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Buying property in Spain Buying property in Spain Introduction to Spanish property market. News, advice, real experiences, buying to let in Spain, mortgages, special offers. Thursday, December 15, 2005 Valencia Land Law debated in the European Parliament This week the European Parliament debated and voted on the recommendations of the Fourtou Report on the controversial Ley Reguladora de la Actividad Urbanistica (LRAU). The law, known by those who protest against its consequences as the Valencia land grab law was originally designed to make sure that areas under development had sufficient infrastructure (roads, street lighting, green belt areas etc.). That was the the theory. However in practice the law has meant that property developers are able to apply to build on land already belonging to other owners where building is not permitted. When their application is approved (as it often is), the land is reclassified by the authorities, and the developers are then allowed to pay exisiting owners prices far below the real market value and build a road, a path or even part of a golf course, sometimes right through the middle of the former owner's back garden. Most of the people affected by this law are Europeans who have seen their dreams of a perfect Spanish home in the sun shattered by ruthless developers. More than 15,000 people have made a formal protest asking the European Parliament to intervene, and the protest group set up to fight the LRAU, Abusos Urbanísticos No , has been active in attracting national, international, political and media attention to a growing problem and demanding a solution. And recently British law firm Irwin Mitchell decided to register land law victims with the European Human Rights Court . Valencia's regional government promised in 2003 to revise and reform the LRAU, but seems in no rush to do so. A pre-project was presented to the Valencian parliament in June this year, but nothing has yet come of it. While the government insists that its intention is to change the law and protect the interests, and land, of property owners, opposition and protest groups allege that it is prevented from doing so from the interest of many of its members in the property development underway in the region. Ever since local and foreign property owners started their active protest, the Government has come under increased pressure to do something. In the Summer a delegation of Euro-MPs visited the Costa Blanca and met with foreign residents, local politicians and property developers to discuss the problem. In November the European Parliament advised the Valencian authorities to modify urban development legislation in the region. And finally this week on 12th December the European Parliament discussed the Fourtou Report and endorsed its contents in a vote on the 13th by a massive majority of 550 in favour, 45 against and 25 abstentions. The Report calls on the European Parliament to urge a moratorium on the approval of new property developments on land where development is not permitted. Any body considering buying property with land in the Valencian Region is advised to seek legal advice from a lawyer who can help with the necessary investigation to ensure that the land attached to the property is not in danger of being subject to eventual seizure by property developers. Related: EU homeowners and ambassadors challenge Valencian land laws European Parliament delegation visit Valencia to challenge Land Laws Valencian landlaws "unconstitutional" Advice from the British Embassy to people purchasing land in Valencia posted by Euroresidentes @ 9:15:00 AM 0 comments Wednesday, November 30, 2005 Home loans in Spain According to figures released by Spain's National Statistics Institute yesterday, the average amount of morgage loans authorised by Spanish banks rose by 18.1 percent in August (compared to the same month in 2005) and reached 146,762€. The overall value of bank home loans rose by 32.1 percent. In August a total of 131,180 mortgages were authorised to customers buying rural and urban properties in Spain and the overall value of these mortgages rose to 19,252 million euros. As usual Spain's savings banks got the biggest share of the home loan market - 53.42 percent - followed by normal banks (36.88 percent) and other lending companies (9.7 percent). Over ninety percent of mortgage loans corresponded to purchases of properties in the so-called " precio libre " (free price) category and just 9.9 percent to purchases of "protected" properties whose selling price is controlled by the government. As far as yearly figures are concerned, the number of mortgaged properties in Spain has so far risen by 9.82 percent this year, while the total amount of loans has shot up by 24.87. Related: Mortgages in Spain Mortages for non-residents in Spain Ranking of Spanish banks Spanish banks Home improvement loans in Spain posted by Euroresidentes @ 9:34:00 AM 0 comments Monday, November 07, 2005 British property buyers prefer Spain According to a study just published by Barclays Bank, the number of UK residents buying property abroad is set to double, and a third of