By Ivo Henfling

I am sitting next to Belize and I am in Cancun. Rudy Matthews and I are promoting Costa Rica living and Costa Rica real estate to future retirees, mostly from the US and Canada.

I think Obama will be doing us a favor by winning the next US elections, which will send lots of US citizens our way, just like it happened in the 2nd Bush administration.

So there are lots of people here in the Casa Magma Marriott in Cancun to check out Costa Rica because living in Costa Rica is the way to go.

The Ultimate International Living Convention

Rudy and I are at the Ultimate International Living Convention in Cancun. The ladies at the table next to us work for the Belize Tourism Board and they promote their own Qualified Retirement Program. I am looking at banners of developers and tourism boards in Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Belize. Latin America is being presented as paradise for retirement. International Living promotes living in Costa Rica and Costa Rica real estate as well as in other countries.

Lots of exhibitors

International Living has done an incredible job of organizing this Ultimate Event for those planning to retire in the near future, only Disney does it better than they do. Over 360 people have been listening to some of the most interesting speeches given by experts from all the different countries for the last 4 days. The exhibition area is huge and there are 45 tables, each table has a different exhibitor. Most exhibitors are developers in the different countries, a few are real estate offices and there are attorneys from different countries, some banks, a safety deposit box company in Panama and offshore asset protection companies.

Costa Rica attorney Roger Petersen

Costa Rica attorney Roger Petersen gave a 30 minute explanation what living in Costa Rica is all about and showed he is a natural at this, the crowd loved him. Roger gave an honest fly over, showing good and bad, of different topics like residency in Costa Rica, property ownership, how important location can be when buying Costa Rica real estate and a little bit about every area in Costa Rica, beach and city.

In a 20 minute workshop later in the day, he pulled another crowd of those interested in more details and I took the advantage there of handing out our beautiful flyers full of information about Costa Rica in general and hot properties in the Central Valley.

Advantages and disadvantages

Most visitors are the same kind of people we always get, some ready to retire now or anytime in the next 10 years. It is fun. We are learning, as this is out first tradeshow, and we expect quite a few of the visitors to come to Costa Rica soon. They all need to do their due diligence and figure out the advantages and disadvantages of all the different places where they want to live for the rest of their life. I have had also quite a few people asking how to use their 401K to invest.

If you have any comments, please feel free to leave them below.