stories very occasionally.
But for every one of those stories, I've heard countless stories of woe. Even today, I was looking on a popular social media site here and it was a story about some people who have done their dough in a massive way. The similar sort of dynamics that we often talk about on our videos.
people came here, dealt with people from their country because they were familiar and they trusted them. And as the story goes, they've lost it sounds like just about everything that they owned. So, it's not just something that we hear sometimes.
We're actually seeing it even in the last few days, and I'm sure there's many other stories out there in recent days that we don't know about. My advice to anyone when they're talking about moving anywhere, whether it's another part of the country that you're living in or definitely overseas, is get your ducks in a row because there are so many things that you need to do before you leave a country. And once you've left, you've left.
And if you miss some of the really important steps in leaving a country, well, it can be really detrimental. Whether it's in respect to your financial situation or documents that you need to get organized, other loose threads that you need to tie up, there are so many things that you just need to concentrate on in the preparation to leave the country that you are leaving. It just doesn't make sense to try and jump the hurdles 10 steps before you've reached them.
All you're going to do is you're going to trip yourself up. You are buying into FOMO and we know how that often turns out. There is definitely an uptick in real estate activity here.
There's more people coming. I think that we're seeing it in prices and purchasing behaviors here, but there's still a lot of land here. There's no need to be rushing to the extent that you're making decisions before you've even come about real estate.
It absolutely makes no sense. The ugly kissing cousin of rushing is greed. We are seeing people come here or people planning to come to Paraguay who are acting out of a tremendous spirit of self gain.
People seem to think that this is the new frontier and it's just a matter of just arriving here with a checkbook and you're just going to own half the country and you're just going to divide it up into cookie cutter sized pieces and live happily ever after. That's a nice dream. But the reality is Paraguay property is already very evolved in that regard.
It's already been a thing that people here, locals, Paraguayans, wealthy people have purchased up vast tracks of land. And right across the country, you have developments of loties, small building plots that have been divided up. And there are tons of them.
many of them still sitting there unsold or if they have sold they haven't been developed. The point I'm getting at is that I'm commonly receiving emails and correspondents from people who have got a plan about coming to Paraguay and making it big in terms of property development. And no question about it, there's opportunity here.
But you won't be able to just come here and click your fingers and it's all going to fall into place. There are many variables. Just like with rushing, greed will put you in a place where you're making decisions that you will probably regret later.
Do you need that amount of land? One hectare for a lot of people if you're not running cattle and a whole lot of other things is a ton of land. particularly given the amount that you can grow here in Paraguay and how quickly things grow, how you need to keep things pretty neat and tidy to make it safe because, you know, we can have an issue with things like snakes and things.
So, you just need to keep everything nice and tidy. So, just wanting more land because you think that you can get it or that you want it. If you need a certain amount of land, maybe start at that point rather than sort of saying, "Well, I only need this amount of land, but I'm going to go for this because I can afford it.
" Because it creates so many other ramifications. If you buy two hectares instead of one hectare, now your fencing cost doubled. If you buy 90 hectares rather than one hectare, well now your staffing costs increased because you would definitely need some help on such a big property.
Particularly if you are looking to run cattle or anything like that. A lot of people will say, "Oh, I want a big property. " Okay, well that's fine, but you're going to have a team of people on your property now, locals and other people that are having to come onto your property.
If you've got cattle over a certain threshold, you'll be having officials coming on because there are certain realities about having significant holdings of cattle and things like that from a stock management and government oversight perspective. There's so many issues relating to the desire to have a bigger chunk of property. Just think about what you actually need rather than what you dream you might be able to get.
I think that if we can keep a handle on our tendency to want to jump the hurdles before we get to them and we can keep the greed monster inside of all of us at least in reasonable check, we might be in a reasonably good place. Just my opinion as always and absolutely no doubt everyone's got their own and isn't that a good thing. So until next time, take care.
Ciao. Smoking rooms wherever you are. It's just about close and time.
[Music] Didn't we just want to go?
