U.S. News & World Report has published an article about purchasing retirement property overseas. Titled "7 Keys to Buying Overseas Retirement Property", the article looks at some practical considerations. 

"While some retirees head straight for America's sun districts-Florida, South Carolina, California, to name a few-others travel clear across the border to launch their post-career lives. And since many overseas retirement hubs combine a reduced cost of living with a delightful tropical climate, it's no wonder they're so appealing. 

Overseas retirement is "more popular all the time," says Ruth Halcomb, who runs the international living website, LiveAbroad.com. "The baby boomers are retiring, and they are the people who went to the Peace Corps and studied abroad." Although buying retirement property overseas can be enchanting, it can also be challenging. Anyone thinking about spending a chunk of change on foreign real estate should be aware of some practical considerations. 

Here are seven tips for retirees considering buying property overseas: 

1. Beware the market trends: While American real estate is experiencing a protracted swoon, some world property markets are moving in the opposite direction. Likewise, the dollar is in the midst of a multiyear slide against foreign currencies. Combined, these trends suggest that selling your U.S. home to buy property overseas today would be unwise, says Michael Englund, the chief economist for Action Economics. "Making that switch now would appear to be classic herd-mentality behavior jumping out of and getting into markets that have already moved sharply in one direction theirs being up, ours being down," Englund says. Financially, it would make more sense to wait perhaps a couple of years for real estate and currency cycles to reverse course. However, Englund cautions, "it's no easier predicting currency markets than it is predicting real estate markets." 

The full article can be found here at U.S. News & World Report.