Why Gran Pacifica in 2026
Every year, more people start asking harder questions about where they live.
Not just where is beautiful, but where makes sense long-term. Where cost, livability, infrastructure, and timing still align. And where the idea of living abroad survives contact with daily reality.
That’s exactly why Gran Pacifica keeps coming up in serious conversations right now.
This recorded webinar breaks down why 2026 matters, why the Pacific coast of Nicaragua is being reassessed, and why Gran Pacifica stands apart from the usual oceanfront hype.
As Mike Cobb explains during the session, the question is no longer “Is oceanfront living possible?”
It’s “Where does it still work in practice?”
What This Webinar Covers
This is not a highlight reel or a glossy destination pitch. It’s a walkthrough of how an oceanfront community functions over time. In the webinar, you’ll learn:
Why the Pacific coast of Nicaragua is on the radar
What “oceanfront” really means once you move past marketing language
How Gran Pacifica compares to other coastal markets in pricing and structure
The difference between lifestyle fantasy and livable reality
Why infrastructure, utilities, and community design matter more than views
What makes 2026 a real inflection point, not a random date
Who this kind of community works for and who should look elsewhere
If you’ve ever loved the idea of living abroad but questioned the execution, this webinar is built for you.
Why Gran Pacifica Is Different
Gran Pacifica wasn’t designed as a resort experiment. It was built as a functioning coastal community from the start. That difference shows up in the details.
Homes are part of a planned, walkable layout. Roads are paved. Utilities are underground. Water, power, and fiber internet are in place. There’s on-site management, security, and a growing mix of full-time residents and part-time owners.
This structure reduces friction. It makes the move abroad feel legible instead of overwhelming.
Gran Pacifica sits on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast, about an hour from Managua, in a region where land prices never reached the speculative extremes seen elsewhere. That timing matters.
The Reality of Pricing and Cost
One of the most discussed parts of the webinar is pricing.
Not aspirational numbers. Real ones.
Mike walks through how Gran Pacifica compares to other oceanfront markets across Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean, and why price per square foot alone tells you very little.
You’ll see how land costs, construction standards, HOA structure, and long-term maintenance affect real affordability, not just entry price.
Why 2026 Matters
2026 is all about convergence. Infrastructure maturity. Market timing. Demographic shifts. Remote work normalization. Rising coastal prices elsewhere.
Gran Pacifica sits at the intersection of those forces, before the window narrows further.
This webinar explains why waiting for “perfect clarity” often means arriving after the opportunity has already changed.
Who This Is For
This webinar is especially relevant if you’re:
Exploring a Plan B abroad that feels livable
Comparing coastal communities beyond the brochure level
Thinking about long-term lifestyle optionality, not quick flips
Curious about Central America but cautious about execution
Looking for a place that works year-round, not just on vacation
It’s also honest about who Gran Pacifica is not for. That clarity matters.
Watch the Full Webinar
If you’re ready to move past surface-level answers and understand how an oceanfront community actually works, this session is worth your time.
👉 Watch the full recording of Why Gran Pacifica in 2026 and decide if it fits the life you’re planning next.
Transcript:
03:00
Diego Fuentes: So that was just a little preview of why Grand Pacifica today, and I’d like to introduce you to our host, Mike Cobb. He’s the CEO of ECI Deal Development, and he’s been living in Nicaragua for 18 years, for a while, and now he’s going to take it from here.
03:27
Mike Cobb: Good. Diego, thank you. Hey, great video, by the way. That’s brand new, I think. I think, it’s nice to see some of the new things and people having fun out there. The new pool, I think we have a new Mexican restaurant on property as well, so lots of… lots of new and great things happening, so thank you for putting that together and for organizing the webinar today. All right, let me just… do me a favor, just let me know that you can see the full screen here.
04:09
Mike Cobb: All right. Well, very good. Want to thank everybody for joining us this afternoon, and we’re going to jump right into it now and talk about why Gran Pacifica this year, 2026, and maybe a little bit about, you know, Nicaragua as well. There are certainly some things happening in the country that are exciting and bode well for tourism and real estate development and property ownership there, but also some things very specific to Gran Pacifica over the years. Diego is right. I lived in Nicaragua for 14 years with my family. I’ve been back in the States about 8 years, but, you know, still there frequently, and have really watched Gran Pacifica go from literally a cattle pasture on the beach to, really, the beginnings of a small town on the beach, and it’s been wonderful to see it happen, and to work with all the people and all of our property owners and all of our guests over the years to make this a wonderful, wonderful reality.
05:07
Mike Cobb: You know, if you’re thinking about living by the ocean, if you’re looking for Southern California weather, but don’t have, you know, the millions of dollars it would take to own a property on the ocean or near the ocean in Southern California, but you want the same kind of lifestyle and weather, Gran Pacifica is a tremendous choice. And, you know, if we’re not ready to go yet, we certainly have people looking at doing things into the future, right? Deciding to make ownership decisions today for a property that they may use as a vacation property in the near term, mid-term, but then ultimately end up moving for a full-time lifestyle at some point.