potential property buyers named Spain as their preferred overseas destination. According to the results of Barclay's study, five percent of UK residents (2.2 million people) already own a property overseas, and another 2 million definitely intend to buy one. And a very high 37 percent of those surveyed for the study said they are considering the possibility of buying a property abroad at some time in the future. Spain remains the firm favourite among British overseas property buyers, with the US coming second and France third. Not surprisingly, the main things putting UK citizens off the idea of buying property abroad are legal and tax complications, the possibility of being misled or deceived by local property sellers, and the difficulty of adapting to a new language and culture. Related: Reasons for living in Spain Property taxes in Spain Spanish lawyers Advice on buying a house in Spain posted by Euroresidentes @ 1:07:00 PM 1 comments Sunday, October 23, 2005 Lessons from one unhappy experience of buying a house in Spain It is an unfortunate fact that the legal system in Spain is at times desperately slow. Anyone considering buying a house in Spain is advised to find a good Spanish lawyer before signing anything at all and before parting with any money. David Wright has just started a new blog to share his unfortunate experience of buying property in Spain with other people. See the first entry below. Users interested in following his story as the final part unravels (and as, we hope, justice is finally done and the Wrights win the home and compensation they deserve) should check out his blog: Slow legal system where he intends to keep people updated with events as and when they happen. Considering tourism and housing investment bring considerable amounts of wealth to Spain, the Spanish law system is appalling slow and expensive. At the begginning of 2000 we enetred into a contract to buy a house, paid the 10% deposit and arranged a date with the notary and respective lawyers to complete. The seeler did not turn up and decided not to sell. THE BIG SURPRISE... he also would not repay the 10 % deposit never mind the penalty of 10%. Our only alternative was litigation. As we were not living in Spain at the time we left a deposit with a lawyer who told us that it would be a straightforward case. Well our case was finally heard in the local courts some 18 months later and we "won" including costs. However, the seller chose to appeal on what I understand to be very flimsy grounds. Some 2 years later the case was reheard in the Regional courts of Malaga where the original decision was upheald. ie we "won" again. However, the seller again decided with his lawyer that an appeal was in order and so we have been waiting almost 2 years for the case to come before a judge in MAdrid's high court!!! We still do not have a date nor can the system give us an estimated date as to when the case will be heard.!!! WHAT CAN fellow EURORESIDENTES learn from this? I believe the following: 1: Entering litigation is very expensive - even though we have "won" twice, we have still had to pay our lawyers fees and costs even though the costs were awarded in our favour. The amount equates roughly to 17% of the purchase/contract price!!!! per hearing. At this point we have paid almost 50% of the orginal house contract price, (deposit plus fees) 2: The seller continues to live in the property and with no penalty or change. 3: We have no idea of timescale as to when the High court can hold the hearing. 4: The so called filtering process that was supposed to be implemented to stop people using the appeal process to delay matters as a tactic does not function. 5: The seller is not obliged to pay the costs awarded against them IF they choose to appeal....SO APPEALING is a good tactic to frustrate. 6: So having a contract from a good lawyer and within the letter of the law, still does not really protect your rights in a timely manner. WHAT then is the point of a contract? it is only worth something to the lawyers in preperation for litigation!!! 7: Perhaps the law will one day help us to retrieve our deposit and costs or even the holiday home we wanted to live in and enjoy in the future. However in the meantime, it has only benefited the lawyers and the vendor. 8: So the law can still be seen as having no "teeth" and benefits the unscrupulous property owner/seller. TAKE GREAT CARE. Finally, if anyone has any suggestions as to what can be done to improve the law or indeed speed up the process then let me know posted by Euroresidentes @ 10:08:00 AM 0 comments Saturday, October 22, 2005 Lowest rise in house prices in Spain since 2002 According to the General Director of Arquitecture and Housing Policy, Rafael Pacheco, the rise in the cost property has risen just 13.4 percent in the last 12 months. This represents the lowest rise for 3 years and, according to Pacheco, is the first clear result of the Spanish government's housing policies. The General Director also indicated the regions in which house prices have risen most. These are Castilla La Mancha (19.8 percent), Aragon (16.4 percent) and the Valencian Region (16.3 percent). In