If you owned a two bedroom, two bath 1,500 square foot apartment that you could convert to a 4,000 square foot brand new home, designed to your specifications, on an acre of land, with views of lake, mountains or golf course - or all three for that matter - how tempting would that be? The average homeowner in London, England could do that right now.
Real estate appreciation over the last decade in London has been wild, fueled by Russian oil barons, wealthy industrialists from emerging India and investors from other resource rich countries. It is getting so that the British can't afford to live in their own capital city anymore (residents of New York City will understand this). Astronomical housing prices - a median price of almost $800,000 in London -- also means that people who provide essential services, like sanitation, subway (Tube) and building maintenance workers, can't afford to live where they work. Soon, the urban rich will be bidding against each other to determine whose toilets (loos) get cleaned.
I am old enough to remember the heady days of the strong dollar. We Americans traveled far and wide, bragging to our friends and neighbors about the bargains we picked up overseas. My wife and I, for example, bought beautiful wool sweaters on our honeymoon in Greece for about $20 nearly three decades ago. I get teary eyed when I recall what we paid for our hotel room on Corfu and for our meals.
We were surprised to hear a fair bit of English spoken in the mountain villages on Corfu. We shouldn't have been. Immigrants from Greece, Ireland and other European countries had been coming to the U.S. for decades, working and saving enough to return years later to the lands of their birth, where they bought the biggest homes in their villages and lived out their days like kings and queens. The strong dollar in the Land of Opportunity did this.
The U.S. is still the Land of Opportunity, only now the opportunity is to buy American and buy it cheap, whether it is a great college education, a Gulfstream jet or a nice house in a golf course community. The U.S. dollar is currently pegged at less than one half the British pound. In a manner of speaking, U.S. housing is on sale at 50 percent off for many overseas investors, more if you consider the softness in some markets in the U.S. This is our way of making it up to owners of homes in London, whose market own real estate market now seems to be peaking, thanks to a low quality export from the U.S. - the sub-prime mortgage.
If you are interested in golf community property in the U.S., send me a note indicating what kind of home, golf course and community you are looking for, and I will be happy to offer some ideas by return note, with no obligation to you whatsoever (and I had nothing to do with the sub-prime mess!)
I am gloating after reading an excellent piece by Conor Dougherty headed, "Is Florida over?" in today's Wall Street Journal. We asked essentially the same question here at GolfCommunityReviews, and answered it, more than eight months ago. (Click here for our January 26, 2007 article.) We have also reported frequently since then about comments to us from "halfbacks," those former northerners who moved to Florida a decade or two ago and are now moving halfway back to the Carolinas and other southeastern states. For months we have been suggesting that the tide was flowing out of the Sunshine State.
Choked with traffic, burdened with increasing property tax and insurance rates in the wake of hurricanes and too bloody hot in the summer, Florida is losing its status as a retirement paradise. I lapse consciously into off-color British prose above because so many Europeans think of Florida as the only warm place to vacation or purchase a second-residence in the U.S. Strong suggestion to our faithful offshore readers: As you consider investing your strong pounds Sterling and Euros, look north of Florida first. The sun does shine in Georgia and the Carolinas.
Florida real estate is still overpriced, with many who paid too much in the waning days of the boom unwilling to yield to the reality that they cannot sell their homes for what they thought they might. Property taxes are high, in part the natural consequence of offsetting the lack of a state income tax, and also to prop up school systems that saw an explosion of students in the last 10 years. Cities like Naples have over-expanded wildly, packing high-density and high-end condos into ever disappearing properties along the Gulf, in effect imprisoning residents inside their gated communities. And consistent with a great Florida tradition that goes back to the 1950s at least, local legislators and town planners have shown little backbone in dealing with aggressive developers.
The bloom, it appears, is off the orange blossom. Approach any investments in Florida real estate with caution.
Choked with traffic, burdened with increasing property tax and insurance rates in the wake of hurricanes and too bloody hot in the summer, Florida is losing its status as a retirement paradise. I lapse consciously into off-color British prose above because so many Europeans think of Florida as the only warm place to vacation or purchase a second-residence in the U.S. Strong suggestion to our faithful offshore readers: As you consider investing your strong pounds Sterling and Euros, look north of Florida first. The sun does shine in Georgia and the Carolinas.
Florida real estate is still overpriced, with many who paid too much in the waning days of the boom unwilling to yield to the reality that they cannot sell their homes for what they thought they might. Property taxes are high, in part the natural consequence of offsetting the lack of a state income tax, and also to prop up school systems that saw an explosion of students in the last 10 years. Cities like Naples have over-expanded wildly, packing high-density and high-end condos into ever disappearing properties along the Gulf, in effect imprisoning residents inside their gated communities. And consistent with a great Florida tradition that goes back to the 1950s at least, local legislators and town planners have shown little backbone in dealing with aggressive developers.
The bloom, it appears, is off the orange blossom. Approach any investments in Florida real estate with caution.
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Our Latest Newsletter
March 2024
March 2024 In This Issue Half Million People Leave Florida. Why? Your Next Home Not Getting Bigger; It’s Getting Better
