Over here, the same thing is happening that the only achievement that is worthy of celebrating as a young man or woman is when you have a form of real estate investment to your name whether land or building to the extent that when you buy a car as a result of necessity before owning a property, you must be a foolish man. This your observation is a very valid one in that here, we have housing deficit and at the same time, there are empty apartments all over the place in certain areas of the country because of the cost of building and investor want to earn their returns faster and move on to something else. Eventually, it is the cabals who are in charge of sale of lands and building materials get to win at the end.

However, its good to invest in real estate but one needs to be strategic about it. Development happens, cities move, a business centre today can be a deserted environment tomorrow but in the midst of all this, some cities would continue to be in existence and those are the areas that would always turn out returns on investment and even when there is a bubble, it won't burst because as the city continues to grow, the need for housing becomes a necessity for countries that are in the peak of their development process.

Real estate is always needed.  You will have children, they need somewhere to live.  Therefore, many choose the direction of investment as real estate.  Very convenient, because you can take time and earn income.

The attractive of real state investments is within the fact that even if it went to 0 (which obviously would never happen, because a place to live will always have some value, of course unless the place wherein the real state resides goes full Chicago or something disastrous happens) will always have some value to it. No matter what the market says, you can still live there. If you are holding a stock and it collapses, you have nothing, same for a crypto and so on. This is why real state will always be desirable.

It will always be attractive to have something which you can milk for passive profits, in this case, having a nice portfolio of apartments. This comes at the cost of having to keep up with any problems that could happen with the renters, being a landlord is a job. I have never been a full time landlord but that's what they say. It is sure a less time consuming job that the average wage slaving one tho, and you could always hire someone to do all the paperwork. If I had the money I would try to own at least 4 apartments in big cities which would deliver a rent high enough to not have to work and live pretty comfortably. These will ALWAYS have a demand. In a globalized world there will always be people willing to pay for it. Many exchange students come to these cities if no locals want to rent it. There is a big demand. Just try to get them in places without troublesome people so you don't have to lose sleep over some fucktard destroying the furniture or whatnot.

If this is of any guidance:



It may be smart to keep focusing on improving your Bitcoin holdings and forget about real estate for now. Our time to own nice houses will come. We may be able to pick up some really cheap deals while Bitcoin as at 6 figures or more in a couple of years.

i suppose it seems the same happening in my country. No cheap house and land keep getting expensive and all people trying to get a house for invest or for living. I do think real estate still good investment but its not for everyone. The real estate price getting expensive and it takes a lot of money to buy a proper one for investment.

The problem begins when too many people are trying to buy houses for rent or to swap and the market crashes. You're left with properties that nobody wants to rent out or buy, or in case of swaps nobody wants to pay you the price you expected and you have to pay the bills as the owner, so keeping the property on the market for years is going to bankrupt you.
Also, the demand might be decent now, but since average Joe is buying a property for rent, we'll at some point have dozens of people owning more than one property and trying to rent out, which won't probably end well for them as they will be left with properties that aren't making them money, but have to be maintained.


Yes, those aren't downtown apartments. There are many factors to consider, one of them being construction materials. Older buildings are made of bricks, at least here in Europe. The newer ones are prefabricated and built within months. If you compare 50 year old buildings to the new ones, for the same price you're getting underground garages, terraces, huge panoramic windows, and cheaper per square meter than a 50+ year old downtown apartments.

Only if you don't maintain them and find someone willing to restore them. For instance, if you had an old Ford Mustang, like 1970 and kept it in your backyard, it would still most likely be worth a lot of money, but if we count in inflation, it wouldn't be that much more than it costed 50 years ago. On top of that it would be rusty and need a new paint job, new wheels, and all rubber parts would have to be replaced. So the car would be undrivable without at least 10k USD being thrown into restoration. It's not a great investment.