Andalucía, traditionally one of the most popular destination for non-resident house buyers, the rise in house prices at 13.7 percent is only just above the national average. The most expensive region as far as the cost of housing is concerned is Madrid (2,719 euros per sq. metre), followed by the Basque Country (2,537 euros), Catalonia (2,037 euros) and the Balearic Islands (2,003 euros). The cheapest regions are Extremadura (864.2 euros per sq. metre), Castilla La Mancha (1,255 euros) and Leon (1,297 euros). Related Revaluation of property in Spain per region Investing in property in Spain Houses for sale in Spain posted by Euroresidentes @ 10:29:00 AM 0 comments Thursday, October 20, 2005 Spanish-English real estate dictionary Because of the amount of enquiries we receive from non-Spanish speaking property buyers in Spain about Spanish real estate terms and how the system here works, we are compiling an extensive Spanish-English glossary of real estate terms . Having completed the glossary, we are now working on full definitions of each term, so that our users can get an idea of how the Spanish property market differs from the property market in the UK. In this sense we want to go beyond a simple bilingual list of property terms. Send us any words not included. We hope to finish all the definitions in the next few days. Click on each term to get the full definition. posted by Euroresidentes @ 12:07:00 PM 0 comments Wednesday, October 05, 2005 Real estate market in Spain, latest statistics According to a study carried out by the Pompeu Fabre University (Barcelona) and Tecnocasa, the housing market in Spain has started slowing down and a halt in the massive price increase experienced over the past fews could be near. The authors have based their opinions and conclusions on the analysis of the sale of over 12,000 second-hand houses and flats and details of mortgages granted to buyers from the first semester of 2004 up to June this year. According to the report, lived-in property (as opposed to brand new) now takes an average of 83 days to sell, which is 15 days longer than a year ago. Another finding of the report is that property sellers this year are more likely to be prepared to negotiate the price than they were last year, and that on average buyers are able to secure a 5 percent reduction in the original asking price. During the presentation of the report yesterday, executives of Tecnocasa said that this should not be interpreted as an indication that the price of housing in Spain was at last starting to come down, since the reduction was usually agreed on property that was overhoused in the first place. However, in their opinion, the findings of the report do suggest that the conditions necessary for an eventual slowing down in the Spanish real estate market at some time in the near future are starting to appear. Other findings of the report: 30 percent of house-buyers in Spain are foreign. 72 percent of all house-buyers come from Spain or another EU country. The rest are non-European, mostly people from South America, Eastern European countries and North Africa who have settled in Spain Over 49 percent of second-hand house buyers are between 25 and 35 years old, and 61 percent buy the property together with another person The average mortgage in Spain in June was 154.890 euros, a rise of 18.80 percent with respect to the same month last year In over 60 percent of all cases, the mortgate loan covers between 75 and 100 percent the total value of the property Small flats are proportionally more expensive than larger flats and houses The average price of lived in property in Spain per sq. metre is 3,000 euros in the most expensive areas of Spain (Madrid, Barcelona and Vizcaya). dropping to just 1,500 euros per sq. metre in the provinces of Alicante, Cadiz, Seville and Valencia The most expensive cities in Spain in terms of housing prices are (in order) Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao and L'Hospitalet de Llobregat (3.070 euros). Related links: Mortages in Spain Mortgages for non-residents in Spain The price of housing in Spain Investing in property in Spain posted by Euroresidentes @ 9:38:00 AM 0 comments About Me Name: Euroresidentes Location: Spain View my complete profile Previous Posts Valencia Land Law debated in the European Parliament Home loans in Spain British property buyers prefer Spain Lessons from one unhappy experience of buying a house in Spain Lowest rise in house prices in Spain since 2002 Spanish-English real estate dictionary Real estate market in Spain, latest statistics High-quality Spanish houses to be marketed in the UK New state property rental agency ready for business in Spain Costa del Sol property market may have reached peak Links Feedback Property market in Spain Reasons for living in Spain Properties for sale in Spain Properties for rent in Spain Hotels in Spain Restaurants in Spain Paradors in Spain Spanish recipies Spanish classical music Spanish courses in Spain Euroresidentes Spain Web Euroresidentes Archives

