Hello, I'm Kevin Pellegrino. I'm from Sacramento, California. First time I heard about Belize, I was doing consulting work for a physician in Sacramento in 2005, helping him open his private practice. And we were looking at creating the model in a foreign country because of the very good business climate here as well as the cost of living and the fact that it was a British colony so followed British common law which meant as a foreigner you could own property. When I first got here I thought wow this is going to be a big risk. There was nothing else. It was mangroves, it the the roads weren't finished and I have to admit I was nervous.
I met Chris who works for Will and the two of them kind of sat me down and really created the vision of what they saw Mahogany Bay becoming and and in all honesty I decided I was going to take a chance and I used retirement funds to invest in purchasing this property and having a rental property built in Belize. And it actually worked out very well for me. It was a big risk, but it definitely paid off.
The experience working with the RE/MAX team here in Belize, you know I call Will the visionary he was the guy that when you walked the property painted the picture for you of where he wanted it to go and you know you sometimes say okay well he's trying to sell you but he quickly showed me that he wouldn't only paint the vision he actually was creating the vision. And so we have a pool now at a pool club. We have restaurants. We have a grocery store up the street. There's now, I think, 95 homes in the community and more and more coming online every month. So I'm seeing the growth. I'm seeing the development.
But the thing I really loved about Chris and Will was it wasn't just we're going to sell you the property, go have a nice day. It was, we're going to sell you the property, but let us introduce you to an engineering company that can help you find the right contractor, manage the build for you. And then, oh, by the way, there's a new property management company that's going to take over the development. Let us introduce you to them and how they will manage the property for you. And they do everything from landscaping. They do all the Airbnb. I don't touch anything. I don't get involved. All I see is the money coming back into my account every month. And they send me a complete statement.
And that's, like I said, I've built rental properties in the States and this is my first international build. And it's probably the easiest build I've ever done. I guess my one thing to say would be do your research. You know, you could check out websites, you could check out testimonials, but you got to do some of the research on your own. Look up the statistics of when you're going to, if you're turning it into an investment property, you know, what's the rental percentages that are going on? What's the growth that's going to happen?
You know, one of the things that's happening in Ambergris Caye, and they just made the announcement a few months ago, is they're going to be building an international airport on the island. And they're estimating that that's going to bring in another 12,000 visitors a week to the island. So there is going to be a huge demand for rental properties. I would just say if you're going to invest, make sure you do your own research as well.
