Belize is an interesting, beautiful, and quirky country located in the tropics, so it is easy to understand why so many people make the decision to move to Belize, either full-time, often as retirees, or for much of the year, as part-time residents.
However, while more people seem to be heading for Belize all of the time, there is also a real revolving door of folks who made the decision to relocate to Belize, but after a relatively short period of time here, they decide to either move back home or to move to another country.
In this article, I hope to explore some of the common reasons for which expats leave Belize. First, a disclaimer, while most of the articles on Belize FAQs are heavily weighted with official sources, in order to examine why so many expats leave Belize, I am primarily leaning on personal observations and experiences, conversations with folks I have met here, and the thousands of posts I have read in Belize-related Facebook Groups over the past six years or so.
Also, to come to an understanding of why so many expats leave Belize, I try to contextualize this anecdotal evidence with my experience living and working abroad, in both developed and developing countries, for much of my adult working life.
Why is Belize so attractive for potential Expats?
Aside from the obvious attractions of tropical weather and the natural beauty of the country, I contend that Belize is one of the easiest countries for North Americans to consider for a move abroad.
First, Belize is the only English-speaking country in Central America, with not only a large segment of the population who can communicate in English, but since English is the official language, government documents, real estate documents, and even the laws of the country are written in English.
On top of English being widely spoken, the currency exchange rate is fixed at 2-1 to the US dollar, so particularly for those from the US, there is no worry about currency fluctuations.
Finally, while there are some frustrations with the Immigration system in Belize, especially when one is applying for Permanent Residency, from my experience, Belize is one of the easiest places to just show up and to be able to extend a Tourist Visa indefinitely.
In every other country I have lived, one had to deal with far more than just showing up and then going to Immigration once a month to pay to extend their Visa.
If it so easy to move to the country, why do so many expats leave Belize?
Often I think that people who visit a few times, especially those who stay in the highly-touristed areas of Ambergris Caye or Placencia, experience the veneer of near North American normalcy here and build expectations based upon this experience.
There are homes and condos that are built to near North American standards; there are imported goodies in the stores for those who have the money to buy them, and as I mentioned above, English is widely spoken, and the fixed 2-1 USD to BZD exchange rate, along with the fact that US dollars are widely accepted, can make Belize seem like a southern extension of the US.
However, this veneer of normalcy rests on top of both the infrastructure of a developing country and the governance of one of the newest independent nations on earth, and these factors, at times, present challenges. First, let’s take a look at some of the infrastructure challenges in Belize.
Why is it so important to visit Belize in the rainy season?
When most visitors visit Belize for the first time, they do their research and learn that the winter months, January-March, tend to have some of the best weather of the year. For this reason, many first time visitors come to Belize during this time, and it is generally sunny, dry, and not overly humid.
However, I always advise potential expats to come for an extended visit during the latter part of the rainy season, particularly September and October, as this is generally the wettest part of the year, and it is during this time one can learn a lot about how the mix of geography and infrastructure challenges can have a huge effect on life here.
Much of Belize is very low lying, with many areas just at or below sea level, so if you are here during the rainy season, you are much more likely to learn which parts of a town, or which properties, are prone to flooding. This can be an important lesson, and it is one that I learned the hard way.
When I first arrived at my property in San Pedro, the island had already been in a drought for about a month, and we didn’t have any rain at all for the first four months or so after I arrived. However, late in the rainy season, we were hit with back-to-back tropical storms, the second of which dumped about 17 inches of rain on us in 12 hours or so. I spent 10-12 consecutive hours carrying 5 gallon buckets of water off of my property to try to save the new apartments on the first floor.
While I likely prevented a great deal of damage, we still had 3-4 inches of water in both of the brand new apartments, and I learned some valuable lessons. First, I learned that there was very little natural drainage and no storm drains in my area of San Pedro.
Second, the ground water on much of the island is only about 12 inches below the surface, and without any storm drainage infrastructure, once there has been sustained heavy rain for a few days, there is simply nowhere for the water to go. Even the street in front of my house became a navigable river, and I could not get the golf cart out for at least three days.
Having learned the effects of there being no drainage in place, I was able to mitigate the situation for future storms by installing a sump pump and taking other measures; however, the damage was done, and had I known a bit more about the tendency to flood in my neighborhood, some of the damage could have been prevented.
Do expats leave Belize due to challenges with infrastructure?
After having experienced the flooding of my new apartments in San Pedro, I do empathize with people who encounter real problems in Belize due to the lack of infrastructure and end up throwing in the towel. For at least a year after the flooding in San Pedro, every time it rained really hard, I became very anxious, remembering hauling those 5-gallon buckets of water off of my property for some 12 hours without a break. I may have suffered a bit of PTSD from that experience.
Along with the lack of storm drainage in San Pedro, due to the extraordinary pace of development on the island over the past 5 years or so, every year, at the peak of busy season, the island’s public water utility experiences a serious lack of water pressure due to too much demand on the system. When I built out my apartments, we added a 600 gallon water storage tank, along with a pump and pressure tank to make sure that we had water pressure in case of low pressure on the system. This, of course, added a good deal of cost to our renovation project.
I had a number of friends and acquaintances in San Pedro, both expats and Belizeans, who lived in apartments above the ground floor, and when there were water pressure problems, they would go with almost zero water pressure in their apartments for some two or three weeks. From my experiences living in other developing countries, I know that it is much more difficult being without water than to be without electricity.
For some folks, dealing with the infrastructure challenges of a developing country is simply part of the experience of breaking away from home and doing something completely different, but for others, it wears on them quickly and is a deal breaker.
What is going on with the electricity supply in Belize?
While we are discussing infrastructure challenges in Belize, we certainly need to look at the big national news story for the Spring of 2024: Rolling Power Outages in Belize.
