This year has seen a large number of Icelanders buying holiday homes abroad. Icelandic investors are buying up property in international locations, with many favouring beach homes in the US.
Plummeting stock markets and the low currency rate of the US dollar have made America a favourite place for Icelandic residents to invest.
Tryggvi Ingolfsson, an Icelandic real estate agent working in the United States, explained, “As the dollar continues to drop, more and more people jump on the bandwagon and want to participate.”
According to Ingolfsson, Orlando is one of the hottest property markets for residents of Iceland, who are lured by the attraction of living near a beach.
Askar Capital is an Icelandic company which specialises in foreign real estate sales and other related business. Askar is one of the most active Icelandic companies in the business.
“It is everything between luxury apartments in London and the headquarters of banks in Germany, to entire neighbourhoods in India and skyscrapers in Macao,” said Tryggvi Herbertsson, Director of Askar Capital.
Proxima Finance, which specialises in property in Bulgaria, has also seen a boom in business this year. The company’s marketing director, Eirikur Hilmarsson, said that Proxima had sold 70 buildings this year and has plans to construct thousands of new apartments in the next three years.