05:47
Mike Cobb: One of the things I like to hit really hard when I talk about Nicaragua, and I’m guessing that because you’re here on this webinar, you may not have a real strong reaction to the country, but, you know, risk versus the perception of risk is an extremely important concept. I mean, here’s a picture of a guy driving to the airport, texting on his phone, right? I had the data from 2022, right? Almost 300,000 people injured in car wrecks because of distracted driving, texting, probably, right? Versus 47 people injured in an airline incident, right? But people are comfortable texting on their way to the airport, right? You know, and then maybe paranoid, or not paranoid, but frozen with fear when they’re sitting on an airplane. And I think that really highlights the power of the perception of risk, right? The feeling of risk. Risk is an emotional feeling. And Nicaragua is a country that feels scary to many U.S. citizens, many North Americans, less so Canadians than U.S, but…
06:52
Mike Cobb: It feels scary. But if you start to look at reality versus perception and let the facts come to light, what you find is that Nicaragua is actually a safe, wonderful, affordable country with a lot of positive attributes, even though the feeling might be quite different. And this is a good friend of mine. In fact, Fredman worked with us for many years, I think almost a decade, Fredman worked for us at Gran Pacifica in Nicaragua. He’s now with Keller Williams. But if you just look at this, I mean, this is Keller Williams globally, globally, right? Number one in the region, number top markets and our net gains. I mean, so, I mean, you just see that here’s the Keller Williams franchise, and the data speaks for itself, right? Even though many people maybe fear Nicaragua or have these perceptions of it. The ones who don’t are actually transacting, and the ones who decide to look at the facts honor the facts are the ones that are making very, very good market decisions and market realities. You know, our company is now 30 years old. We started in 1996. We were really looking to create affordable residences for people with adventurous souls. I think the single thread that probably weaves through all property owners, investors, throughout Central America, Latin America, is this sense of adventure. And, you know what? Capturing that in a community is powerfully an important piece, and we’ve done that.
08:25
Mike Cobb: Today, we work in 7 countries. We have over 4,000 acres and 5 miles of beachfront property continuing to develop here. You can see some projects underway there at Gran Pacifica. We have an incredible team of people. Look, a lot of times people talk about what they’re gonna do. You know, gonna take money and people, and, you know, having the right people, a company is really, you know, people more than anything else, and we’ve got a great team of people who get the job done day in, day out.
08:59
Mike Cobb: So, we’re going to talk about some of these in greater detail. This is a picture of hole number 4 at Grand Pacifica, which plays down to the ocean, a beautiful oceanfront hole on our golf course. You know, why Nicaragua, living and investing, the, you know, the community itself, Gran Pacifica, and then the affordability. So, where is Gran Pacifica and Nicaragua? You can see Nicaragua in the lower left map there. It’s the largest country in Central America. Managua is the capital. In the bigger map, it sits right on the bottom of Lake Managua, and kind of sits in between the two lakes there.
09:38
Mike Cobb: Gran Pacifica is the closest beach to the city of Managua, to the capital city of Managua, to the airport, to the international airport, to the country. Gran Pacifica’s about, depends on where in Managua, somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour and 15 minutes, depending on what part of the city. So it’s close, and the location is excellent, easy to get to, with paved road the whole way.
10:03
Mike Cobb: Products in a mature market, they can be expensive. Products in a developing, emerging market can be very, very affordable. And what we see is a country like Nicaragua, where, you know, 30 years ago, when we first opened our doors as ECI, and 26 years ago, when we bought our property at Gran Pacifica, Nicaragua was way down on that curve. It hadn’t even been really thought about by many people. And so, today, it’s climbing this destination curve, this popularity curve. And as it does so, the prices of real estate continue to appreciate, which is great for folks who got in early. But as you can see, the prices of property have a long way to go before they… anywhere close to some of the countries at the top of the curve, like Costa Rica, Cancun, Panama, and other countries in the region.
10:52
Mike Cobb: Why Nicaragua? It is the safest country in Central America. It kind of flip-flops back and forth with Costa Rica. We’ll look at some stats. Real estate is extremely affordable. Cost of living, once you own the real estate, or if you’re renting, is very, very affordable. It is a beautiful, wonderful country full of historical and natural treasures, and the climate is great. We talked about that Southern California climate.
11:17
Mike Cobb: It’s very, very affordable. You know, year-round golf, basically you have cactus and palm trees, right? It’s that Southern California climate with one big exception. In Southern California, the water is cold. You can’t get in it for very long. At Gran Pacifica, the water is 80 to 82 degrees. Pacific Ocean, so you’ve got Southern California feel with warm Pacific Ocean.
11:44
Mike Cobb: Here’s a stat. I know a lot of times people say, oh, don’t confuse me with the facts, right? But if you look at the hard data, right, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, they’re all very, very safe. You look at a country like El Salvador, this data has changed. El Salvador has become much, much safer, by the way, since 2020. But, you know, you even look at some U.S. cities, right? How safe is Nicaragua compared to some U.S. cities, and it’s actually on a crime, homicide per 100,000 people, much safer. The statistic I like to use is a picture of myself, my wife, Carol, and my daughter, Amanda. This picture was taken in 2002. We had just moved to Nicaragua, and if you have children, you know that you would never put your children in danger.
12:33
Mike Cobb: And so, you know, the safety statistic that I like is the fact that, you know, I took my family there, and many other people have taken their families to Nicaragua as well, because it really is safe, and if you have your money where your mouth is, you do that. We had a great lifestyle, we watched Steeler games, grew up in Pittsburgh, tried to get both of my daughters to be Steeler fans. Jury’s out on that, but anyway.
12:56
Mike Cobb: They were in Girl Scouts, we had Girl Scouts, they have dance, so lots of great activities, lots of great lifestyle, but super, super, super affordable. And, camping at the beach, we would go to the beach and literally camp out at the beach, only people for miles in any direction, and, and felt very, very safe doing that.
13:17
Mike Cobb: Yeah, 14 years in Nicaragua. I like to say, you know, safety is somewhat geographic, but is also behavioral. This is volcano boarding, and there’s a guy down at the bottom of the hill with a radar gun, and they, and they put up the best, highest speed of the week, at the place where you load up to come to Sara Negro is the name of it. So I like to say that, you know, safety is geographic but it is also behaviorable. Behavioral. And, sadly, I did not break the speed record. But I did try. Excuse me.
13:56
Mike Cobb: Anyway… Affordability. Here’s a condo on the, on the left side, right? This was a condo in California, you know, a million bucks, right? $950,000.
14:11
Mike Cobb: The same thing in Nicaragua. Beautiful view of the ocean, under $200,000, right? So, you know, 5 times difference in price, same ocean, same weather.
