Lee’s biggest business is advising people how to build eco-friendly homes out of shipping containers, throwing in alternative-energy systems, like solar panels, if they’re interested. He’s also the go-to guy in San Juan when expats and business owners have computer trouble. And he helps fellow expats transition to life in Nicaragua…
Founded in 1524, Granada, Nicaragua is a historic city with homes and other buildings hundreds of years old. Colonial homes are known for their red tile roofs and interior courtyards with gardens, fountains, and sometimes even swimming pools.
I’ve told you before about Rancho Santana on Nicaragua’s south Pacific Coast. This is the community with five beaches, 2,700 acres and more than two miles of coast. (International Living’s parent company is the owner and developer.)
On Nicaragua’s southern Pacific coast, just a short hop from the Costa Rican border, you’ll find San Juan del Sur. It’s the ideal beach town: funky, laid-back, and cheap. Plus, its location on a small cove, with cliffs rising dramatically from the water on either edge, means the views, especially at sunset, are spectacular.
With little more than a few hundred bucks and some determination Reece decided to give the import-export world a try. Now he has a nationwide business.
Real estate prices in Nicaragua have dropped by as much as 44% since the beginning of the economic downturn. A short-lived property boom triggered real estate price increases in many parts of the country, with Nicaragua’s popular coastal regions witnessing a particularly pronounced jump.
I first visited Nicaragua nearly a decade ago and fell in love with its rough-around-the-edges beauty and the genuine warmth of its people. In 2007, my husband and I lived for a while on this hilltop overlooking San Juan del Sur. We spent lazy days exploring hidden beaches and lively evenings with friends at the thatch-roofed seafood restaurants that line the beach.
Reece Guth stepped off the bus at a sleepy town two miles from Nicaragua’s Pacific Coast. He was armed with two things—a vague business idea and a money belt filled with $50 notes shoved down his pants.
We’re lying together in a hammock. The sun is shining brightly overhead, there’s a cool breeze, and I can hear the distant sounds of a carnival. Our garden is lush and full of blooming hibiscus and ginger plants. Our fountain gurgles and above us the banana leaves sway. Once a dream, life here in Granada, Nicaragua, is now a reality.
For Tuey Murdock and her family, Nicaragua is the place that has it all… Stunning Pacific coast beaches, a great cost of living, excellent medical facilities, and a way of life that lets them relax and enjoy the natural wonders they find all around them.
Donna Tabor joined the Peace Corps 16 years ago, and her first station was Granada, Nicaragua. She’s been there ever since.
I came away from my first visit to Nicaragua, in 2004, with a lopsided image of the coastal lifestyle in Central America’s largest country…an image based only on the southern Pacific coast and its network of luxury, planned communities designed specifically with expats in mind.
If you’ve ever dreamed of living abroad in a Spanish colonial home, you won’t find a better place in the Americas than Granada, Nicaragua.
In this video, IL editor Lee Harrison is in the Nicaraguan seaside town of Masachapa…an old-fashioned beach town that was popular with Managua’s wealthy as far back as the 1940s.
We’re always on the lookout for that “next” place. That place where geography and price-point and accessibility come together at just the right time to create a window of opportunity for pioneering investors.
Imagine yourself awakening to a symphony of tropical birds and brilliant sunshine. You walk into the open-air, center courtyard of your colonial home and pour yourself a rich cup of locally grown coffee. The courtyard’s lush, tropical vegetation is the home’s centerpiece oasis… and almost hides the blue, shimmering pool, right in your “living room.”
In this video, IL tour downtown León—Nicaragua’s intellectual capital, and also a university town. León, the capital of the country for 200 years before Managua was so designated, once served as the country’s political, military, cultural, and religious center.
In this video, IL take a tour around a beautiful colonial home for sale for $150,000 in Granada, Nicaragua. The colonial homes in Granada have names, and this one, which has been restored, is called Casa Arcos.
In 2008, the time felt right for Eric and his wife Stephanie to leave their Chicago jobs—his in an auto body shop and hers in human relations. They spent nine months traveling Central America, from Panama to Belize, from beaches to mountains. “But we never found good bread,” Eric says.
In this video, IL editor Lee Harrison takes a tour around the Spanish colonial city of Granada, Nicaragua. This city is not only popular with travelers, but with expats as well.
My husband Jack and I decided to move to Nicaragua in early 2009. We had been successful realtors in Atlanta for 22 years, but when the real estate market collapsed in 2008, we decided it was time to quit.
When my husband Jurg and I first moved to Nicaragua, we planned on a three-year stay. But its 10 years later and we’re still here…and we’re not leaving anytime soon.
The jewel in Nicaragua’s crown is a little city called Granada. It’s a beautiful, bewitching place. And if your dream of an overseas property involves an old colonial home, you’ll get more for your money in Granada.
It’s before dawn as the first surfers race toward the ocean and the sun begins to unroll a carpet of yellow light across the beach. Soon the clubhouse is buzzing with the breakfast crowd…and I can see neighbors on horseback stopping to chat in the surf.
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