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Lief Simon is the co-founder of Live and Invest Overseas, which is one of the world’s leading resources on investment, real estate and retirement overseas. Simon joins the show to discuss some of the best markets worldwide and how investors can get the best returns in them. Simon also discusses emerging markets and what countries investors should avoid.

Visit Live and Invest Overseas at www.liveandinvestoverseas.com.

Lief Simon has lived and worked in seven countries on five continents and has traveled to more than 50 countries. His real estate investing experience began nearly 20 years ago with a multi-unit building in Chicago. After selling that building for a total return of more than 1,800 percent in just 30 months, Lief began to diversify internationally.

In the decades since, Lief has personally bought and sold property in 21 countries. He has managed multi-million-dollar developments, multi-million-dollar property portfolios and more than two dozen rental properties. Over the years that Lief has been living overseas, he has also been actively engaged in doing business. He has launched and managed business ventures in 10 countries, including local businesses, web-based businesses and international franchises. Lief has spent more than three weeks out of four on the road for the better part of the past two decades, traveling almost constantly in search of the world’s top emerging real estate opportunities. In recent years, Lief has also turned readers on to targeted investments suitable for the individual investor in Mexico, Nicaragua, Romania, Panama, Belize, the Philippines and most recently, Colombia and Brazil.

He has been quoted in articles on international real estate in Live and Invest Overseas, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, USA Today, and Outdoor Magazine.

Check out this episode!

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ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the JetSetter Show, where we explore lifestyle-friendly destinations worldwide. Enjoy and learn from a variety of experts on topics ranging from upscale travel at wholesale prices, to retiring overseas, to global real estate and business opportunities, to tax havens and expatriate opportunities. You’ll get great ideas on unique cultures, causes, and cruise vacations. Whether you’re wealthy or just want to live a wealthy lifestyle, the JetSetter Show is for you. Here’s your host, Jason Hartman.

JASON HARTMAN: Welcome to the JetSetter Show! This is Jason Hartman, your host, where we explore lifestyle-friendly destinations worldwide. I think you’ll enjoy the interview we have for you today, and we will be back with that, in less than 60 seconds, here on the JetSetter Show.

ANNOUNCER: What’s great about the shows you’ll find on www.jasonhartman.com is that, if you want to learn about investing in and managing income properties for college students, there’s a show for that! If you want to learn how to get noticed online and in social media, there’s a show for that! If you want to know how to save on life’s largest expense, there’s a show for that! And if you’d like to know about America’s crime of the century, there’s even a show for that. Yep! There’s a show for just about anything. Only from www.jasonhartman.com. Or type in Jason Hartman in the iTunes store.

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JASON HARTMAN: It’s my pleasure to welcome Lief Simon back to the show! He is the cofounder of Live and Invest Overseas, and we’re going to be talking about some overseas real estate opportunities, some business opportunities, and of course, the problem and the backdrop and the context as to why someone would want to consider any of these things. Lief, welcome back. How are you?

LIEF SIMON: I’m great. Thanks for having me, Jason.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, yeah. Well, the pleasure is all mine. You know, first of all, and obviously the listeners are interested in this topic because that’s why they’re listening, but just give a brief outline as to your view of the world now. I assume most of your clientele is probably American, or at least North American? Would that be a fair assumption?

LIEF SIMON: Yeah, I’d say probably 80, 85% of our readers are from North America. And the rest may be from North America but living in different parts of the world, but they’re all English speaking. And from a why go overseas perspective, why would you buy property in another country? For me, I guess there’s a couple aspects. One, you could just do it for the pure adventure. If you wanted to have a vacation home on the beach, you could buy a cheaper home, beach condo, in Panama, for example, than you could in, you know, Santa Monica. But for me as an investor, it’s about diversification. And you know, in 2008, when the world real estate market collapsed, they all didn’t collapse at the same rate. You know, Ireland and Spain went down as low as 50, 60% from their peaks, but Panama, for example, went down slowly, and maybe dropped 20-25% over the course of a few years after the main markets collapsed. And it’s mostly bounced back at this point, whereas, again, to use Ireland and Spain as an example, most of those local markets are still down, although Dublin has recovered a bit. So, diversification, both in markets, but also in currencies. So, I’ve invested in places like Brazil, and Europe, to get some currency diversification and some cash flow in the local currencies. Sometimes, you know, for the purpose of having cash flow in a country that I like to travel to.

JASON HARTMAN: And when you do that, talk a little bit about how you structure that. I mean, for example, you mentioned Brazil. So, you buy a property in Brazil, say the property has cash flow, which is great, you open a Brazilian bank account? Do you form a Brazilian entity or just buy it in your personal name? I said you open a bank account. Assuming you do. In Brazil, I don’t know if you do. Just kind of give a little backdrop as to how you structure the whole thing.

LIEF SIMON: Sure. And really, it’s gonna depend country by country, and also, person by person. But the country is gonna be the key factor to start with. In some countries, for example, they don’t charge capital gains tax on real estate profits if you hold the property in your own name. So, in Croatia, for example, if you own the property for more than three years, and it’s held in your own name, there’s no capital gains tax. So in that case you’re gonna put it in your own name, even though you might prefer to put it into some kind of structure for probate purposes or asset protection. In Brazil, you essentially put it in your own name, because putting it into a local corporation has high administrative complexities and costs, and even trying to register a foreign corporation has similar complexities and costs. So it’s just easier, in the case of Brazil. In a place like Panama, almost all locals hold their property in a local corporation for asset protection purposes, and historically, also for tax purposes, because there was no capital gains tax in Panama on shares of a corporation years ago. That’s changed since, so fewer people are forcing themselves into that corporation holding. And then the main thing I think about is probate. I own property I think at this point in 12 countries still. I bought property over the years in 21. And, so, for my kids, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, you don’t want them having to go through probate in a dozen countries just to get access to the assets. So, having a central structure for most people will make sense. You know, set up a [unintelligible] LLC, or a Belize LLC, and use that to hold the bulk of your properties, and then, when there’s an exception, like maybe you have in Brazil or Croatia, you work with that exception, but try and consolidate as much as you can.

JASON HARTMAN: And, one of the challenges is, setting up that foreign bank account. So let me just kind of understand a couple things. Are you an American citizen?

LIEF SIMON: I am, yes.

JASON HARTMAN: Okay. And, where do you actually live? Where’s your residence?

LIEF SIMON: At the moment I’m in Panama, but I’ve—

JASON HARTMAN: That’s what’s funny about this new class of—and you’re not exactly new to this, but there’s sort of this fairly new class. I think a lot of it was inspired by, oh, Tim Ferriss and the 4-Hour Workweek, and this geoarbitrage concept—that’s what my show is about here to a large extent. But you know, there’s this new class of people like, that say where do you live, right now I’m in Panama [LAUGHTER]. You know, that’s not the way we used to answer that question, Lief. We used to say, oh, I live in the Socialist Republic of California. And that was the answer. So, you’re not gonna be there that long? Or, what?

LIEF SIMON: We’re in Panama; this is where we started our publishing company, and Panama’s a good location to run a business and find English speaking employees and all that stuff. Previous to that we were in France, and we were working for another publishing company as employees, at that point my wife and I, but when we left and wanted to start our own thing,