Apartment Lease Sharing

[RICHARD A.]

It is my understanding that there has been a history of expats in Panama who are not legally full time residents, but live there essentially full time by crossing the border every 6 months for a day in Costa Rica or Colombia, then return to begin another 6 months ‘visitor’ residency in Panama.

If I understand it correctly, the Panamanian government has started enforcing a 30 day absence from the country before you can begin your next tourist visa. If this is the case, I would speculate that there are a lot of expats who lease (or own) their Panama property full time, but are forced to let it sit empty twice a year for an entire month.

Given that there are other expats like myself who would like to visit for a month or two at a time, but don’t want to pay short term rental rates, there should be a great opportunity for those forced to leave temporarily, to gain some cost sharing during their absence while providing a bargain rent to those of us who fill in. It could even be a 50/50 lease with each party occupying the residence half time but the combined entity gets long term rental rates.

First of all, are my understandings correct, and if so do others see a value in this type of cooperative arrangement?

Rich Alexander

[COUNTRY EXPERT- JESSICA RAMESCH]

Hi Rich,

Thanks for your post. Apologies for any delay caused by our migration to this new platform. That’s an interesting idea.

There’s no way to tell how many of the expats in the Chiriqui region were living there full time without proper residence papers. (It seems–though there’s no way to be 100% sure–that border officials are being strict at the land crossing in Chiriqui, not with people flying in and out of Tocumen airport. And so it would seem this measure is affecting “illegal” residents in Chiriqui–e.g. Boquete, David–not in other locales like Coronado or Panama City.) There is no registry and the people we tend to interview do have their pensionado visa and are thus legal residents.

You could try posting on one of the Boquete specific forums such as Boquete Ning to see what the members of the Boquete community say. Home-sharing and swapping is growing in popularity but it’s not for everyone, so I’m not sure what kind of a response you will get.

You might also try registering yourself as a housesitter on one of the popular international housesitting websites–in exchange for housesitting and possibly caring for pets you could get yourself a free stay somewhere.

Best,

Jessica
IL Panama Editor Jessica Ramesch

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