ligot,

No personal firsthand experience but a lot of years worth of talking to those who have done this, and the reality is, we thought very seriously about doing this many years ago.

Among the the turn offs to us were the fact that rules and laws are NOT the same as those in the States, and you need to know you don't have a lot of legal protections. You really can't depend on needing rental income to help offset the expenses and costs involved - there are many rental properties available and they don't all get rented all of the time. And the big one to me is managing the maintenance of the property from such a distance. At one time we had a home in the South and being an absentee owner was not a great experience.

And of course these are just my opinions and there are many absentee owners here on the forum who may think I'm nuts for worrying about these things. We had actually considered SXM as a retirement option but after exploring the possibilities we decided WE weren't of the mindset to be comfortable with this idea. There's a small part of me that has always regretted not making that leap in faith but every time I hear of some of the issues others have had I've never regretted our ultimate decision NOT to follow our plan to make an island purchase. Well, not much, anyway..... <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/duh.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/duh.gif" alt="" />