SAN JOSE DEL CABO, Mexico—Lured by 300-plus days of sunshine and "good, fun waves,'' Greg Leach is tapping the equity from his three-bedroom Mountain View, Calif., home to build a vacation getaway near this small Mexican resort town.

Leach, 52, who is splitting the estimated $100,000 (U.S.) investment with a surfing buddy, could pocket a sizable profit if he wanted. Realtors estimate their house could fetch close to $400,000 in Baja's sizzling market, which has shot up at least 10 per cent to 15 per cent a year for the past two years.

"Cabo has just exploded,'' said Leach, a building contractor.

Buyers have been snapping up homes and condos here in the southern half of the Baja Peninsula, usually in all-cash deals. Like Leach, most of the newcomers are Americans, many from California, leveraging the equity in their increasingly valuable U.S. homes.

Their purchases reflect a change in global real estate ownership: People no longer have to be super-rich to invest in homes in foreign locales. In fact, some economists are starting to worry whether places like Baja California, London and British Columbia are part of a global housing bubble driven in the past year by the same combustible mix that has fuelled American home prices: relatively low interest rates, flexible financing and sluggish U.S. stock markets that have sent investors looking for better money-making opportunities.

Official figures aren't kept on how many Americans are buying residential real estate abroad or how many foreigners are investing in the United States. But a survey by the National Association of Realtors revealed that 15 per cent of homebuyers in Florida last year were foreigners, mostly from Europe and Latin America. Three-quarters of those buyers said the properties were vacation homes or investments.

TD Bank economist Carl Gomez said Americans make up as much as 10 per cent of the homebuyers in the British Columbia cities of Victoria and Vancouver, which have experienced double-digit price increases in recent years.

Like most buyers of homes abroad, Mike Pariseau wasn't seeking riches when he bought his first four-bedroom house in Victoria in 1996. He and his wife, who is Canadian, had been going there for vacations. That home proved to be such a good investment that they purchased a condominium last year where their daughter is living while attending college.

Pariseau paid about $384,000 for his Canadian properties, tapping the equity in his Santa Barbara, Calif., home, which has jumped in value from $210,000 to $1.2 million in the two decades since he purchased it.

"As far as I'm concerned, real estate is the only way to be,'' said Pariseau, a software consultant. "We've got some money in managed funds, but it doesn't even come close.''

Although housing markets historically have been driven by local buyers and sellers, globalization — and the Internet — have made it easier for people in the fastest-growing markets to export their wealth.

Some economists fear that if the U.S. economy hit a rough patch, heavily indebted Americans would be forced to sell their second homes or dump investment properties, triggering price drops in the United States as well as in places such as Baja that depend heavily on American money.

Investment bank Morgan Stanley estimated this year that property prices in two-thirds of the world were either highly inflated or moving quickly in that direction.

Some worried governments are trying to cool their housing markets in hopes of engineering a soft landing. The Chinese government has raised taxes and tightened lending in an effort to tamp down prices that have doubled over the last two years in markets such as Shanghai. After the British and Australian governments hiked interest rates, housing prices in those markets started to slow.

But even the threat of hurricanes, restrictions on foreign investment and soaring electricity and water bills haven't damped America's enthusiasm for Baja. Greenbacks have transformed this region into an American enclave, where English is the lingua franca, the U.S. dollar is the currency of choice and must-have accessories include a security guard, an infinity pool and high-speed Internet access.

The 32-kilometre stretch of coastline between the towns of Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo is a string of luxury resorts and gated residential communities with private clubs and designer golf courses.

The luxury complex on Cabo San Lucas' Medano Beach sells six-week-a-year "fractional ownerships'' in its two-bedroom ocean-view condominiums at prices starting at $136,000.

"It's really been a tremendous investment,'' said Brent Brown, a 46-year-old owner of a chain of Utah auto dealerships, who recently sold his home in Cabo San Lucas for $4.3 million, doubling his investment of two years earlier.

Investing in Mexico carries risks. Real estate agents aren't regulated and there have been several cases recently of people with millions of dollars in escrow funds that had not been deposited in legitimate accounts, according to people involved in the real estate industry.

The Mexican constitution prohibits foreigners from owning land within 48 km of the coastline or 97 km of the border. But the country amended its laws to encourage foreign investment after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994.

Los Angeles Times