Honest, Unbiased Information
Retirement Detectives is solely owned and operated by T. Rob Brown (aka Señor Roberto Chocolate). It's purpose is to report on existing and emerging retirement destinations around the globe in an authoritative, unbiased way. Unlike many sites that pretend to be independent but are really marketing property, we are not a front for a real estate developer, property speculator or condominium owner.
We are not involved in real estate, offshore investments, tourism promotion or any other services other than the provision of honest, impartial information for retirees. Many of the so-called “retirement living” or “offshore retirement” websites and newsletters are nothing more than fronts for real estate pitches. Their “Ten Best” or “Worlds Best” retirement destinations just happen to be wherever they have condos for sale at the time. Even the offshore investment newsletters I subscribed to sound more like hard-core carnival barkers than true investment or real estate advisers. They themselves own many of the investments they are hawking. I feel this is a conflict of interest.
Now don’t get me wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with real estate websites. After all, that is how we find out what’s available in the locations we are interested in. I have used a number of real estate agents to buy my own properties and feel that a good agent earns every dime of their commissions. It is the deviousness of providing investment information when it is really nothing more than a self-interested real estate pitch that I resent.
Twelve years ago, when my wife and I started looking for a winter home we used travel books, recommendations from friends, and our own travel experiences to research the areas we were interested in. At that time there were no websites dedicated to retirement destinations. As for friend’s recommendations, while they were heart-felt, we found that what they saw in a week-long, sometimes rum-soaked vacation bore little resemblance to what it was like to live on the other side of the resort fence. Local life was a very different world beyond the manicured lawns and twenty-four hour security of the five star resorts. The single best source of information is our own eyes. We were shocked at the differences we saw when we finally showed up at some idyllic destination only to be repulsed by the stench of rotting garbage or the deplorable conditions of the roads, sewers or beaches. My wife was a photographer for twenty-one years – I have seen what she can do in photo shop to fix flaws in photographs. Dark, dirty water becomes aqua green. Glass-strewn, garbage-ridden stretches of beach became pristine white-powder sands. So if you are looking for the real scoop on existing or emerging retirement destinations without the hype, and high pressure sales pitch you've come to the right place.
We DO NOT Sell or Recommend Real Estate!
We promise independent research. We will only comment on destinations that we ourselves have physically been to and seen with our own eyes. We are not affiliated with any real estate organizations or developments. Our revenues come from the Google ads which Google places on our site - so please click on the ads to support us! In the future we will also sell in-depth reports on various destinations as they are completed. To keep our research as impartial and unbiased as possible, we do not accept payment from any of the destinations we research or review. We do not accept compensation for any products, services (such as hotels) we mention in our articles. That allows us to "tell it like it is" in every article we bring to you.
Membership is FREE for a limited time only! By becoming a member, you will have access to insider information about the Worlds Greatest Retirement Destinations including premium content and features not available to casual visitors like our Destination Selection Matrix, which allows you to create your own customized retirement destination criteria and find a match, our 'Retirement Destinations' section which contains insider information about the destinations we have or are investigating, our 'Move Advisor' community forum where members provide first hand information about living in their retirement destination and other community forums.
Only members may vote on which destinations are to be researched or added to our list of destinations to be visited. Our Community Please send us your questions, comments and suggestions. As our membership builds, more and more advertisers will want to pay to be on our site.
Click here to become a member.
Buenos dias! I am T. Rob Brown (aka Señor Roberto Chocolate). I am what some might call “the new retiree”, or “early retiree”. I was born in 1956, smack dab in the middle of the baby boomers. I am the youngest of seven children, so I am doubly spoiled. I was a bachelor for over forty years before marrying Yolanda Van Der Kolk in 1999, after living together for seven years. (You don’t want to rush into these things after all).