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Naples Real Estate, Naples Florida Real Estate, Naples FL Real Estate - Berry Realty Group Site Map Naples Real Estate , Naples Florida Real Estate , Marco Island real estate , and homes for sale in Collier County , Bonita Springs , and Estero . See Naples Florida Real Estate We're #1 For A Reason! Home | Neighborhood Tours | Buying | Selling | Featured Homes | Search For A Home | Life in SWF Your Guide To Naples and Southwest Florida Real Estate Home Online Relocation Guide Neighborhood Tours Free Market Analysis Map of Naples Rentals and Leases Real Estate Blog What Is Your Home Worth? Meet Our Team Maps Newsletter Mortgage Beach Cam (Live) Contact Us Email Us Local Resources Commercial Properties Links E-Pros Scott Berry ABR, E-Pro Sun Realty 3757 Tamiami Trail North Naples, FL 34103 800-450-0198 239-450-0290 Your Ultimate Naples Florida Real Estate Guide Scott Berry and The Berry Realty Group Scott Berry Was Recently Featured On ABC News! 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IF YOU ARE NEW TO RENTING OR LEASING NAPLES FLORIDA REAL ESTATE If you are new to renting or leasing in Naples, you have definitely come to the right place. Rental markets, policies, and practices vary from state to state, and even among counties. We know the Naples rental market better than anyone else, and we would love to assist you. Naples Florida Rentals Search this site powered by FreeFind See Us In The See Us In The Florida Real Estate Directory Sand Dollar Title Group, Inc. Naples Title Services This site features Naples real estate , and homes for sale, land for sale and other real estate for sale in Naples Florida, The Moorings, Pelican Marsh, Pelican Bay Real Estate, Vanderbilt Beach, Barefoot Beach, Park Shore, Port Royal, Old Naples, Bonita Springs, Estero, Marco Island and neighboring communities. Search this site for homes for sale in Collier County communities including, Naples, Pelican Marsh , The Moorings, Bonita Springs, Estero, Marco Island,Pelican Bay , Vanderbilt Beach , Barefoot Beach , Park Shore , Port Royal , Olde Naples , and find your dream home! Scott Berry, and the Berry Realty Group ,can help you buy , sell or lease a home or other real estate throughout the Collier County,Naples , and the surrounding communities. Naples Real Estate , Naples Florida Real Estate Naples Real Estate, Naples Florida Real Estate Naples Real Estate, Naples Florida Real Estate Real Estate Banner Network Find our listing in the directory at Real Estate & Mortgages Pelican Marsh, Pelican Marsh Real Estate Alpharetta Georgia Real Estate Crete hotel , apartments for holidays Crete - Greece flights All Links Directory Florida Real Estate SeekOn/Real Estate Indexed by State 1000's of FREE Promotional Resources = Reciprocal links exchange database and website promotion resources and more! 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Pondering Real Estate Pondering Real Estate Adam Hamilton August 23, 2002 2913 Most Americans' largest asset is their home. With chaotic and turbulent economic times upon us, how will residential real estate perform in the coming years. Some thoughts... One of the greatest blessings of writing publicly is the continual stream of feedback I am offered from folks around the world. They let me know when I am wrong, help shape my worldviews and opinions, and offer dazzling new ideas that are often absolutely brilliant. Without everyone who graciously writes in to help deepen my own understanding, my own thought processes would rapidly stagnate. I am always grateful for feedback, positive, neutral, or negative. The people who take the time to write really augment the crucial foundational base off which my thoughts articulated in these essays are formed and polished. One of the most common questions people have, especially those writing from the States, regards real estate. For Americans, real estate, in the form of their primary family home, is often the largest asset they command. The value of real estate, especially the price trend, is very important to countless folks across our great nation. Many Americans I hear from, especially those with a contrarian investor mindset, wonder what will happen to residential real estate prices in the United States. The question is a very complex and difficult one, for a whole myriad of reasons. I have been pondering this matter since the US equity bubbles burst and am finally ready to commit some tentative thoughts to paper on this vexing issue. A massive caveat is in order however. I am approaching this question about real estate price trends from the perspective of a speculator. Not having a background in real estate, these ideas may be completely worthless, so please dont act on anything in this essay without at least first discussing these concepts with a real estate professional you personally trust with decades of experience. I hope this essay will simply spur further thoughts and discussions. The primary issue that I have been wrestling with in my mind regarding residential real estate price trends in the coming years concerns inflation and deflation. Inflation and deflation are simply opposing monetary phenomena, but both seem to be attacking our fragile post-bust economy in the US with great fury from opposite sides. For some