14:23
Mike Cobb: The affordability. And then once you own the real estate, or once you rent, what you find is the cost of living is so much more affordable. Everything from meals to food to help, you know, I’d never had a maid before, but living in Nicaragua, it was very affordable to have a maid, have a part-time gardener. The kinds of things that dance, like my girls were in dance, and incredibly affordable.
14:48
Mike Cobb: So, you know, the cost of living once you’re there is so, so much less. A huge restaurant breakfast for 4 bucks, a steak dinner for 10 bucks. You know, where you shop, where you eat, it matters, right? If you want to go to the big fancy grocery store, which is the picture on the top, it looks like a U.S. grocery store, and a lot of the prices are U.S. prices.
15:10
Mike Cobb: But if you want to shop organic and go to the local market, you can get incredible produce, meats, cheeses, fish right out of the ocean. And it is so, so, so silly inexpensive. And the nice thing about a place like Nicaragua is you can grow your own food, build your own food forest, where you can just literally have a ton of food. At Gran Pacifica, we’ve put in a plantain, mango, pineapple, limes, all kinds of fruit trees, and it’s there for our owners and guests to come and harvest when it’s ripe, and enjoy beautiful, fresh produce. Right down the beach, about a half a mile away, the fishing boats pull up, and you can go down there and see what the catch of the day is, and pick some up for again. Incredibly inexpensive prices.
16:06
Mike Cobb: Nicaragua’s historical. Nicaragua has one of the oldest cities in the Americas. This is a picture of Granada. The city is 500 years old. It is a continually occupied city for 500 years. In fact, I think it’s the oldest in the Americas. You’ve got the colonial city of Leon, Managua, of course, Masaya, another beautiful colonial city, and then you’ve got the Warren Islands, and some beautiful beach areas as well. Volcano boarding, you saw that, be careful unless you want to break the speed record, and surfing, a crater lake, which is spectacular, and then some active volcanoes as well.
16:45
Mike Cobb: Granada is an absolute must-see. It’s about an hour and 45 minutes, 2 hours from Grand Pacifica, but a great place for a day trip, great restaurants, but, you know, because staying in a beautiful, old, 300-400-year-old colonial home that’s been turned into a bed and breakfast is so silly and expensive, a lot of people go there for a long weekend and just make a weekend of it and stroll the city, sit in the cafes, go to some of the exquisite museums there, take a ride on Lake Nicaragua, which you can see in the background through the Isletas. It is truly a wonderful treasure of the country, and a place that if you live in Nicaragua, you’ll probably go to fairly often. Lots of festivals, horse parades, epicas, they call them.
17:32
Mike Cobb: And then, as you get out and about, you’ve got Samodo Canyon and lots of beaches, whether they’re Pacific or Caribbean. Just some… just a beautiful country with so, so, so much to offer. And, we’re gonna talk about why investing in the country makes a lot of sense. The first one is, to me, the most important one there. Foreign landowner rights, but no restrictions on foreign ownership, equal treatment of foreign or domestic investor. This is critically important. You know, countries that make a differentiation between a local and a foreigner in property rights, I don’t like that personally. It’s not to say that it’s always bad, but I’m a fan of countries that treat foreigners and locals identically with regard to the law, period, but certainly property law in this case. Property tax rates are low.
18:26
Mike Cobb: And they have a title system. We think in common law, which is what the U.S. and Canada practices, we have, you know, a fee, simple title. In civil law, which is what Central America and South America uses, it’s Escritora publica, public title. It’s the civil law equivalent of fee, simple title. So, extremely important. And this is my favorite reason that I think Nicaragua’s a great place to invest, because they do treat everybody equally. The residency programs are phenomenal. They’re easy, they’re fast, there’s a lot of data here. If you’re interested in residency in Nicaragua, let us know. Reach out. We’ve got residency consultants and property consultants that can certainly help, but if you just look at the pension program on the top, 45 years or older, so many people, probably most of the people on this webinar today would qualify, and you have to receive at least $600 a month. So, again, Social Security payment, pension, combination of both, $600 a month is a pretty low threshold, and that qualifies you for the pension or visa, which gives you the right to live in Nicaragua.
19:41
Mike Cobb: And then there’s the deep real estate value. We showed that popularity curve, that development curve. You know, Nicaragua’s not as popular as places like Costa Rica, or Mexico, or Panama, or other places in the Caribbean, and so the prices of real estate are much, much, much more affordable. I think this was a discovery tour that we had down there, maybe a couple months ago, a group of folks checking things out before they decided they wanted to own, and the reality is that we bring people down, but the media is doing a great job of telling the Nicaragua story as well. The secret truly is getting out. Travel, Vogue, other publications are talking about Nicaragua for all the same reasons we’re talking about today, and they’re talking about it in a much broader audience.
20:29
Mike Cobb: If looking at Nicaragua is something you have been doing, I’m guessing it is, and you’re thinking about property ownership there, as it becomes more popular, the prices will go up, supply and demand. You know, right now, it’s still pretty much a secret, right? It’s still that the perception of risk is still out there, even though the real risk isn’t, right? This is an arbitrage. This is an opportunity to take advantage of the difference between risk and the perception of risk. That’s a gap. That’s a gap in the marketplace, and that gap means money. And as Nicaragua’s perception of risk drops to what the real risk is, that gap closes. And again, that gap is money in somebody’s pocket. And if you decide it’s something you want to do soon, that’s money in your pocket.
21:18
Mike Cobb: Gran Pacifica is a beautiful community that we started. We bought the property now 26 years ago. I moved to start the project. It was nothing, it was a cattle pasture in 2002, I moved there with Carol and Amanda, and Emily came along a little bit later, and we’ve built this wonderful, wonderful community on three and a half miles of beach. It is a huge project.
