The Top Real Estate Markets in 2026

This was a first for me…

My mobile rang and without glancing at who was calling, I picked up. Dumb decision.

On the other end, a woman; her voice told me she was in her 20s. She wanted to sell me on some investment firm that would manage my money for me in this “rapidly changing age.” She read to me from what was obviously a script.

I politely told her, “Nope. I’ve managed my own money for 30 years. I had a Series 7 license at one point, needed on Wall Street to manage money for other people. And I’ve written nine or 10 books on global investing and personal finance. Really don’t need or want someone else handling my money. Thanks.”

She persisted.

I hung up.

And…

She called back! To argue!

She tried to test me on Wall Street terminology. I laughed. And hung up.

And she called back again!

When it comes to investing, I trust very few people—and certainly no yokel who cold-calls me. I trust myself and my experiences because I’ve earned a degree in “Real Life Wall Street” over the last 40 years of market lunacy. I’ve had the privilege of interviewing and learning from the very best minds on the Street during my time writing the Heard on the Street investment column while at The Wall Street Journal for 17 years.

That said, there are corners of the investment world I don’t know. And when I am navigating that world, there is a Rolodex of experts I call.

When I was building a cellar of investment-grade wines (it grew to more than 600 bottles at one point), I called my friend, Dave, who ran one of America’s largest wine importers and who literally wrote the book on investing in wine (with me as his ghostwriter). When I want to own collectable coins, I never make a move without calling my friend, Van, who helped found PCGS, the #1 coin-grading service, and who for the last 40 years or so has run one of the most-respected coin dealerships in the country. 

And when it comes to all things real estate… I turn to Ronan McMahon, who founded Real Estate Trend Alert.

I first heard about Ronan 15 years ago. I was speaking at a conference in Cabo San Lucas, and while at dinner one night a couple other speakers were talking about the success this Irish guy was having finding bargain-bin real estate in the post-Global Financial Crisis world. He’d been a buyer himself and was bringing to his subscribers opportunities on Spain’s hotly desired Mediterranean Coast, in Portugal, and various other places.

I’ve always fancied real estate. Something about the physicality of property, someone else paying off your mortgage by way of their rental payments, the value of land persistently trending higher over time.

At one point before a divorce, I owned a piece of rental property. And I took a swing at buying distressed property at a sheriff’s auction, then fixing up the house and flipping it. I collected nice, fat returns both times.

But those were in the States, and as an investor who’d gone international with my money way back in the early 90s, I’d been wondering about property overseas. However, the process of finding, buying, maintaining, and managing a house or condo abroad seemed too daunting.

And then Ronan invited me to Playa del Carmen and Tulum along Mexico’s Riviera Maya.

Now… I hate Ronan!

He walked me through amazing properties. In Tulum, he took me to a home in a community that sprang from the jungle adjacent to the beach. Thick stone and wood and glass. Open space everywhere. Master suites worthy of upscale hotels, walls of glass overlooking the jungle.

Think: Santa Fe meets high-end beach club… a house anyone would be ecstatic to call home.

Worse, he told me the price.

So affordable relative to anywhere in beachside America that it made me hate Ronan a little more.

Worse, Ronan finds his opportunities in all the places where I’d love to own a rental home that I could use myself. Coastal Mexico, Costa Rica, an up-and-coming tourist haven in Montenegro along the Adriatic Sea in southeastern Europe.

Just the past weekend, I spent time in northern Portugal, in a riverside village that Ronan has decreed as his second ranked destination in his 2026 RETA Index, and where he owns a home. I saw all the dilapidated ruins of stone homes from the 18th and 19th centuries in the core of an Old Town dating back nearly a millennium that investors and homeowners are now transforming into uber-modern houses wrapped in an ancient-stone shell. 

I peeked into one where the remodel looks to be about 80% complete. Those ancient stone walls built before pilgrims landed in America, and giant walls of glass looking out over the wide Minho River and Spain’s Galicia region just across the water.

Architectural magazine cover-story material.

Which is why I actually love Ronan…He’s the only person I trust when it comes to real estate.

For the last two years, I’ve been threatening to move a chunk of my largest IRA into overseas rental property. That urge is growing stronger as stocks move well past nosebleed levels, and as the dollar is on a long-term downward trajectory that will mean my rental income earns ever-more dollars.

When I finally pull the trigger… Ronan will be getting a phone call.