Margarita Island—after the Vote.

By Scott Boswell:
Well, the excitement has calmed after the “referendum” and things look bright as the country breathes a sigh of relief after the “NO” vote on Chavez's constitutional changes. People smile and say Buenos Dias or Buenos Noches, real estate is once again booming and apartment buildings are going up. Reminds me of the Miami of the 1960's. Prices are still lower here than they were for many Florida properties way back then. The banks will lend money on apartment purchase and some contractors will give 15 year financing—even to foreigners. This is the “new” Venezuela. You must have a Residence Visa and Cedula (Venezuelan I.D. Card) to obtain any of this financing. There is a nice discount on pre-completion prices if you pay cash, and you only need your passport to buy with cash. There will be no “nationalization” of your private property, so relax.

Personally, I prefer to live in a house or townhouse. But a Condo apartment does offer more security if you don't live here full time or don't want to deal with maintenance.
Right now I have a big 2 bedroom/2 bath Apartment for sale here in Playa El Angel. You'll find photos and more information on my website http://www.discovermargaritaisland.com.
It's fully furnished, (even linens, pots & pans, t.v., air conditioning—everything!) It has a pool and is in walking distance to all the shopping, medical care, restaurants and is located in the most convenient and popular area on the entire island. The price is $58,000 U.S.D. This could also be an income property for you. It was rented for last year at $800.00 a month.

I get lots of e-mails from people who want to live on a Caribbean island...or at least think they do. Living on an island can be fun, and at times a real “pain”. Many goods and food items are imported so once in a while some things are in short supply or temporarily unavailable. Occasionally finding eggs, chicken, pork, milk, cooking oil, etc. can be a real challenge, but everyone soon learns to 'make do' and eventually most of the staples manage to re-appear in the markets. We tend to pay more for groceries than the locals do because we buy a lot of imported brands which are more expensive. Even so, food is cheap, liquor is cheap and beer is almost free-about 16 cents a bottle! Sometimes the power goes out for a few minutes or a few hours. When we lived in Mississippi the electricity went off every time we had an electric storm, so it's nothing new to us. At this writing there are ice storms in parts of the Northern U.S., and they can cause power outages for days and weeks. The only ice you'll find here is in your cocktail—which might cost up to a whopping $2 U.S.
We don't have hurricanes, floods, volcanoes, large earthquakes or tornadoes. We occasionally get tired of the same beautiful weather day after day after day... Sometimes we wake up and say, “Damn, another #$!% sunny day in Paradise!”
Our rainy season is Nov. & Dec., plus some summer showers in July/August—those are really welcome!

Living Expenses--
We totaled our expenditures for food, cleaning supplies for the house and 4 rental apartments, liquor, beer, gas for the car and “miscellaneous stuff” and for all this it's about $500 U.S. per month. We don't 'skimp' on food or anything else, for that matter. This did not include car repairs, marina fees and supplies for our boat, insurance, imported appliances, and clothes. Well, not actually that much on clothes...”formal dress” here is when you wear shoes. You could go year 'round in your bathing suit and nobody would pay much attention...unless you happen to look like Pam Anderson, of course!
However, the locals dress well and you must wear proper attire (long pants for men) if you go to any government building.

The rest of the story- It is very difficult and frustrating to try to get anything done here. People do not keep appointments or are habitually late for them . Workers are not skilled and it is darned difficult to find anyone who takes pride in his job. You can find some good workers but it is an on-going search. The same is true for mechanics, roofers, electricians, in short, all the 'trades'. Not just my opinion...many people who have lived here for years (and all over the world, too) say that Venezuelans in general and Margaritenos in particular are basically lazy. Maybe it's the climate, but most Caribbean people just aren't very work-oriented. They're like some welfare people in the States...wouldn't take a job no matter what the pay. I don't care if saying this isn't politically correct—to me, politically correct is an oxymoron anyway. A friend of mine used to do a lot of boat repairs in the Bahamas. He says you could leave your shoes and tools on the dock and they'd steal your shoes but leave your tools, because they couldn't sell the tools (nobody wanted to work). It's not quite that bad here—they'd steal your tools too! Almost every place here has a security guard so both your shoes and tools are reasonably safe.

I get inquiries from lots of people wanting to know “can I work/make a living there?” Not knowing these people, that's an impossible question to answer. All I can say is I came here with a very small nest egg to invest and I've done quite well over the last few years. And I've seen others bring hundreds of thousands of dollars and go broke..contact Scott
at discovermargaritaisland@yahoo.com