The Drama Behind Realtors & Lawyers in Panama
Be VERY VERY careful when you deal with Realtors & Lawyers in Panama.
First, there’s no MLM here in Panama. They have some site that’s meant to make you think it’s MLM, but it’s not. It used to be called SLM Panama, but I see now as of 2017, that the link is dead.
There are tons of criminals here, both expats & locals alike. I’ve heard horror stories where expats invest in a house which is in the pre-construction stage, & the development never gets finished.
Or they lose all their money because there never was going to be a development in the first place & it was all a scam.
These so called Realtors aren’t real professionals. In fact many Realtors have no license at all, & even if they do, as you may have seen in my other post, only 1 out of maybe 10-20 actually do their job by returning phone calls, returning e-mails, etc. If they can smell money on you, they will call you. If you are just an average joe/jane, maybe not so much.
Then I just found out the other day that even lawyers don’t have to be licensed. You need to ASK them if they are. LOL (What????)
One expat couple got ripped off $1,500 when the lawyer started asking for more money & that’s when they found out the guy wasn’t even a lawyer. There was no way they were going to get that money back.
I dealt with a lawyer who was an idiot named Cesar. I got drawn into the fact that he was on the cheaper side & how he tried to reassure me by repeating over & over again that he was trying to help me. But every time I talked to him, he’d change his story about my landlord case.
Then he wouldn’t tell me his pricing until the last minute when it was already too late, & he’d blame me for his mistakes.
Lastly, even after he knew I had no electricity, he still tried to e-mail me trying to get a response. Ummm, NO electricity means NO COMPUTER BUD!
While I agree anyone can make that mistake, you expect lawyers to be sharp & on the ball.
I got his name from an expat, but only ONE expat. I think you need to get a lawyer’s name from several expats.
Another lawyer I dealt with gave me completely different information than this Cesar guy did. So depending on who you speak to, suddenly the law changes & you don’t know whom to believe.
Unfortunately this is either part of the scam routine all Panamanians do (they lie so much they can’t remember their own lies), or it’s part of the issue with their lack of intelligence. Not sure which it is.
The sharp Panamanians I’ve met (so far I haven’t met very many, but I’m hoping that will change as time goes on) don’t want to stay in Panama. I mean think about it, if you are really smart, would you put up with this BS? That’s why I may not be here for very much longer. I wrote this post within the first year of landing in Panama before I knew I HAD to get away from there.
I didn’t know about all these problems before I came to Panama. I thought my biggest issue would be the lack of customer service as that’s the ONLY thing expats online ever mentioned to me.
So PLEASE, don’t just get references from one expat, ask them for 5-10 references once you are referred to either a Panamanian realtor or lawyer. I don’t want you getting ripped off.
The bottom line is, that there aren’t many good ones out there. I know we all hate lawyers anyway, over here they are even worse. I believe I have a good Realtor for you in Panama City. I didn’t use him because I was moving out at the time, but I liked him, he was nice & he tried to help me despite knowing he wasn’t going to make money off of me.
Michelle