Probably it’s illegal for foreigners to purchase real estate in IRaq now, and certainly it’s not a good idea right now, but after the war, which the US is indubitably going to win, I guess a newly installed pro-western government will open the country to forein inversors. And I guess real estate prices will be pretty down immediately after the war. But given Iraq’s huge oil reserves and the wealth other oil-rich countries have accumulated, aren’t chances good that, in a westernized rich Iraq, Baghdad will be an important hub of commerce in this region right between the Middle East and Inner Asia? I guess this would drive prices up a lot. I’m wondering if it’s a profitable thing to buy cheap realties after Saddam is finally out of the game, and wait twenty or so years.
[sub]And no, I’m not going to do this; after all, any profit this would yield would be blood money IMHO. But I’m curious if this would work, and if funds managers are already planning to do something along this line.[/sub]
Yep. Land prices just skyrocketed in Tehran once the Shah left.
Just because Saddam’s gone doesn’t mean Iraq will turn into the Monaco of the Middle East. There are plenty of extreme rulers waiting to step into power who would want Iraq for Iraqis.
Actually, I seem to remember a recent news segment (I think it was on 60 minutes, but could easily be wrong) focusing on the phenomonon that real estate prices have been significantly rising in Iraq recently. Apparently the going assumption among Iraqi real estate investors is that the demise of Saddam’s regime is imminent and the local economy will improve significantly afterwards, and many of them are acting on that assumption.
…but they can’t admit that publicly (there are significant negative ramifications of doing so - getting shot, for example) , so all they will say publicly is that the local economy is looking real good right now.
OK, make that “phenonemon”. Or something similar.
The other problem is that many third world countries don’t have secure property rights. If you are a major business and an important person who has friends and connections, no one will question your ownership of your land. But what if you are a foreigner, who doesn’t have any connections? If the interior ministry says that the current President’s nephew really owns the land you claim to have a title for, what exactly are you going to do about it? This is a major problem in the third world, many people have lived on land for generations but have no documentation “proving” that they actually own the land.
There’s also the fact that the next ruler of Iraq will probably also be a dictator. According to a news article I read about a week ago, the current thinking in the Bush administration is: we’re going to find an Iraqi provincial governor (or whatever they’re called) who isn’t too bad a guy, set him up as the new president of Iraq, and leave within a year or two.
So don’t expect life in Babylon to change too much.