A somewhat relevant story. 3 months ago I started saving and researching Costa Rican real estate. I figure that over the next two years a lot of people will be

A somewhat relevant story. 3 months ago I started saving and researching Costa Rican real estate. I figure that over the next two years a lot of people will be having a cash crunch and it will be a buyer's market in (somewhat over-built) Costa Rica. Right now I'm not where I need to be in terms of savings or knowledge, but in 10-16 months I will be. The interesting thing is that I have started talking to agents in CR and I can almost see things beginning to unfold. The people I'm talking to start throwing "deals" at me. It starts like "I know this may be a little soon, but I may have the perfect rental property for you" says the real estate agent. "It's $225, if you can bring 80k to the table the selling can finance the rest over 5 years" "Sorry, not interested. I'm just not ready, I need to do more research" I say. "Hi Mike, I spoke with the seller again. He can bring the price down to $200k, with financing over 10 years." I say again that I'm about 18 months away from pulling the trigger. The agent comes back with "We can probably go under $200k finance for 15 years (at about 9%) and we can furnish the place for you - a 12-15k value." Now I don't (yet) know if this is a good deal or notbut it is pretty easy to see the leverage working here. Because I'm on the right side of the market I can throw out a low offer and see what happens. I'm not going to. Hopefully in about a year, I will be walking in and everyone else will be running the other way, needing to sell. I understand that everyone @ hacker news is smart enough to "get" this, but it is cool to see this in action.