Irishman selling real estate in Florida while living in Spain

Armagh native Colin Murphy has spent the majority of the last 20 years based in Spain while sealing deals on the US property market. He says remote working and the freedom of running his own business have given him the best of both worlds.

While living and raising a family in Madrid, Colin runs his real estate business, CGM Land Inc, in Florida – a market he and two partners first broke into in 2008 when they saw what they considered to be a golden opportunity as property prices there plummeted after the financial crash.

“I love the Spanish quality of life. I like the culture, I like the food, healthcare is much better. You’re not dealing with the whole gun control issue. But at the same time, it’s difficult to earn a good salary in Spain,” he says.

“It’s very easy nowadays to run a US business from a remote base, so I’m trying to have the Spanish lifestyle, but matching it with the dynamism of the US corporate world.

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“But it’s not just about how do I earn the most money. Freedom of money, freedom of location and freedom of time are all equally important to me. I like having a small, nimble business which can ebb and flow at the pace of my lifestyle, so the kind of lifestyle I want determines the rhythm of the business and it’s not the other way around,” he adds.

Born in Keady and raised mostly in Limerick, Murphy says he always had itchy feet and a hunger to carve out his own path “outside of the small Irish bubble”.

Having studied business in UL and taken a masters in marketing in UCD, where he met his Spanish wife, Cristina, he says he was always been more drawn to the idea of building something himself than moving up the corporate ladder. After spending a few years in London straight out of college selling advertising space for The Irish Times and property magazines, Murphy found himself at the helm of the Irish office of British company Someplace Else, selling holiday homes in eastern Europe and Central America at the peak of the property boom between 2004 and 2007.

“It was before the crash when everybody, particularly Irish people, were super-enthusiastic about property. We had a nice office on Dawson Street, and we had a good few years before the crisis wiped that out,” he says. “But in 2008 that entire business model of selling off-plan properties in emerging markets just evaporated. We had to close the office, we had to let everybody go. It was a very humbling experience,” he says.

As business dried up in Ireland, Murphy and two partners saw an opportunity in Florida, where property prices had already been tumbling for a number of years.

“We figured that if we could get access to discounted properties over there, we might have a chance of continuing to sell and continuing to earn a commission. There were these nice Orlando condos that were selling for $70,000 or $80,000 (€63,700-€72,800) that used to be $230,000 (€209,250) two years prior,” he says.

The trio cobbled together a few thousand euro to fly out to Orlando and network with estate agents locally to source inventory and, in 2009, set up their real estate business, Torcana, in Florida.

“People didn’t feel safe leaving their money in AIB at the time. Some of them felt safer putting $90,000 into a condo in Orlando and renting it for $1,100 per month than leaving it in a bank. We got lucky that we stumbled on to that and it helped us to get started and to build up some cash reserves,” he says.

Colin spent 12 years with his Torcana partners, buying, renovating and selling Florida properties, operating the majority of the time remotely from Madrid, before setting out on his own with CGM Land Inc at the start of the pandemic.

“Eventually I needed to do something different. I was a bit burned out around the time Covid hit so I split amicably with the business partners I had been working with. That’s when I pivoted to just buying and selling vacant land in Florida, which has just been fantastic. I’ve been doing that for two years now,” he said.

Colin says that resilience and an appetite for risk were both essential in pivoting to success in the Florida market.

“Resilience is more important than being smart or being lucky. Just trying to keep going when other people will give up, that’s a habit anybody can develop,” he says.

“And a healthy attitude towards risk is essential. If you aren’t prepared to take some risk in your life, you’re going to end up working for someone who was. Some people want to avoid risk all the time, but if you want an interesting life, you have to have a healthy attitude towards risk.”

Currently a volunteer with the Spanish Irish Business Network, promoting business and cultural links between the two countries, Colin says that networking has also been one of the keys to success in breaking into an industry away from home.

“If you have itchy feet, don’t be afraid of taking the plunge and moving, but do it with networking. Find the groups of people that are where you want to be, and just move in those circles. You’d be amazed at how open people are and how helpful people are making introductions that would benefit you, or giving you advice about what mistakes to avoid before you make them,” he says.