21:43
Mike Cobb: It’s 2,500 acres, Southern California climate. We are the closest beach, the closest resort community to the airport, the international airport in Managua. And we’ve got multiple neighborhoods. We’ll talk about that. Neighborhoods are important. Like, a town is not all one thing, right? A small town is many different neighborhoods that capture the spirit of individuality, and that’s what Gran Pacifica has done. But the first thing that we always like to talk about is reality. Like, there’s something there. A lot of people talk about what’s going to happen, what’s gonna happen. We’re gonna build a golf course, we’re gonna put in streets, we’re gonna build a community, we’re gonna build a clubhouse, whatever it is. The reality of Gran Pacifica is all of those things exist. There is a community. There are now probably 80 to 90 people full-time year-round on property. In the high season, which is cold weather up north, it swells to maybe 120 to 130 people full-time. Plus, we have guests who are coming and going as well. And so, when you have that kind of people, you have community, and you have different… you have different elements of the community, right? You have different likes and dislikes, and you have different areas of interest, and people can get together, you know, as they see fit. Here’s a group of people right here playing golf, for example. There’s another group in the middle. This is a turtle release. We just had a turtle release a couple weeks ago, and we have a turtle preservation program. There are lots of things you can do to meet other people who are neighbors and guests and property owners at Grand Pacifica, because it’s there, it’s real, it is a community.
23:23
Mike Cobb: This is our San Diego Viejo. This is our very first community. These are larger home sites, anywhere from a fifth of an acre up to about just under a half an acre home sites with single-family homes. We have pretty strong architectural covenants and restrictions, Spanish colonial style. You can see the tiles.
23:45
Mike Cobb: And I think we have a few home designs here that came in. This is a Miele home. This is actually one of the smaller home site areas. They go from about an eighth of an acre to about a quarter of an acre, but still some beautiful, beautiful homes here. This is one of our Miele homes, spectacular properties. These are, again, just some of the ideas in Phase 1. And what I really like about architectural covenants and restrictions are that they create harmony, not uniformity. I think a lot of communities you drive through, it’s… I call it the waltz, right? It’s 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, and they kind of repeat patterns. I don’t think there are any two homes that are identical at Grand Pacific, and we’ve got, I don’t know, maybe a couple hundred homes now, I think. And in Phase 1, the first San Diego Viejo, no two homes are alike, but they’re harmoniously blended because of the architectural covenants and restrictions. Some interior shots to give you an idea of what’s possible from the interiors, exteriors. We planted a lot of trees along the streets. There are sidewalks on both sides so that you can walk in the shade, you can ride your bike in the shade, you can drive a golf cart in the shade and really enjoy being out in the community and meeting other people as you pass them by, whether it’s on a golf cart or bike or walking. This is the Ava and Bella neighborhoods. This is about 90 homes that were just completed last year, at the end of last year. The homes in the foreground are solar.
25:26
Mike Cobb: They are now being tied into the grid as well, but they initially planned to be 100% off-grid. The homes closer to the water are the Bella homes. They were always designed as a hybrid home, a little bit larger, but a beautiful set of homes that are very, very affordable for folks looking to be in Grand Pacifica, but a really interesting, cool neighborhood, the EVA. We call it the EVA community, the tiny homes.
25:54
Mike Cobb: Some interior shots, some exterior shots. Obviously, just finishing up at the end of last year. Landscaping is slowly coming on, but by the rainy season in 2026 into the fall of 2026 and into 27, a lot of this landscaping will have grown up and really changed the feel of the place as much as anything.
26:18
Mike Cobb: Let’s see, just some more views of what’s happening there. These are the BELA Oceanfront homes, 2- and 3-bedroom homes directly on the ocean. You can see some beautiful views out across swimming pools, wonderful, lovely, interiors as well. And, all directly, facing the ocean around a small pool in the middle.
26:45
Mike Cobb: Condos, we have two different condo communities, and some idea of these condos. I think these are all sold at this point. There are some resales of those, and we’ll be looking at adding some additional condo buildings in the future as well, but all direct oceanfront, beautiful pools, restaurant, clubhouse. All right there, all, you know, very, very handy.
27:09
Mike Cobb: This is our master plan community, and in fact, the property itself goes off the top of this picture. This is not even the entire length of the property, but as you see, there are several neighborhoods there already. We have the San Diego Viejo, we have the Milagro Verde, the Mila, the Santa Barbara, the EVA, and the BELA. But with this much property, we really have the ability to develop other neighborhoods, new neighborhoods, for different styles.
27:34
Mike Cobb: And so, if somebody wants to see this map, we’d love to send you a copy of it. It really starts to highlight all of the different areas of the property, the mango orchard, the horse. We have a stable area. People now stable their horses with us, so when they’re there, they can ride the golf course and other elements of this wonderful community that exists today.
27:57
Mike Cobb: A picture taken from the other direction, looking back across about a mile and a half of our property. So about half the property is represented here in this picture, but you can kind of see some of the neighborhoods taking shape. This is the Santa Barbara home sites. We have one home in there today. These are very large acre-to-acre and a half home sites that either front the ocean or have incredible direct ocean views. These are spectacular home sites for very large custom homes. If you’re looking to build something truly unique and special, I’m just… generally, this lot and this home cost right around a million dollars, and if you were to look for something like that in any part of California or Florida, you’d just be putting another zero on that number, 10, 15, 20 million dollars. So again, the affordability of being able to own something this spectacular is incredible.
28:59
Mike Cobb: Here are the two condo, communities that we have, the Las Perlas condo and the Momotombo. New condo buildings will be built, as well.
29:08
Mike Cobb: Just to give you some idea of some of the home prices, homes starting around $170,000, condos starting under $200, and it’s, you know, sort of the sweet spot of the market is that, you know, three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath kind of home, for, you know, $350,000, and then up as you get into custom homes from there. But the affordability… and let me just also pause and say, these homes are solid concrete. Concrete and rebar. You know, I look at the homes that are being built around my neighborhood, about 80 miles west of Washington, D.C, in the Shenandoah Valley. They’re using, you know, they’re not even 2x4s, I don’t even know what to call them, but they’re not… they’re smaller than a 2×4, and they use the particle board, and I just look at the construction, and I think.
