Twenty-five percent of U.S. rental properties are foreign owned. With the decline in the value of the dollar that number should increase significantly. The concept of land speculation as beneficial to U.S. domestic policy is dubious.
Urban real estate values are set as Ricardian bare land surface values plus whatever society values above and below it. Obvious urban real estate is of no intrinsic greater worth than rural real estate yet because society values the urban real estate more it is given a far higher value. In that perspective the better real estate values for increasing the value of an initial investment would be in urban areas that are believed to become more desirable to prosperous citizens of the world, generally. Urban real estate with it’s inflated value based on social usage has an implicitly more volatile rating that varies with social interest in the land.
The Internet has made Montana land buying popular in Chekoslovakia and other such distant places with lots of attractive women; everyone wants to have a retreat high in the last best U.S. frontier with a woman that knows how to make strudel. Western Alaska fish processing plants have foreigners from everywhere in then world planning how to buy up that state or perhaps Montana, while in California illegal aliens are saving for their American born kids to buy property their close to Sacramento and Fresno. As the U.S. population swells with foreign takeovers of U.S. properties that are cheap the rich of the world can buy the more prestigious properties.
It could be that the next cycle of global economic crashing will afford better chances for the presently devalued dollar to become a useful paper for purchasing desirable foreign properties. Possibly the Rub al Khali desert or other Arabian locales would be cheap places to buy land if the royals there to allow the barbarians outside their gates to rub elbows with them-hoy ve!(oy ve?)
Short selling in the stock market is a well known practice most useful for the cognoscenti; it is possible that knowledge of philosophical axiological method (value theory) applied to how one quietly enjoys ownership of land during life could be equally valuable for potential real estate buyers. Sure everyone wants to play death of a salesman chasing the crackerbox palace dream, always in debt and paying 5 or 10 dollars a gallon for gas while despoiling pristine wilderness areas looking for more crude, if it were possible to persuade a few that alternative energy and home produced power are good elements of real estate ownership maybe people will value windy, sunny areas as much as neon, noisy, polluted urban areas with central global energy networks. The broadcast media is owned by elite rich corporations lecturing the masses on market trends and about everything else important to corporate profits…they hate internet bloggers because the poor and middle class are the majority and they develop different values than C.N.N., N.B.C. and A.B.C. etc-don’t just accept their spin for the rich interpretation of news and world events. Instead set you’re own values for real estate and energy production and search for investment opportunities that are within you’re means and ability to operate and improve within an ecological context good for the Earth in the midst of a real social environment of wastefulness. The purpose of the 1% concentrating wealth is to make everyone pay 100% of their income in rents from corporations they own, so doing it yourself is a good way to land a punch on the opposition to democracy, individual free enterprise and social individualism.
Ecological economics are hurt by increased suburban sprawl of a habitat destroying nature. Tax reduction for select urban properties would increase the social value of the properties by reducing costs and keep more investment in packed socially active locales. From a empirical point of view the best ergonomic places to invest in real estate are rural properties for environmental-conservation oriented individuals and urban areas for corporatist minions seeking to make a fast buck with damn the deer and forests and full velocity of money ahead passion for profits.
Some do believe that the world is just in a parting out or finishing up phase for the optimally designed suburban parkland managed by wise-use global corporate managers for extraction industries. In such a dystopia all will earn a living by ‘investing’ capital and no one will work except the drudges, third worlders in need of first world training and military forces to subdue the wild. With those ideas in mind Arizona is a good place to invest for it will have solar powered escalators on solar collecting pyramid exteriors with BIOS plantings inside retaining water from saltwater evaporation feeder canals from the cross country border canal control ditch, perhaps. The next best place would be Chicago in urban renewal of all those mass-produced homes from the 20’s through 70’s.
It might be best to wait until after the November election to publish a book and learn what might impact real estate prices, yet why not write now instead of with the pack of ‘I told you so’ers’ and hang-wringing pundits (etymology of that word is from a bad punter on a football team that invariably gave the opfor team field position ten yards away from the line of scrimmage or worse). John McCain has taken the Republican nomination putting the Republican Party in the ‘True Grit’ scenario of running the ‘one-eyed fat man’ against the card dealing Cleavon Little/’Blazing Saddles’ scourge of racism in the west son of Kenya, convertee to the hell raising preacher of Chicago he had to denounce like a Tarus Bulba or Darth Vader spiritual father in reverse Barack Obama. For some this isn’t a win-win scenario and for others maybe it is-George W. Bush will be out of office. One more time around with a President incapable of moving the nation rapidly away from use of fossil fuels with global corporations increasing their control over U.S. Rental properties (at 25% and rising rapidly). Oh heck…
Restrictions upon real estate purchases by foreign nationals are an inherent fact of life in many nations. Some writer could usefully produce a ‘Guide to Global Real Estate Purchasing’ for those of us poor folks that aren’t sure if buying land in Venezuela or Argentina is a good idea. Supposedly President Bush bought a half million acres more or less in Uruguay so that may be an indicator of expected land value increases as a follow up to sundry trade deals made with Latin America. For single guys any country with a lot of attractive single women is a good place to buy real estate if it is affordable while cold remote places aren’t unless thats all that is within price reach.