The Nicaragua real estate market is not governed by a central database of all properties that are available for sale, equivalent to the Multiple Listing System (MLS) in the US for example. In addition there are no official property statistics. Properties are manually registered in a series of regional property registries but the information is not easily aggregated or accessible. This feature of the market has implications for both buyers and sellers and the best investors adjust their strategies accordingly.
Implications for buyers:
- Don’t assume that each agent will have a complete database of all properties for sale in your target market. For a comprehensive understanding of what is available you’ll need to book property viewings with multiple agents. It’s also worth casting your net even wider for pocket listings that are held by informal players. Yes, in Nicaragua the hotel receptionist or your taxi driver will often have a few listings up their sleeve.
- Compile your own spreadsheet of asking prices. Apart from a few sources such as Reveal Real Estate, there are few active places you can go to for independent data on the market. So unfortunately you’ll have to put in the legwork yourself and build your own comparative data-set if you want to get a good feel for what constitutes good value.
Implications for sellers:
- Make sure your real estate listing is widely known by all agents who are active in your local market. In a non-MLS environment, where collaboration between agents is weak, this is normally a better strategy than providing an exclusive to a single agent.
- Bear in mind that agents work primarily as buyer agents rather than listing agents, so help them out with marketing your property. Provide them with photos (so that they don’t have to take these themselves) create compelling listing copy (so they can simply cut and paste for their websites and newsletters). Don’t get annoyed about having to do this, your goal should simply be getting as much exposure as possible for your property – so make things easy for the agents.