29:57
Mike Cobb: It’s great, I’m sure it’ll be there for, you know, for 20, 30, 40, 50 years, but it’s not going to last 500 years. These homes are built to last 500 years, and if you look at the affordability of them. I mean, they’re about the same price, or maybe a little bit less than a home in the U.S. And that’s the other point that I get asked a lot. Like, Mike, why is a home, say, a two and a half, you know, what, two, you know, three-bedroom, two and a half bath home, right? The one on the top right, for $350, $339, whatever, $350. Say, I can buy a house in the States for, you know, for $350. You’re right, you can.
30:40
Mike Cobb: But remember, it’s going to be built out of, you know, whatever, the tiny 2×4 and all that kind of particle board, stuff like that, right? The difference is that, you know… doors, windows, cement, rebar, which is what we use, tiles, toilets, faucets, wire, light fixtures. All of those elements are world priced. There’s no discount on cement or toilets or wire in Nicaragua, right, or anywhere else in the world. They’re priced to a world price, right? The only thing that’s less in Nicaragua is the labor, and labor is about a third of the cost to build a house. And if labor’s, you know, half as expensive, or a third, or even a third, right, you’re talking about half of a third, so a sixth, say, for example. So is a home in Nicaragua, what, you know, a sixth… less expensive? Yes, probably, right? But it’s not like it’s half price, because, you know, everything is world price. All the things it takes to build a house cost whatever they cost in the world marketplace. The thing to remember is, is that the house in Nicaragua, the house at Grand Pacifica that we build for you, will be solid cement, and will be there for 500 years, so it’s something that you’re not going to be around for 500, right? But maybe your kids, your grandkids, your great-grandkids. It really will become a permanent asset that builds your legacy for your family in the future.
32:12
Mike Cobb: Affordable living, yeah, great activities. Look at the, I mean, fishing, horseback riding, and we have spa services. I think Laura was getting a massage in the last one. The surfing is world-class. If you’re a surfer, Grand Pacifica has two surf sites, one of which is a world-class surf site. Kelly Slater and other surfers have come and filmed there. It is called the Meat Grinder, it’s called the Meat Grinderfor a reason. It is a professional surf location, but for folks who surf, it is a mecca, and people come there specifically for that. We also have a beach break called Asuchillo. A lot of people learn to surf, my daughters learned to surf there, and it’s a beautiful swimming beach as well.
32:56
Mike Cobb: We have beautiful yoga programs, we have a weekly, class on Saturday morning that’s tremendous. I’ve joined it a few times, but we have folks that do yoga more frequently as well. This is, Ximena and some of the folks, and she’s there every Saturday morning helping people to learn it. These are my daughters when they were way a lot younger, out playing at that Asuchillo Beach, the surfing beach. Playing on their boogie boards, before they were ready to learn to surf. This is our… this is a hole… this is hole number 3, playing down towards the ocean. The beautiful thing about the first 9 is 4 of the 9 holes either play 2 on or away from the ocean, so they’re just spectacular ocean, view, golf course. Something nice to do is ride horses on the beach, and
33:44
Mike Cobb: It’s not something you can do very many places in the world, but at Gran Pacifica, you can take a horseback ride on the beach. Some folks getting keys to their brand new home. Social engagement, talked about the turtle program, beach cleanup, sustainable gardens, working in the local community. You know, we do a lot with the various service organizations, Rotary being one of them.
34:08
Mike Cobb: We do a lot on our own. We encourage the engagement. We help folks get engaged, because if you’re going to go do a beach cleanup, or work with some gardens, or, you know, go teach English at a school, or teach, you know, just basic, you know, business accounting, checkbook accounting, right? You can do all of those things. And if you do those things, chances are you’re going to be working alongside someone else from the community who loves the same things you do. You get to know them, you get to spend time together. Afterwards, maybe you go have a beer together, a burger, or wings, or churrasco, which is a great Nicaraguan thing. And then that’s how community is built. That’s how friendships are built. And when people, you know, if you’re thinking about moving to Grand Pacifica, or anywhere, you know, and we’re leaving a job, for example, let’s say we’re retiring or we’re gonna go work remote for a while before we retire, right? We’re leaving our home, we’re leaving maybe our work environment, or certainly our physical social work environment. Maybe we’re leaving our church, or our synagogue, or we’re leaving our bowling, or softball club, or our yoga club, or the bridge group, or whatever it is. We’re leaving all of those social networks, all of our friends, and we’re moving someplace new.
35:20
Mike Cobb: And the thing that we have to remember and think about, and think about it hard, is how do we make new friends? How do we build new community? And there are a ton of ghost towns all over Latin America, places where the developer’s gonna do this, and they’re gonna do that, and we’re gonna have a clubhouse, and we’re gonna have people there. You know, if you’re going to move somewhere, and you’re gonna spend a lot of time there, chances are you’re going to want to be somewhere where other people are, and if there are, you know, how do you meet them? And social engagement is a great way to meet people. It’ll help you meet people who care about the same kinds of things that you care about.
36:00
Mike Cobb: And we encourage it, we foster it, and we facilitate this kind of community and social engagement. Yeah, the baby turtles are so cool. They’re just so cool. Here’s a family that just celebrated Christmas! We’ve got a golf clubhouse, we’ve got tennis courts. Again, lots of things that, you know, help people become, you know, comfortable and have things to do, and places to meet. Again, places to meet are really important. If you meet somebody off doing a social engagement, like, okay, maybe you want to invite them to your house, but maybe you don’t know them that well, so you just say, hey, let’s go down to Sea Salt and have a drink together, and have a meal, or whatever it happens to be. Great restaurant, great amenities. We bring in lots of outside groups if you’re thinking about having events, it’s easy, and it gives exposure to the community. And then some of the folks who decide to come down and get married decide to come back and spend more time, and a lot of those folks do become owners.
