was speaking with a friend over dinner last night and she is planning a trip to Poland to buy some properties.

for 80K a brand new nice home near Krakow.

anyone have experience with such an endeavor?

I would not do it in Poland unless you are a Polish citizen and are fluent. Poland has changed a lot since the 80s/90s but still a ton of eastern european bureaucracy. It will be more of a pain than it is worth. If the goal was to buy and use as a vacation property or something like that...maybe but still probably not.

Seems like a massive risk to do something like this unless you have eyes on it or someone you trust implicitly to have eyes on it and/or can manage the property on your behalf. I assume this is what people generally do with foreign property anyway?

I simply wouldn't trust this otherwise. Especially in an increasingly disorderly world.

i will also add foreign currency risk. exchange rates change all the time. In local currency the investment might go up significantly but that doesn't mean the same will happen on a USD basis.

I had a tax client that lived most of the year in Poland, teaching English. Had been doing so for 15 or more years. One day he gets a knock at his door and a group of guys in uniforms walk in and interrogate him for nearly an hour.

All sorts of bad thoughts were going through his mind. He wasn't able to tell exactly what they were after, the questions were pretty general, but he said they were all business, very serious. He figured they were going to take him to jail and deport him, but that did not happen. Weird that after all that time they felt the need to do that.

I'd not want my money at risk there.

Already covered but taxes (both here and there), fund repatriation cost, FX, local ownership laws, etc. Know those well because that's what is going to break any investment.

AggieMainland said:

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I would not do it in Poland unless you are a Polish citizen and are fluent. Poland has changed a lot since the 80s/90s but still a ton of eastern european bureaucracy. It will be more of a pain than it is worth. If the goal was to buy and use as a vacation property or something like that...maybe but still probably not.

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Good advice.

I am still trying to figure out how the "snowbirds" flock from warm weather climates in the winter to cooler climates in the summer

i don't see how they do this unless they own two properties.

or just try to rent out your primary residence in Florida on Airbnb and rent somewhere else for a few months during every summer?

that seems to have a low percentage of success.