background on these two titanic forces, please see my Inflation or Deflation? essay published last December. Inflation is spawned by the hooligans at the Federal Reserve printing too much paper (or electronic) money, which they have been doing in spades in recent years in a vain and fruitless attempt to stop the normal post-bubble bust process from running its full course. In the last 12 months, the various US money supply measures have exploded up with astounding violence. The absolute year-over-year M1 inflation is 5.2%, MZM 12.7%, M2 7.9%, and M3 7.4%. These numbers are downright frightening in light of historical inflationary precedent! In an inflationary environment, relatively more money chases after relatively fewer goods, services, and real estate. If the amount of money in circulation is rising faster than available real estate in the areas in which people want to live, residential real estate prices should rise. Realtors use this inflation idea to convince their customers that land prices should perpetually rise because land is scarce. Unfortunately, thats not the whole story. While real estate professionals constantly bombard us with marketing propaganda claiming that land is scarce and no more is being made, that is a myth. One example why is evident in multi-story buildings. A 10-story structure, for example, has about 10x the usable space as a single story structure, but has the same footprint in raw land terms. Land itself is not scarce, just land in locations where people want to live. For example, the sparsely-populated state of Montana has about 147,000 square miles of area, or roughly 94m acres. Assuming that only 2/3 of Montanas land is useable (the rest might be mountains or lakes, or streets in cities), that leaves 63m acres. If the entire US population is 287m people, they could all move to Montana and each live in modest estates of almost 1/4 acre, or 9,500 square feet. If their houses took up 1/3 of their plots, and each had a basement and two aboveground stories, every American could live in Montana in individual 9,500 square feet mini-mansions! Land is not scarce in general. I have seen land sell in the North Dakota Badlands for $25 per acre. I have heard of deals involving vast tracts of land in northern Australia going for under $1 per acre. Land is relatively scarce in small areas in which lots of people want or need to live however, such as New York Citys Manhattan Island. Monetary inflation should indeed bode well for real estate prices, but where will it strike? If US monetary inflation bids on barren lands in the Western states for example, residential real estate in the big Eastern cities might not benefit. Just because the general economic environment in the US is highly inflationary thanks to the Feds obnoxious and practically criminal monetary growth, that doesnt necessarily mean real estate in a given small corner of the US will do well. And then we must consider deflation! Deflation is caused by relatively less money chasing relatively more goods, services, and real estate. In deflationary environments money supplies shrink and prices drop. As long as the American people allow the private Federal Reserve bank to continue its tyranny of inflationary theft, there will never be less money in the US economy than there is today. But, muddying the waters even further, the historical line between money and credit is now exceedingly blurry. Because Americans love going into debt, they insist on buying their houses on time, with borrowed money at high interest rates, rather than working hard, saving the funds themselves, and paying cash when they can afford to buy a house outright. While deflation in the US money supplies is probably impossible with the Fed around, deflation in debt, or credit, is already happening. With Americans not actually buying houses outright but really in effect borrowing them from banks, any contraction in available debt will leave less credit available to chase houses. With less credit chasing residential real estate, prices will be forced to fall. But, just as with inflation, it is difficult or impossible to predict how the contraction in general credit available to buy houses will affect real estate in any given small area of the United States. Confused yet? Me too. There are both titanic inflationary and monstrous deflationary forces barreling down on the United States. But, residential real estate markets are all local and many will be affected differently. Deflationary forces could win out in New York City for instance, causing home values to plummet while at the same time inflationary forces win out in Wyoming causing house prices to rise. Real estate is all local. In the stock markets, it is meaningless whether you buy a share of a publicly-traded company in New York or California. In real estate where you buy your house is everything! Location, location, location. Since all real estate markets are really local, perhaps there are some warning signs that you can watch for in your little corner of America to warn of impending real estate price drops. While national generalizations about monetary inflation or debt/credit deflation regarding real estate