37:01
Mike Cobb: Here’s some folks pretending to work. I don’t think they’re working, but anyway, they’re pretending to work. But yeah, we have a lot of people who do work from Grand Pacifica. The internet is fast, it’s excellent, it allows you to work remotely and do it very, very well. I’ve done it many, many times, many times over the years, and still continue to do it, you know, hammer this point, sorry to hammer it, but the community is there, people are there. You have a place that you can call home, meet other people, and build friendships. And at the very beginning, I talked about this spirit of adventure that kind of flows through all of you. If you’re on this webinar, you have a spirit of adventure, I am sure of that. And you know, I think it’s hard. I know that, you know, I live in a little town in West Virginia, 80 miles west of Washington, D.C, and I find it very hard, very rare, to actually find people who have a spirit of adventure in the same way I do, that they would even think about living overseas. And you know what?
38:10
Mike Cobb: trait, I’m gonna call it that, that character trait, maybe. Because it’s rare, right? When we find it, it’s so precious. And a place like Gran Pacifica distills it, right? People self-select, people like you self-select to be there. You say, you know what, I have a… you might not say it out loud, but you have a spirit of adventure, looking to live overseas. And when you come, and you meet other people at Grand Pacifica, and you start to spend time there, what you realize is that you find people who understand you, and you understand them, and maybe you disagree on politics, maybe you disagree on the things you like to do. That doesn’t matter. There’s this big common thread that really holds people together in a very wonderful way, and it’s special, and it’s unique. And that’s what coming to a place like Grand Pacifica can deliver. It can deliver a real sense of community of people who understand you, and you understand them.
39:06
Mike Cobb: We’re still planning, obviously. You know, we’ve got 2,500 acres and three and a half miles of beach. We’re looking at different new neighborhoods. We’re looking at other activities. We’re looking at how we continue to shape this small town, right? It went from a cattle pasture to almost a village. It’s gone from a village now with two distinct neighborhoods to a very small town. And, you know, and we’re working with the property owners, with our property owners association, and we have a steering committee, and we have a chairperson, president of the HOA, which is the Homeowners association, and, you know, this is a coordinated effort to make sure that the way the project moves forward, the way this small town moves forward, is a way that continues to deliver the kind of community that people have come to expect, and it’s working.
40:00
Mike Cobb: Anyway, there will be changes, there are changes. Some of them we control, some we don’t. You know, tax rules, government regulation, all those things are out of our control, but we have great relationships with the local government, we have great relationships with the national government, and so we maintain those relationships so that we can work with them to make sure that the implementation of new rules and new regulations is done in a fair and easy way.
40:35
Mike Cobb: Yeah, Nicaragua’s very welcoming to foreigners. This picture, by the way, is our farmer’s market. I think we have a farmer’s market, I think Thursday. I’m not 100% sure, but I think it’s Thursday. But anyway, but again, you know, the sense of community and how do we continue to foster this going forward. One thing that is happening in the south of the country and is coming north is a coastal road. It’s called the Costa Nera, and it is a spectacular road, as you can see. That’s a real picture of a new section in the south of the country. They are building a tremendous road that’s going to run from the south of the country to the north of the country. They started in the south. It’s coming north. They’ve already surveyed, they already know that it’s going to be going just behind Gran Pacifica, continuing north, and as that road comes through, property values will absolutely increase. They have everywhere else from the southern part of the country all the way through to where they are today, which is about 30, 40 miles south of us. So, this is happening, continues to happen, and it will further position Gran Pacifica as a prime location, because we will always be the closest beach to the capital city, but from there, being able to travel north-south, and people can easily come from the south to us as well.
42:00
Mike Cobb: Move-in ready homes? Yeah, here’s one. A beautiful, it’s a two-story, it’s got a sleeping loft upstairs. It is a small house. It’s a tiny home, it’s what it is. But for $110,000 you know what? If you’re looking for a beautiful home, on, you know, on a resort community, whatever, 100 yards from the ocean, I don’t know exactly, but anywhere from 50 to 125 yards from the ocean, you know, $110,000. I mean, this is, this is an incredible opportunity. Another one which is a little bit bigger for $200,000. But again, just, incredible homes that are ready for you to move into today. Here’s a casita, two-bedroom, 2 bath, I think it’s about 1,000 square feet, it doesn’t say there, but I’m roughly on that. It’s in the Mila neighborhood. This is about 400 yards, maybe 500 yards from the ocean, but right along a golf course. Beautiful, beautiful neighborhood. So, 200… under $200,000 for a two-bedroom, two-bath home. And here’s a beautiful Bella home. Three-bedroom, 2 bath, 1,300 square feet, you know, directly on the Pacific Ocean, directly on the Pacific Ocean for under a half a million dollars. So, these are the kinds of homes that are available right now. Obviously, you can decide that you want to own a home site, have a home built, a custom home, that’s always possible, and a lot of folks like that, but more folks really are looking for something that they can own today and begin to enjoy immediately, and these homes are homes that allow you to do that. This is the EVA and BELA Community, solid concrete homes, very low EMF.
43:47
Mike Cobb: Which is important to a lot of folks. It blocks out the electromagnetic frequencies. The construction itself does that. You know, 100 to 150 meters to the ocean, and then, some, some, ways to own it for, very, you know, whatever, $30,000 down, very little amount on a payment of, the monthly investment, $849 dollars a month. So, making this an affordable option for people who want to get there, who want to have ownership of an incredible asset, an asset that will be there for 500 years, solid concrete, and a beautiful beach and golf community. We do take crypto, that people ask that. If you have crypto, we take it. Not all the crazy coins, but if you have Coinbase, anything Coinbase will take, our wallet’s a Coinbase wallet. Anything Coinbase we’ll take. If you have something different, you can convert it into something there, Bitcoin, whatever, and we’ll take that. If you want to own it as an investment, 100% investment, no use. You can use a self-directed IRA. I’ve done this with some properties overseas, and it works very, very well. And again, we have financing options.