Yes, this is another problem. In many countries your land can be bought back by the state. This allows them to take your land from you for a fraction of its value if they ever find something in the ground (oil, natural gas) or just want to build a highway.



If you take ad valorem tax  into account, owning a real estate can potentially bankrupt you. Imagine having to pay 1% of its value a year as tax and the government decides to value the property ridiculously high. This can suddenly happen if something that adds value to your property is built nearby. For instance, the area around your land becomes a national park, which means that nothing can be built, so you will never have noisy neighbors or a factory built nearby. If the value of your land doubles so will the tax. This is an extreme situation but we all know that strange things have a tendency of happening in the most unexpected moments.


IMO The Trump administration is doing its best to discourage people from moving to the US.


This is an important factor. The  problem is that most EU countries have negative growth. Some have neutral, but a positive is a rarity.

Yea, that's crazy.


I'm actually not sure about this part. Just a couple examples that could make your apartments completely worthless:
A natural disaster (flood, earthquake)
A problem caused by tennants (fire, gas explosion)
A war

Sure, you can insure them, but this will reduce your earnings and the insurance will never cover 100% of the damages.

Not only you are surprised about the building boom. I researched the real estate market in my country (Russia, Moscow and the nearest places) and the situation is absurd because developers build new houses but most part of people cannot afford to buy a flat for themselves in that houses and some part of houses stay almost empty. Moreover in the national currency prices are growing a little but in dollars the prices has fallen down in two times yet. Despite of the prices falling people still  consider that buying a flat is a good investment. I am waiting that prices on flats in my country will be dropped in dollars again. I even do not mention that houses often are build so near each other causes a lot of troubles.
So, buying a real estate is not a good investment in my country at the current moment of time.

In my country, the older buildings are deliberately devalued, and most of the people buy it, but only to find out that the building will be soon collapsed by a bulldozer.

Yeah and other countries are promoting tourism,including mine and making the cost of living go only more higher.  


I see why things are totally opposite in the EU.


Yeah don't do that. It seems to be a go to thing for a lot of people in my country and people do successfully do it, but its not ideal. Some people buy a 3 BHK and rent the two rooms and boom, they don't have to get a job. And the apartments will only be in demand, if they have their working environment around them, with essential stores around. You could earn a fuckton of money, but be careful, subletting is not allowed in some places.

I remember a similar case here, but with someone who just didn't want to leave, and rightfully so. Eventually that person got paid what he wanted for his property and left to see how it later was reduced to dust.

It was far more expensive and time consuming to get that person to leave through a legal battle, so they went with the easiest option. As last person standing you can achieve quite a lot if you don't let them scare you off.

I'm however not sure how friendly the situation would be dealt with in Asia and Africa. People's rights there are of less value and you probably lose more by playing hard game if you're unwanted.

Well everything has its risk. Certain stocks could be affected by floods and earthquakes depending on what you are holding. A war for sure would have an impact on pretty much everything else as well.

Maintaining a small 3 room apartment is not that much of a nightmare. We aren't talking about a villa with a pool, a garden, vegetation, a couple bathrooms.. just small city apartments which will always have a demand. You can get them in places known to never be affected by earthquakes or floods, just study the area before buying. Fire or gas explosion is always there tho, but that's life.

Perhaps you could look at parking spots. You can rent them too and they have next 0 maintenance since it's just a small rectangle of cement. The % of danger of flood is much higher too, since they are underground. But even then... assuming your car isn't there, the person renting it will have the problem, not you. If it floods, it will dry, again it's just concrete, nothing of value on your name is lost. Parking spots seem like a winner in terms of passive income. Im not sure how taxes go in these, but there should be a good demand for parking spots in cities.

I know a family that owns an entire parking building next to an airport and they make millions out of it. They've had it for years and family keeps inheriting it. A money making machine.

Having an entire building is maybe overkill for most of us, but with 20 to 50 spots you could be very well off. When BTC goes to $500,000 or so you will be able to afford a bunch of these with a single BTC.