are tough to make, zooming in to the local level for analysis has a much higher probability of success. Stock speculators throughout history have learned to carefully monitor equity markets for danger signs of maturing bubbles. All markets, including real estate, move in great cycles throughout history, marked by rampant euphoria at the tops and popular indifference at the bottoms. Perhaps applying some common bubble warning signs in equity markets to your local real estate market will yield some interesting fruit. Three common warning signs for equity bubbles are parabolic price rises, excessive valuations, and overwhelming euphoria. In real estate, parabolic price rises happen when a local market witnesses prices rocketing up by 15%+ per year, for years in a row. If you go to your local library and look at old newspaper classified ads, or else secure local data from your hometown real estate professional, you can easily graph it in Excel. If prices of comparable homes across time are shooting up on a long-term zeroed-chart like a ballistic missile, like the bubbles in the NASDAQ 2000 and DJIA 1929, you are most likely in the belly of the beast, a local unsustainable real estate bubble. Check out bubble growth graphed, it sticks out like a central banker at a rock concert! This graph shows values indexed to 100, but you can just as easily think of them in terms of dollars, starting out at $100k. Imagine you bought a house 25 years ago for $100k, a lot of money back then. If your house price appreciated by 5% per year compounded annually, it would now be worth $339k, which is totally plausible and makes sense. On the other hand, if your house had appreciated by 15% each year, it would now be worth $3,292k, or $3.3m! This is a massive increase in price, and it ought to throw up big red warning flags all across your cranium. Does it make sense for a $100k house to become a $3.3m house in only 25 years? Absolutely not, that is just silly! As the graph above shows, abnormally high growth rates make for parabolic charts, bubbles that look just like the stock market variety. If your local real estate market is ascending parabolically like the NASDAQ of 1997-2000, you are in a bubble. History unambiguously shows that no financial trend continues in the same direction forever and all bubbles ultimately pop. Unrealistic annual growth rates are a key bubble warning sign. For a deeper discussion of unrealistic growth rates over the long-term, please see my essay The Elusive Long-Term from last August. Another warning sign of equity bubbles is excessive valuations. In the stock markets, valuations are most commonly measured by the formidable yet often scorned price-to-earnings ratio. The historical average P/E ratio for US equity markets is 13.5x earnings. We can also apply this concept to real estate holdings. While most people buy a house simply to live in, it is also possible to buy a house to use as a rental property. In a residential house used as a single-family rental, there is a price, the cash paid for the house, and an earnings stream, the rent the family pays to the owner. With a real estate P and E, we can compute a rough real estate valuation multiple. If a rental property costs $100k to buy, and rents for $1000 per month, or $12k per year, its P/E ratio is 8.3. Even though most families dont own a separate rental property, with a little legwork you can check your local newspapers and calculate some rough P/E proxies for your area. Find houses for sale similar to yours to get price data points. Find houses for rent similar to yours to get earnings data points. Divide the P by the E, and you have a rough valuation estimate. I dont know what a reasonable average long-term residential real-estate P/E is. I suspect it is probably in the 10-20 range though, as that implies a 5% to 10% return on the owners capital, which is in line with historical returns available across a broad market spectrum. If you find that houses in your area are renting for implied P/Es of under 20 or so, that is a good sign that house prices may be fair. Conversely, if you find houses in your area renting for implied P/Es of over 20, valuations are probably too high and you should be wary of a potential real estate bubble. Another common warning sign of equity bubbles is rampant and unbridled widespread euphoria. Remember the NASDAQ in 1999 and early 2000? It was unreal! All anyone ever talked about was the NASDAQ, how boring. As a hard-traveling consulting road warrior at the time, I remember even the shoeshine boys at airports were talking about their tech stock investments as they polished shoes. It was just crazy, just as brilliant historians like Charles Mackay of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds fame (written in 1841) warned us it would be. It is difficult to empirically quantify euphoria, but there is no mistaking it if you keep your ears open and pay attention to what folks are talking about in your social circles. If you find yourself in a local situation where the preferred topic of conversation at every social get-together is always residential real estate and the great wealth to be made in home