44:58
Mike Cobb: We do take metals as well. Metals are certainly a valuable asset, and we have a valuable asset, and we’re willing to exchange assets. We have discovery tours coming up. We just, I think we have one going on right now, maybe towards the end of it. We had one in the fall, we have another one coming up this summer in August. They’re a lot of fun. A bunch of people all together. We tour the country. We show you everything from Granada to the islands, to the rainforest, the cloud forest, the coffee-growing regions, and back out to Gran Pacifica as well. So you’ll… you come on a discovery tour, you’ll have a very, very broad understanding of the entire country, as well as being able to spend some time at Gran Pacifica. We have discovery tours that go to Panama to look at our teak plantations there. I just gave a presentation earlier today about our teak plantations. Just got back from Panama two days ago. I was down there, speaking about it at a conference, and we ran a discovery tour out to the plantation and the sawmill. The next one is coming up in May. So if you want to come see any of these things, reach out. We’d certainly love to hear from you. Right, the only thing missing is you, and we hope that some of you will decide to come visit, make some decisions about property ownership, and become our neighbors. Become a neighbor, become part of our community and our family. So, Diego, I see you’re back.
46:29
Mike Cobb: Happy to answer any questions that people may have, here for the next few minutes.
46:34
Diego Fuentes: Thank you, Mike. Yeah, we do have some questions already, but if you have any questions, please use the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen, and you can type in your questions, and we’ll try to get through them right now, but if we don’t get to your question, please send an email to this email, [email protected], and one of our property consultants will reach out to you directly.
46:56
Diego Fuentes: The first question is… you already touched on this, but they want a little bit more clarification. The ACI quality is American fuel quality, right? Hot water in the sinks and everything.
47:09
Mike Cobb: Yeah. Yeah, look, I mean, it’s, we have expectations as North Americans, and I think the expectations are sometimes met, but a lot of times they’re not. And just simple things like having a standard for how high a countertop is, or in a bathroom, having the light placed in front rather than the back, or having the house entirely plumbed for hot water to all of the bathrooms, including the kitchen sink, which is not a bathroom, of course, but having hot water in your kitchen sink. A lot of these things we just kind of take for granted, and we make the assumption that they’re all there, and they may or may not be. So, you know, my book, actually, if folks want to get a copy of my book, we’ll send you a coupon. You can have my book for free. You know, we’ll send you a coupon. You can download it off of Amazon on Kindle. Just shoot a note that says at ECIDevelopment.com and say, Mike’s book. We’ll send you the coupon, you can go to Amazon and download the book. You know, I talk a lot about this, 30 questions that we should ask when we buy property overseas to help really kind of figure out whether a product meets a North American standard or not. And I think some of the easy things are like hot water, but, you know, just the harder things to really look at are the engineering standards. Now, was the house designed, with a seismic. In Nicaragua, for example, a seismic standard. And, you know, the codes in Nicaragua are kind of a blending of the U.S, California, and the Japanese code. It’s a very strong code for earthquake. And if you build to it, your house is going to stand up to just about everything, you know, the Earth can throw at you, right? The problem is there’s nobody checking to make sure that the house was, A, designed that way, or B, more important, built that way. I’ve heard stories about somebody plugging in a guitar at a home near Grand Pacifica, and, you know, getting shocked, right? So it wasn’t grounded properly. You know, and again, these are the kinds of things that you don’t know until after the fact, right? You buy a home, or you make a transaction on something, and it’s only later that you find out these things. And some, again, aren’t particularly important. I mean, hot water’s kind of important, but having your house stand up in an earthquake, and Nicaragua gets earthquakes. Like, I don’t pull any punches. Like, first time I ever felt an earthquake was when I lived in Nicaragua, and there were some little ones, and there were a couple rollers, right?
49:51
Mike Cobb: But at the end of the day, if you build to the seismic code, like, you don’t have to worry. Your house is built to withstand earthquakes all the way up to, like, really, really, really big ones, right? And, but the issue is, is how do you know that the house was built that way, if it’s already built. And you can hire engineers to look at it, and it’s something you should do. But working with a company that does these things just right out of the gates is probably easier than trying to figure it out, certainly after the fact.
50:28
Diego Fuentes: Absolutely. That connects to the second question I see here. They’re asking about, since it’s in the coast, is there any risk of tsunamis or hurricanes?
50:38
Mike Cobb: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, again, tsunamis happen. We’re on the Pacific Ocean. I mean, they can happen anywhere from Alaska to Chile, right? So, if you have a home on the Pacific Ocean, anywhere between Alaska and Chile, you have a risk of earthquake, you have a risk of tsunami. Hurricanes tend to… the Pacific hurricanes tend to go further up and hit usually Mexico. I’m not going to say it’s impossible for a hurricane to hit Gran Pacifica, but I don’t think any ever have. I don’t know. I don’t remember any. But earthquake is definitely a reality. Tsunami is definitely a reality. So, you know, build to those, build to those contingencies, and that’s the solution. And look, if you’re uncomfortable with it, don’t buy. Like, don’t buy. But don’t buy anywhere between Alaska and Chile either, because, you know what? Like, you got the same things going on that whole, you know, 10,000 mile stretch of Pacific coastline.
51:44
Diego Fuentes: Do you need a car to go get groceries and to get to the property?
51:50
Mike Cobb: You know, you don’t need a car, but I think that you’re better off with a car. You know, there’s a small grocery store right outside of Grand Pacifica that has kind of everything you need, and if they don’t have it, they’ll order it for you. They do a tremendous job of that. But if you’re really… if you want to go to Costco, if you want to go to La Colonia or La Union, which are the big two big grocery stores, Costco, it’s the Sam’s Club kind of thing. Walmart, there’s a big Walmart. So if you want to go into Managua, you don’t need a car, but your life is probably easier with a car than without. So, I don’t know, but…
52:30
Mike Cobb: I hope that answers your question. What I would ask is, if you’re really interested in ownership, and you want to pursue that question, and some others like it, you know, one of our property consultants can really talk you through the specifics of what it would be like without a car, with a car, with a car, and driver, right? Because that’s the other thing. You can have a car, but you can have a driver, because it’s very, very affordable to have a driver. So, again, what the cost of insurance is, I mean, there are a lot of details associated with a car or without a car, but that’s a great question, and one of our property consultants can certainly help talk through more of the details and nuances of, you know, pluses and minuses.
