How to Invest in French Alps Properties

Let's pretend for a moment you have a lot of money that you want to invest in real estate. Well, you could invest it in Canada - specifically cities like Toronto and Vancouver where real estate prices are skyrocketing at breakneck speed, but are also dangerously into bubble territory.

It is basically a high risk, high reward situation when you invest in real estate in Toronto or Vancouver. Prices are going up quickly, but when that bubble bursts a lot of investors are going to lose most of their investment. And do you really want to be doing that during a pandemic when the economic future of Canada is uncertain?

What you need is an alternative that is a safer bet - more stable - with guaranteed year over year higher valuations, but with less risk involved.

So what you want to be thinking about is luxury properties in places that are desirable.

Enter the French Alps. Or any of the Alps for that matter. The French, the Swiss, the Italian. That whole region is ripe for investment, and because the types of properties that are available there are ski resorts and chalets, you can basically guarantee that they will continue to be desirable for many decades to come.

You can invest in properties near lakes, near mountains, ski resorts, prestige chalets, hotels, older properties and newer properties that are being built right now. New constructions are an excellent opportunity for investment, provided the construction company is reputable and has a solid plan for how to make a profit from the chalet or ski resort or whatever it is they are building.

You can even buy a home in the French Alps and use it for vacationing in France, and sell it ten years from now for a tidy profit. And when you're not using it yourself, you can rent it out so that you're earning money on the property even when you're not vacationing.

Want to invest in a French Alps property / vacation in France / rent out your property? What are you waiting for?

Or even if you're not interested in vacationing in France there are lots of other locations to consider. Any place that is a tourist location is a hot commodity these days for rentals and a smart investment as their prices only ever go up.

With the exception of Florida.

Do NOT invest in Florida.

Any place like Florida which will be flooded in the next 30 years due to rising sea levels is a bad investment. Don't invest in any location that is in a flood plain unless you're willing to get flood insurance for the entire time.

But the good news is that the Alps and various mountain resort regions don't really have flood issues. What they need to worry about is avalanches, mud slides, etc. So when doing your research you should also check how many avalanches were in the area during the past 100 years and how much property damage there was. (And what the price of avalanche insurance is.)

Remember! Always get insurance to protect your investment!

London's Architectural Woes

Can too many skyscrapers make a city ugly?

Yes and no. Check out the video below wherein people in London England question the role of skyscrapers in British architecture.

Prefabricated Skyscrapers being built in record times

Imagine if you could buy and build a skyscraper in record time - in the same manner that you build furniture from Ikea.

That is the mantra behind a growing trend in the architecture industry, building prefabricated skyscrapers that have all the parts built in a factory and then are assembled on site in a record time frame.

The trend is growing quickly - and building quickly - in major cities around the globe, including New York and London, where the realization that such buildings can be built faster, cheaper and better by using prefabrication.

For example in the video below you can watch a Chinese construction crew building a new 30 story skyscraper in 360 hours - just 15 days.



And what is more...

Prefabricated buildings are cheaper to build - thanks to saving $$$ on construction workers who often spend half their time on the job standing around waiting for cement and materials to arrive - and then waiting for the cement to dry.

Prefabricated buildings are better quality - because factories have higher quality building standards whereas construction crews sometimes make mistakes and have to use a quick fix to solve a problem.

But the biggest change is SPEED, because prefabricated buildings are really fast to build. All the materials are built in a factory on production lines (which is more time efficient) and the construction crews just need to assemble and attach the final pieces.

What this means is that people could build whole new cities in a hurry if we wanted to, by using factories to build the parts.

The biggest delay is building the foundation of the structure, which would be unchanged from the current methods - but maybe in the future a genius will come up with a faster and more effective way to build foundations too.

Lastly, prefabricated buildings don't have to be boring. They're like Lego. You can make them look like any number of shapes and the technology is there to modify how you want a structure to look. We are only limited by our imaginations to design something better.

I think this is a trend we will see a lot more of in the future.

Apartments and Condos in Mallorca

Why Mallorca makes a great option for condo buying instead of Toronto

Mallorca (also known as Majorca, so I will alternate which name I use) is a tiny tropical island off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean Sea, an island that is 80% dependent upon tourism for its entire economy.

So you would think that the prices of condos and apartments there are probably pretty expensive, right?

After all, we're talking about a tiny country that in 2013 sold 30 estate villas for over 5 million Euros each - the most expensive of which was 18 million Euros. That is a lot of very expensive estates for one little Spanish island.