As we reported in our article on the subject, the immediate cause of the rolling power outages in Belize in Spring 2024 stems from the fact that the national power company in Belize, Belize Electricity Limited (BEL), does not have sufficient in-country capacity to produce enough power to meet demand; thus, BEL purchases power from the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) in Mexico everyday in order to meet the demand for electricity here in Belize.
However, due to greatly increased demand and related issues on the Mexican side of the border, CFE announced early in May that they would need to curtail the amount of electricity that they could supply to Belize.
At the time of writing this article, we have been experiencing rolling blackouts for about a month. Most days, CFE in Mexico is curtailing the supply of electricity to Belize at between 5-7 pm, and then Belize Electricity Limited needs to begin ‘load shedding,’ which is the process of shutting down different parts of the grid each afternoon/evening in order to protect the grid equipment from being damaged by excess demand.
Unfortunately, the electricity supply problem in Belize has been accompanied by a severe drought and extremely hot temperatures, with most of the country reaching near 90 degrees fahrenheit (32C) every day, and some inland spots seeing temperatures of 100 degrees (38C).
Both many of the expats I have spoken with and those who have written posts online have really suffered in the heat during the blackouts. I feel a bit fortunate because I do not use AC in my home. Since I have lived in the tropics for most of the past 30 years, I choose not to run the AC, as I really don’t like being inside with forced-air cooling or heating, and I have little desire to pay a huge electric bill here, as rates in Belize are quite high. Thus, I am accustomed to the heat, but for folks who run the AC 24/7, it has likely been rough.
There are plans to mitigate the electricity supply problems here in Belize, however, like with most large-scale infrastructure projects, permanent solutions are unlikely to materialize in a matter of weeks or months. We have been in the slow tourist season since these problems have become commonplace, so it will be interesting to see what occurs when things pick up later in the year as the tourists start to come back for the winter.
Of course there are many expats in Belize who have built off-grid homes here, so these folks are not affected as much by the electricity infrastructure challenges. And many people also have cisterns or wells as their source of water, so they are not dependent on public utilities for these services.
Do any expats leave Belize because it is expensive to live there?
To answer to this question, like for almost anywhere else, how expensive it is to live in Belize largely depends upon where you live in Belize and how you choose to live. With a few exceptions in the tourist areas, most homes here are less expensive than in North America, and property taxes are almost nonexistent.
Having said this about the affordability of Belize real estate, one thing that expats quickly learn is that buying products that they were used to having at home can be really expensive here.
One must always remember that because Belize has a national population of only around 416,000, there are no economies of scale to be found in Belize. Alongside the small population, which makes it difficult for businesses to import things at reasonable prices, the government of Belize also imposes high tariffs on nearly every product brought into the country.
From my observation, the combination of high tariffs and the small population can make Belize feel very expensive for one who wants to replicate a North American lifestyle here.
Unless you are able to really adapt yourself to the local products available here and the less expensive items brought in from Mexico, one can quickly find themselves spending a great deal of money. I believe that a fairly high number of expats leave Belize because they found that their cost of living here, for the lifestyle they had hoped to live, was much higher than they had anticipated.
To be clear, if one buys locally-produced goods such as meat, produce, and fruit, basic living expenses can be quite reasonable, but if you need particular imported foods, quality spirits or wine, or brand name household items, you can expect to pay far more for these products than you would in North America.
Do some expats leave Belize because of the bureaucracy?
One of the best pieces of advice I read online when I was preparing to move to Belize was that if one brought nothing else along with them, they needed to bring a great deal of patience to Belize.
Many expats who move to Belize hope to be granted Permanent Residency here, and many come here also looking to start businesses or to perhaps rent part of their property on Airbnb to bring in some extra income. All of these activities involve interaction with entities of the government of Belize, and while things have improved over the past several years, the gears of government here still tend to grind very slowly.
When I came to Belize, I had many years’ experience renting several vacation rental properties in Hawaii, and Hawaii is known to have some of the strictest business regulations in the US; however, I found the process of being licensed to legally rent out my apartments in Belize to be far more expensive and time consuming than anything I had ever experienced in Hawaii.
In order to rent any property to a foreign national here in Belize, one needs to obtain a Hotel License from the Belize Tourism Board, and one needs to expect the licensure process to take roughly a year from the time of application to the receipt of your license.
While the procedures for obtaining Permanent Residency, a Work Permit, or a Hotel License are currently outlined pretty accurately online via the government ministry websites, what is lacking is a realistic time frame for any of these things to be completed. I have read hundreds of posts made by people extremely frustrated by these processes, and I was frustrated a good deal myself; thus, I have to admit that the advice to bring an abundance of patience to Belize was some of the best, if not the best advice, I read while preparing for the move.
Final Thoughts on why expats leave Belize
In this article, I have touched on some of the Belize-specific reasons why expats leave Belize; however, there are, of course, a number of things which can cause folks to move back to their home country, and these are common anywhere you find a community of expats.
Some people leave Belize simply because they miss family back home, and others depart when they need to go to assist parents, children, or others who might need their help back in their home country. A fair number of people also return to North America because they need more advanced medical care, or they are covered on health insurance at home, but do not have insurance to treat more complicated matters here.
I want to close here by saying that I did not put this article together to try to convince anyone not to come to Belize, as for every one of the reasons for which expats leave Belize, there are as many, and probably more reasons, that people stay here in this small, beautiful, and quirky country tucked in between the Caribbean and Central America.
Finally, if you are considering a move to Belize, you might want to check out our book: Belize FAQs: A detailed guide for those interested in moving to Belize. In the book, there are more than 150 pages of Belize FAQs at your fingertips. And Belize FAQs is available in both paperback and Kindle formats.