53:15
Diego Fuentes: Thank you, Mike. We have someone asking about the price to golf in Gran Pacifica.
53:21
Mike Cobb: I don’t know. I’m gonna throw out a number, like, 20 bucks. It’s not very expensive. I think that might be 20 bucks for the round, and maybe the cart’s another 15 or 20 or something. But if you send that question in, or I don’t know, Diego, if you have a way to log it, and we’ll get somebody to answer that.
53:40
Diego Fuentes: Yes, sir.
53:41
Mike Cobb: But very, very affordable. In fact, I think, the new, the new rules, now that the, Homeowners, Property Owners Association is taking care of the golf courses, I think homeowners can golf for free. I think there still might be a cart charge, but if you have your own golf cart, which a lot of people who live there do, then really you’re golfing for free, I think.
54:07
Diego Fuentes: Yeah, the green fees are included in the HOA now, so…
54:10
Mike Cobb: Thank you, thank you, Diego. Yeah, okay.
54:14
Diego Fuentes: How is it like the visa situation for someone that wants to own and move to Nicaragua?
54:21
Mike Cobb: Depends on which visa. If you qualify for the pensionado, that is by far the easiest and fastest. And because you can own the property without being a resident, because again, they treat foreigners and residents identical, it’s not an issue. So you can own the property and become a resident, or you can become a resident and then buy the property, it doesn’t matter, but the pensionado is the fastest and easiest if you’re 45 and can show at least $600 a month in pension or Social Security income.Thank you.
54:57
Diego Fuentes: Then, following up, we have someone asking how comparable is the healthcare to Canada, especially for older folks? Where are they called?
55:07
Mike Cobb: You know, the private care in Nicaragua, which is several of the hospitals, is world-class. You know, I had a couple heart stents put in at the Vivian Pellas Hospital. My daughter had foot surgery at the Vivian Pellas. We did all of our checkups there as well. The doctor’s offices are all part of that hospital complex, right? And, they have great programs. I can’t remember what the… Club Salute, Club Salute. And you can buy a $50 a month or a $100 a month, and it entitles you to discounts on all kinds of things. We did not do that. What we did was, we had an insurance program called Amadex, BUPA, they changed the name somewhere in the middle. It’s a company out of Florida. It’s an expat insurance company. And so, what we did is we had that insurance for, like, anything really big. I get hit by a bus, right? I mean, you need to go be in the hospital for a month in the United States, or in Europe, or in Canada, right? That insurance company pays for that. It’s insurance. And then we just paid for every other medical need that we had out of pocket, because it was very affordable. If you need to get an x-ray, it’s like 50 bucks, 60 bucks. You want to go get your teeth cleaned. I do. When I’m down there, I still have my teeth, my dental work done when I’m in Nicaragua. I’m there four or five times a year, you know, it’s 30 to 50 bucks, depending. I had a couple fillings put in. I had 3 fillings. I had my teeth cleaned and 3 fillings put in last time I was there, and it was $120. So, we just paid out of pocket for health. The other thing about the healthcare there is you don’t wait. Like, literally, you call up and say, I’m coming in, or you just go in. And, you can get appointments same day, next day. If you’re really, really sick, the doctor will literally make a house call to come visit you. You know, I mean, it’s so easy and it’s so affordable. I think that’s one of the best things about a country like Nicaragua, is the affordability and the ease of the healthcare, and then the quality of the care. Again, the Vivian Pellas Hospital was the 13th hospital in all of Latin America to get the JCI Gold accreditation, Joint Commission International. So we’re talking aboutevery hospital that’s in Mexico all the way down to Argentina and Chile.
57:35
Mike Cobb: Nicaragua’s hospital, the Vivian Pellas, was the 13th in all of Latin America to get this JCI Gold accreditation, which is huge. I mean, it’s a huge, thing. And so you have world-class healthcare that’s accessible, quickly, and very, very affordable. And then they have the Club Salute, Club Salute, if you want to use their local, or if you want to do the kind of the bifurcation, which is what we did.
58:03
Diego Fuentes: And I think last question, Mike, what happens to the homes once, like, if I just want to live there 6 months and go back to the States, what happens to the homes?
58:14
Mike Cobb: Yeah, great question. One of two things. We have both property management and rental management. You know, and there’s not much difference between the two, except that property management, you know, we’ll go in, we’ll make sure your grass is cut, we’ll have somebody go into the house, probably once a week’s about right. You know, while they’re there, open up all the doors and windows, let the air through, flush the toilets, run water in the sinks, just wipe things down, right? That’s sort of what I would call property management. Rental management’s the same kind of thing, except that, you know, if you want to rent it when you’re not there, our hospitality group will then put people in it, and you’ll actually get some rental income to offset, you know, property owner fees and property taxes and things like that.
59:05
Diego Fuentes: Thank you so much, Mike. I think we ran out, but we’ll… we’ll get all your questions and make sure they’re in the hands of appropriate consultant, so they can follow up with you directly.
59:16
Mike Cobb: Excellent. No, thank you, everybody, for joining. I really hope that many of you will decide that this is something you want to do. You want to take the step, you want to come visit, you want to become part of the neighborhood, part of the family, and we certainly welcome that. More folks with the spirit of adventure really adds wonderfully to who we are today and what we will become. So, you know, come join us, and Diego, thank you for pulling this all together. It was really a really a good event, and I thank you and everyone else on our team who makes this all possible all the time, so…
59:54
Diego Fuentes: Thank you, Mike. Thank you, everyone. Have a great day.
