Buy a Historic Property

Historic development properties represent a challenge.  While a love for the Casco is the most important requirement, a little building or development experience is helpful. 

If you are ready to start investigating a development project in Panama City’s old quarter, a good place to start is Arco’s Casco Antiguo Handbook.  In it you will find information regarding the state of the market, development costs and regulatory issues.

It is important to understand that when you buy an unrestored property in Casco Antiguo, you are buying a piece of Panama’s cultural heritage, and with that purchase comes responsibility.  These responsibilities can be summarized as follows:

1. Follow the design rules.  Execute your project within the design guidelines established by the Office of Historical Patrimony (Patrimonio Historico).  These rules are strictly (and in our experience, fairly) enforced by Patrimonio Historico, so you there isn’t much choice in the matter, but the process is much easier if you take time to understand the guidelines in advance so that your expectations are reasonable from the outset.

2. Begin your project promptly.  Understand that you have a moral, and in most cases a legal, obligation to begin restoration promptly following your purchase. The revitalization of the Casco is a joint effort between the government, private enterprise and individual members of the community.  In the past, speculators have seen Casco Antiguo’s potential and bought ruins with the idea of selling them later at a profit when everything else was developed.  Taken to its logical extreme, this kind of speculation would obviously bring the revitalization of the Casco to a screeching halt.  In practice what has happened is that for many years there were a lot of owners sitting on the sidelines watching while the government and a few courageous entrepreneurs did the work and took the risk.   Essentially, these speculators sucked value out of the neighborhood, making it harder, riskier and more expensive for those who were willing to put energy into actual redevelopment projects.  Luckily, the government is now enforcing parts of Ley 9 that were originally designed to prevent this type of speculation, which enforcement has begun to push the pace of development.

3. Look for ways to contribute beyond the four walls of your project. Restoring a property is one of those wonderful win-win situations where you can simultaneously create value for yourself and for your country and community.  It is worth keeping in mind that the value that inures to you depends not just on the quality of your project, but also on the health of the community around it.