One Person's Trash is Another's Island Home

Tom, here.

This is Price-Reduced.com where we talk a lot about real estate and a little about life.

The transcript provides links for you to go more in depth on the topics covered here.

There is only so much land on this earth so what other options do we have?

No Land? No Problem? Will technology save the day when it comes to a land shortage? There is an off the grid floating home a Canadian Couple spent twenty years building. You will find one person’s trash is anothers floating island home as shown by British Artist Richart Sowa. Even though you might enjoy a slide show video of Amazing Floating Homes, can floating homes really solve any of societies problems? Amsterdam came up with a plan to help alleviate their housing shortage by building floating homes.

What shows up in the World News for real estate?

CNN has a great article about the rising prices and the strong real estate market in Europe. Prices in Madrid have risen 10% and Dublin has seen nearly 12% increase in the first quarter. Another trend? Younger buyers are choosing smaller cities where they feel they can get a better quality of life.

One area where prices continue to be reduced is in the Countryside of Italy. Global Property Guide has an in depth article about what is happening in Italy’s Real Estate Market. With interest rates as low as 1.92% earlier this year, wouldn’t you expect a housing boom? Learn what is holding back a boom from happening in various parts of Italy. Keep in mind the number of owner occupied households they have. Would you guess it to be 60%? 70%? Maybe 80%? If you have to guess. Guess on the high side.

Have you ever thought about what the home ownership rates are in other countries around the world? There is a Wikipedia article that might surprise you.

Everyone strives for home ownership, right?

There is an article in Business Insider entitled “I’m a financial planner — here’s why I won’t buy a home” The author doesn’t say he wouldn’t invest in real estate. What he does say is that he won’t own the home he lives in. It’s an article worth reading.

Kind of unusual that someone would choose not to be a home owner isn’t it?

Maybe not so unusual if you lived in Germany. Although home ownership rates in Spain and Ireland are in the eighty plus percent range, Germany is on the other end of the scale for European Countries at about half that, or forty one percent. Why choose to rent over buy? Banking requirements for home ownership and government regulation may play a part in the decision and satisfaction with renting.

Did you know there is the “Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development” or OECD. It has a Better Life Index where it focuses on housing, education, jobs, and even life satisfaction across many countries of the world. Don’t visit this website unless you also want to learn about Work-Life Balance.

What is happening in the U.S. in the area of real estate?

Let’s look at the State of Florida.

If you are looking for an entry level Luxury Home in Sarasota County, you will pay 19.7% more than last year, That is the highest rate in the nation for the twenty fastest growing Luxury Markets studied.

Ever wonder what your real estate agent does on their off time? Donna Kalil spends her time off capturing Burmese pythons as part of a Python Elimination Program by South Florida’s Water Management District. Her largest? About twelve feet long.

Take 10,000. neighborhoods across the United States, focus on six factors including appreciation, crime, schools, and unemployment, and what do you find? You find that the Pine Ridge Neighborhood in the Naples Florida Metro area is the 10,000. to 1 favorite.

Did you know that Florida was number one of the top five states for Foreign Investors according to the National Association of Realtors?

Let’s go from the southeastern United States to the Northwest United States, the Portland Oregon Vancouver Washington Metro area.

Oregonlive has a great article about the 10 Portland-Vancouver neighborhoods where prices reduced over the last year. To put it a little more accurately, the median price declined year to year for the second quarter. The area with the biggest drop? The 97202 zip code which includes the Sellwood, Moreland, and Richmond neighborhoods where the median price declined 10.2%.

Can’t look at what has gone down without wondering which neighborhoods are the most in demand. The top two are North Aloha or 97003 zip code and North Hillsboro or the 97124 zip code, which is also the location of the 2018 Northwest Natural Street of Dreams.

That is a good reminder that no matter what city you live in, your homes value and amount of demand for it, can vary from neighborhood to neighborhood for the same size and quality of house.

Have you ever watched a time lapse of a water lilly opening and closing? Quite a beautiful site.

Some of us are so focused on what we see on the surface of the pond, we don’t begin to think about all of the plant and fish life underneath it.

There are variations of thought provoking stories about the lily pad.

If you had a pond with one lily pad in it and every day the number of lily pads doubled. At the end of 30 days the pond is completely full. The question is, how many days into the month are you when the pond is 1/2 full? As you might has guessed, the answer is not half way through the month which would be fifteen days.

The next question might be, if you were driving past that pond, on what day might you realize that the lily pads were there? Let’s say it is the 28th which is when the pond is 1/4th full. That leaves us plenty of time to correct the lily pad problem, right? After all, 75% of the pond is unaffected. However, 28 out of 30 days means about 93% of our month is gone, over. That leaves us just 7% of the month to take corrective action, even though only 25% of the pond is covered with a problem.

Maybe that is one reason why , whether in real estate or in life, it makes sense to solve problems when they are small.

Thank you for listening to Price-Reduced.com and always remember, financially speaking, “When it comes to real estate, the best time to buy or sell, is when you don’t have to.