ownership, chances are euphoria is setting in and you should proceed with great caution. Just as parabolic price rises, excessive valuations, and overwhelming euphoria are danger signs of bubble tops in the stock markets, they are also equally valid danger signs in local real estate markets. It is probably a wise idea to periodically monitor these three fronts. In addition to stock market-like traits, there are also other factors that affect local real estate prices. These include net local migration patterns, income trends, and interest rates. One of the most important local factors in house prices is migration. If you live in or near a community that is growing as more people move in each year, that increases the pool of potential bidders competing for local houses. Prices are far more likely to rise in an environment of net in-migration. On the other hand, if your community is shrinking, both the number of people and amount of capital available to throw at residential real estate dwindles. This is a bad omen for future real estate prices in your area. Typically cities grow and rural areas shrink as people seek the jobs available in cities. This is not always the case though. As the Information Age continues to evolve, a new population of workers is growing, the information worker. Info workers deal purely in information, like a software programmer. It is often not important where they live, as they rely on the Internet to work remotely with their colleagues and clients. Info workers often earn high salaries and have the means to bid up home prices. Zeal LLC , my company, is an example of an Information Age venture. My partners and I can research, consult, trade, and write from anywhere on Earth. It makes absolutely no difference to you whether I penned this essay in Alaska, Australia, Argentina, or the Azores. Info workers, whose ranks will grow dramatically in the coming decade, are very blessed to be able to live and work from anywhere. So, if you live in an area of exceptional natural beauty and very high quality of life, prime rural areas, an influx of urban information refugees from the decaying carcasses of the megalopoli will probably help support real estate prices in your location even through tough economic times. It may make sense to buy real estate in elite communities like the Colorado or California mountain resort towns even if the US economy faces very turbulent times ahead. The Information Age will probably totally alter the dynamics of rural real estate in prized areas. Another factor to consider is income trends in your area. Ultimately, real estate prices in a given location can never increase faster than income over the long-term. Even for the vast majority who choose to go into debt to live in a house, the level of debt service they can afford is totally dependent on their income. If general income trends in your community are rising, that is a great sign and is bullish for real estate prices. On the other hand, if general income is falling, for any reason, that suggests real estate prices will have to correct downward to adjust for the loss of debt-servicing ability necessary for folks to borrow money and buy residential real estate. Interest rate levels are also intimately tied into this whole debt service capability. As all those burdened with a mortgage know, for many years most of the monthly payments are almost totally interest. It takes a long time and a huge amount of money dumped down the mortgage black hole, into bankers pockets, before the amortization starts taking good-sized bites out of principal each month. Amazingly, in the first 2/3 of a typical 30-year mortgages lifespan, the interest portion of each monthly payment exceeds the principal portion. So, if interest rates are heading higher due to Greenspans promiscuous inflation as I have discussed in past essays including Bond Anomalies Abound , it will severely retard debt-financed residential real estate purchases nationwide. Although interest rates havent turned north yet, history suggests they will be forced higher sooner or later as the bubble excesses are painfully squeezed out of the US economy. In summary, attempting to divine real estate price trends is very difficult in a macro sense. There are a great deal of diverse variables that affect real estate prices. In addition, unlike the stock market, there is no national real estate market. All real estate is local, so national trends must be examined for your particular situation in light of the local realities in your community. Nevertheless, if you do your own due diligence and integrate local real estate data you uncover into national post-bubble trends, you should be able to emerge with a fairly good idea of where your local residential real estate prices might be heading. Adam Hamilton, CPA August 23, 2002 Do you enjoy these essays? Please subscribe to our acclaimed private Zeal Intelligence newsletter today to see the good stuff each month, including our specific stock and options trades based on our research! For more information ... Zeal Intelligence For a FREE sample ... FREE Samples! To subscribe ... 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