Changing Gears in Belize

When I said I was changing gears in Belize, I didn't mean shifting from 1st to second in an automobile, I mean that after 13 years, Angela and I have sold our business, Beaches and Dreams, one that we pretty much built from the ground up, starting with just 4 cabana rooms and a small 4 table restaurant, to a thriving,now 11 room property including a 3 story Boutique Hotel, a 60 seat restaurant, The Barracuda Bar and Grill, and a thriving tour operation including boats, vans and on staff licensed tour guides. Our lives have been in a fishbowl of sorts given the power of sites like TripAdvisor, that chronicles our lives as hoteliers and even as restaurant owners.

In those 13 years, I became involved in the Real Estate marketing business, mostly as a byproduct of owning a place where people visited and became enamored in the beauty, but mostly in the lifestyle that comes with living in paradise.

Throughout those years, I have bought, subdivided a small parcel on the nearby Sittee River , selling all 10 of those lots in just a few years, located property for and helped with the planning and construction of the Longest Zip Line, build and sold 2 spec houses in the Hopkins Area, helped at least 25 people find their ideal piece of property to build retirement and seasonal homes, many of which are now vacation rentals, started 6 business and helped a dozen other folks start businesses inn Belize. I have also discouraged a few people from seeking to move here as I do not sugarcoat the experience, and frankly, you can't move away from yourself and your problems.

Fast forward now to August of 2017, and a deal went through to sell our 3 phased business, Beaches and Dreams Seafront Inn, LTD. Make no mistake, it was a hard thing to do, but it was also in the original plan to grow and sell the business while there was still much potential for growth in the area and we could get our price, but there was something that came with the sudden realization that I would be leaving what I believe to be one of the greatest stretches of Beach on the Belize mainland. It wasn't sellers remorse, it was movers remorse. We loved it here and it is still a great place to do business and any investment in Real Estate here is still a great payoff and will surely beat the S & P 500, so we did the only logical thing to do, we bought a property just 200 feet up the beach from Beaches and Dreams. This property is leased to a dive shop operation downstairs and has a 3 bedroom 3 bath home upstairs, is located in the hotel and commercial zone and, go figure, had room for a little restaurant downstairs next to the dive shop.

A view of False Sittee Point shows what a great piece of property lies in and around the Hopkins area. The Sittee River has great fishing, kayaking and even a bio-luminescent lagoon to visit at night.

We've got 2 national parks with in a 10 mile radius with an amazing 8 waterfalls for hiking, swimming and wild life viewing. 

 A great place to launch a new business that helps bring buyers and sellers together in a one on one basis and can help folks navigate an unfamiliar territory of foreign land, home and business ownership in Belize. Tropical Pathways Belize is a partnership of 2 longtime friends whom have been living abroad for a combined 30 some odd years. Lyle Burke, who had been living in Merida , Mexico and his company represented sales all throughout Central America and specializing in tourism related businesses for sale. Lyle was instrumental in helping me build a great marketing plan for my resort in Belize and believes the Belize market, with its English speaking residents and British Common laws for owning real estate(basically identical to US laws, also based on BCL) was something that, if we combined our efforts, would lead to a unique 1 on one client agent relationship to find folks the exact property they were looking for. Our philosophy is simple. We have developed a network of agents across Belize that will co broker with us so we are not limited to and trying to sell property to clients based on a limited amount of listings we want to sell. We call ourselves a Boutique Agency. Stay tuned for more and visit our website at www.tropicalpathways.com to sign up for our exclusive newsletter with news from Belize and quick property offerings at substantially discounted rates. For now, You'd better Belize it!