Thus you would think Majorca really only caters to wealthy estate properties - but we are forgetting that the locals at Mallorca have to live somewhere too, right?

Which means that wherever they are living, it has to be affordable - either by renting a property, owning a condo, or owning a house.

What I have learned is that vacant beach front properties are very expensive. Vacant lots on the beach are in the 450,000 to 600,000 Euros range. (That is $675,000 to $900,000 CDN.)

I browsed some websites for condos and apartments in Majorca and on one of the websites I found 3 small condos for sale 69,000 Euros, 90,000 Euros and 90,000 Euros. (So between $103,000 and $135,000 CDN.)

Now compare those prices in Majorca to small condos in Toronto - and they are about the same. A small condo in Toronto costs about the same as a small condo in a tropical paradise.

And to be fair, the really expensive condos in Mallorca are about the same prices as the really expensive condos in Toronto - a city that so far this winter has average -15 degrees outside, so bitterly cold you start thinking "Hey, why am I living here? Why aren't I living in a tropical paradise instead???"

At which point you have to stop and think why anyone would bother to live in Toronto when they could live in Majorca or some other tropical place instead.

Like just look at these photos I found of Mallorca. I think they demonstrate the difference.

Yada yada yada, basically why would anyone live in Toronto - one of North America's most expensive cities to live in - when you could live in Majorca instead for the same price?

Job? Learn to telecommute. Most of the high paying jobs in Toronto are in the banking and investment industry - jobs that could easily telecommute. Entire workplaces could all move to Mallorca and still hold meetings and do their regular banking stuff while enjoying sun, surf and relaxing drinks in a paradise.

It boggles my mind that tropical islands are not the financial centres instead of cold cities like London, New York and Toronto.

Land in Western Australia / the Outback

Australia is one of those countries I don't really long to see.

Asia, love it there and have already been there twice. South America - I can't wait to visit Bolivia and Brazil. Africa... Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Zimbabwe... all fascinating places. And Europe of course, lots of things to do there.

But Australia?

I guess I am just not a fan of kangaroos, crocodiles, and Australia's landscape.

However I do like a bargain when it comes to real estate - and Australia has a lot of bargains when compared to the real estate prices in Canada.

And I also enjoy looking at the real estate prices of obscure parts of the world... eg. You can get a plot of land on the side of volcano in Hawaii for $5,000 USD. True, its on the side of an inactive volcano... which means no local water... but it is in Hawaii!

Western Australia (WA) on the other hand has vasts regions of desert and scrub brush for sale. Some of it is former farmland that has gone belly up due to extreme droughts.

Its the kind of place where you can buy 680 square miles of land for $360,000 Australian dollars, according to the website Satterley.com.au provide land for sale in WA.

There are homes in more habitable regions too, like in Perth, Beaumaris Beach, Brighton, Catalina, Eglinton, Erindale Grove, Jindalee Beachside and Princeton... but I really need to post a map of Western Australia so you know where these places are.

I went browsing on various Australian real estate websites and found some interesting deals.

#1. A plot of residential land in Perth for $8,500. Nothing built on it yet, waiting for a developer.

#2. 2032 square meters of land in Doodlakine for only $19,500. (Australian towns have such funny names.)

#3. $114,000 for abandoned farmland near Perth. 206 acres worth. See photo below.

I think my point here is that if the prices are low enough there is a certain romanticism to the idea of suddenly picking up and moving to a different country and trying something new.

Even more so if you're already independently wealthy - or have enough that you don't really worry about food any more.

However I must admit Hawaii is more enticing than Australia. I am sorry to the good people of Australia for saying this... but its freaking HAWAII! Its one of the most desirable places to live in the world.

And if you love sailing you could always just buy a ship and then sail from place to place... something I have frequently dreamed of doing, if I could find a way of doing it financially.

OFF TOPIC - Where does one look for used ships online? I tried Googling it and found on Kijiji an used 29 foot Westerly sailboat in Nova Scotia for $20,000.

So I guess my point here is that depending on what your real estate / career / travel aspirations are you can find cheap land in many strange parts of the world - and failing that, buy an used sailboat and then just sail to many strange parts of the world. Assuming of course that you have the financial means to get food and other things you might need along the way.

So if you're living in Toronto - or Perth - or wherever you happen to live, and have saved up a tidy nest egg... absolutely, why not follow your dreams and move somewhere interesting (or sail there)?

You only live once.