I read this with naive expectation, hoping there was Somewhere I could turn to like Mecca…
we’ve all picked “somewhere else.” I wish we all could proclaim “my hometown” as the place best place in the world to be.
We did when we were five.
I think the Central Valley in California. Sooner or later there’s going to be a high speed rail put in, and once that happens you’ll get a lot of commuters from LA and San Fran.
Given the OP, most people (well, at least I) voted with the thought of “where do you think housing values will appreciate the most over the next 25 years”? So it’s not a case of nobody believing their hometown is the best place in the world, it’s a case of people believing that home appreciation will best happen elsewhere.
And that’s pretty much spot on… in 25 years, there will only be one answer to the question of “where has homes appreciated the most in the past 25 years”?
I got a good vibe about Charlotte, NC. Many people in various media outlets seem to agree.
Despite the current economic situation in Las Vegas, we still get over 35 million tourists arriving at just the airport alone each year, and that doesn’t include those who drive in from California and other locations. In other words, The Strip is busy, and the trend shows it will continue to stay busy and popular, with rooms booked at 90% + occupancy on a regular basis.
I mention this as currently you can buy homes/condos for a mere fraction of their original worth. If you, or you and a friend/friends pooled some money together, you could get a great property here for pennies on the dollar. Do you really think you would have problems finding friends/family to stay at your place in Las Vegas when you are not in town?
There are lots of small-time investors currently snapping up entire apartment complexes, million dollar homes for $200,000, and penthouse apartments for cheap. They even have bus tours for Asian visitors who, once they see what is available, are buying properties on a whim!
Yes, we are the foreclosure capital of the US right now, but this too will change.
Any northern city with plenty of water (ground or surface), not flood-prone, and seismically safe.
Duluth/Superior, Eau Claire, Minneapolis, much of New England.
As you say, I would buy distressed Vega$ properties any day of the week over distressed Rust Belt properties.
So would I, if it wasn’t for one thing: water. I don’t think Las Vegas is sustainable. Sooner or later (and I’m betting sooner) they are going to run up against the lack of water. It just can’t support that many people on the supplies it has very long. So unless they build an aqueduct to bring water in from Minot, ND…
Rio de Janeiro, and to a lesser extent all of Brazil.
Sure, it’s extremely corrupt, and the bureaucracy is so terrible it doesn’t even fulfil its basic functions, and I suspect there’s a large amount of bullshit in the economic statistics about Brazil - but it’s certain that something is happening, and some kind of valuable economic growth will continue to happen even if the government doesn’t reform at all. Brazilians are on average becoming wealthier relative to the rest of the world.
Rio is in a great situation then. It`s one of the main bases for the growing oil industry, and most business in general is concentrated in a few cities: Rio, São Paulo, and Manaus. São Paulo is just too damned big, and Manaus is in the middle of nowhere (intentionally made into a low-tax industrial area to draw investment to Amazonas), but Rio has a great location, great entertainment/cultural options, and still some room to grow. Furthermore, the crackdown on the favelas (shantytowns) has succeeded in pacifying the formerly shocking amount of crime, and there are loads of (attempted) reforms/rebuilding of the city for the 2014 football World Cup and 2016 Olympics. (That might be creating a bit of a short-term housing bubble, but over the course of years prices will just continue rising)
If the government can get its act together and improve the (deeply flawed, and easily paralysed by rain) infrastructure, Rio would be my bet for the world leader in housing value increase in 25 years. Even now, I can say that I bought an apartment here just over a year ago after getting married, and since then its value has much more than doubled in value.
I had that vibe 7 years ago. All things considered it is a great place to live. Housing is relatively cheap compared to some other areas (NY/NJ; CA; etc.) and there is a lot of land available. The biggest worry is the reliance on two banking giants for the majority of the local economy. They are attracting other sectors but it’s primarily a banking town.
I have been to Mauritius and while the countryside is nice, the cities are really ugly and crowded. I don’t think I would ever choose to live there.
That was part of my intent. But I also (and this part I guess wasn’t as clearly conveyed) was curious specifically about what places that are currently written off as goners are going to surprise everyone with their economic resurgence - much like New York did. So while it won’t surprise anyone that London real estate is (probably) going to keep going up, is there some other grim, half-abandoned city that’s going to surge ahead in the next few decades?
The worst financial decision that I ever made was not buying a small house or home unit in the inner western suburbs of Sydney in about 1997 or 1998. I had enough cash on hand for a deposit and I looked at a few, and even went to a couple of auctions, but decided that the market was overinflated then, and it wasn’t worth my while trying to put together a mortgage to buy a place. Of course, a couple of years later, when I’d have wanted to sell, prices had gone up a lot, so I’d probably have netted a profit of around $50,000 on top of the $50,000 that I had in cash for a deposit. I do remember a time when office buildings in the Sydney CBD dropped significantly in price, and I think it’s likely that housing prices will ease a bit, but I think the long term prospects in Sydney are still good. However, I agree that it’s not going to be the place with the most spectacular increases in housing value.