Friends and Neighbours

We are entering a great disintegration. Maybe the wise thing to do is to sell assets in Europe now before the crash gets out of hand. The real trouble is that people dont generally want to move very far from where they have traditionally lived, so selling real estate is probably the last option. That means that by the time that option is being considered it will already be too late.

For some considerable time now I have suggested people should probably sell up and Go East. Malaysia seems one of the better options. Luckily one of the official languages there is English.

My second option would be what I have done myself. I moved to southern Portugal. Real estate prices are still high in this part of the world, and I still think Portugal will escape the worst of the collapsing continent. But what you might call the economic heartbeat of the western part of the continent is suffering severe palpitations.

If you live in southern Europe you may well be better off than the north simply because there has traditionally been less industrialisation in the south, so there is less to collapse.

However, you do need to think seriously about where your money comes from. Preferably not from Europe.

The eastern part of the continent, by which I mean Russia, is doing very well indeed. Just how well you may have seen if you watched Tucker Carlson wandering around the markets there and buying things. The last time I looked his ratings showed a quarter of the world’s population watched his Russian trip, so now almost everybody knows the true state of things over there.

I’m sure most Europeans know what’s what. The four big economies, Britain, Germany, France and Italy are all on the ropes.

I constantly hear people talking about Britain rejoining the EU which clearly means that a heck of a lot of people dont see what is staring them in the face, namely that the EU is at death’s door. 

Every country within the union is suffering from inflation, high unemployment, political incompetence, worsening food shortages, worsening energy shortages, failing businesses, and bankrupt exchequers. On top of this the various governments are burdened with unsustainable social commitments.

The only question is, how much longer can such a situation be sustainable? The real answer is that it cant. I fully believe there will be serious repercussions within the next year or so.

My own concerns are no longer directed to what is likely to happen over the course of the next couple of years. I am far more interested in what is to come after the debacle.

There are so many questions.

Where will the food come from if the Brussels idiots keep to their insane edicts? And what do people do when there is no food? Usually they riot and steal.

Where will the energy come from? Russia wont switch on the spigots after the way we have behaved towards them. The US has turned off their spigots as well.

So what happens when the power goes off? The tractors wont start, so the fields dont get ploughed and sown. The trains stop. Fridges fail. And the people start to riot and steal, until there is nothing left to steal.

And then we go back to the middle ages, start breeding horses like mad, and plant potatoes in the window boxes.

And life goes back to being nasty, brutish and short.

The Brussels mafia will try to create an army. That will give them even more power. If or when then happens I shall definitely leave. At the moment Brussels has no real power. They can be side-lined. It’s easy. Dont fund them. But create an army and fund that, and you will have given your tormentors all the power they need. That is what is coming.

If you think Europe needs an army to defend itself, think again. It cant be used against an aggressor. But who in their right mind would want to invade a collapsing continent that is clearly headed for the exit?

Look at the UK. It cant feed its population. It imports 80% of its food-stuffs. How easy would it be to blockade the country? It’s almost blockaded now. During a blockade you need friends not enemies, and those friends need to have what you want, and be prepared to sell it to you. That also means you need to have the money to pay for it.

The UK needs it, and increasingly doesn’t have the money to pay for it.

The danger level for a country living on credit is generally regarded as 90% of GDP. The UK position has topped 100%. That means it can no longer productively borrow to fund future payments because the cost of the funding starts to cost more than the value of the money borrowed.

England, in fact the whole of Western Europe, rapidly needs a monetary overhaul, and friends bearing gifts. Increasingly it appears to have neither.

As for an army to defend Europe, at the moment the nations cant even defend their borders from unarmed people in rowing boats! In short, in terms of protection, Europe is a laughing stock.

What would even a proper army achieve? The US is supposedly the biggest power on the planet and it has lost every war it’s waged during my lifetime.

The character of war has changed drastically since then.

One neatly placed electro-magnetic pulse would bring a country to its knees in minutes. The electric supply would fail. Engines would no longer function. The knock-on effect would mean no money would be available because there would be no electricity to power the banking system. That means there would be no way to cook dinner. It would take less than a week for there to be mass starvation because food would no longer be able to be kept before rotting as every freezer would fail. Bang would go the entire communications network.

The good news is that you would only have two things left to worry about. How many tins of food you have left, and how are you going to warm the contents.

The water filtration systems and pumps would stop working, and 95% of the mechanical structure of a country would no longer operate.

Of course the radiation would cause massive loss of life as well, but these days radiation devices are much more selective than they used to be.

Modern warfare survives simply because governments so far refuse to use modern technology in war.

Warships, bombers, tanks; they are all obsolete. One EMP would bring all of them to a standstill.

Even without that, hypersonic missiles can easily destroy a battleship. That is the most out-dated war machine still being used.

It is time people started to wake up to a modern reality and realise that it really is time to start being friends with one’s neighbours, or there wont be any you, or any neighbours.

Buying in Lisbon

Part 2 of my reply to Pierre about buying a ruin in Lisbon

“We want to move to Lisbon permanently early 2013 and found several nice rentals.
But we also found an old house in Lisbon, on the border with Alfama. It needs very serious renovation (practically RECONSTRUCTION). But once done, we would have a T2 for ourselves, and 2 T1 for daily/weekly rental with great views (including the river). Total costs aprx. 250K. Would you consider this a risky investment?”

In part 1 of my reply I looked at the general economic outlook in Portugal. It is not good. However, let’s now look at the particular deal.

If this deal was anywhere else in Portugal I would say it was way too expensive. I must admit I dont know what house prices or rentals go for in Alfama. It certainly would appear to be a great spot overlooking the estuary. You really do need to check other prices in that area. A quarter of a million just for a ruin sounds crazy. Let me put it like this. I have a three bed apartment in London. It is close to several tube stations, and there is a massive amount of work available for good pay within walking distance. It is worth about the same amount.

Lisbon wages are not as high as London wages, so why is a ruin worth so much money? Something sounds not right here. I can in that area find for sale a property split into two apartments ready to move into for €150,000 (that’s half the price of your project) so unless the one you have your eye on has spectacular views from the top of the hill with courtyard and garden I have no idea why it costs so much.

A capital city should have a proper rental market, but you really do need to tramp around the streets and see what deals you can find, then get back and get out the spreadsheet and do your homework. Down here in the Algarve you’d have to be a total idiot to buy anything with a view to renting it out. You can rent a 1 bed apartment for €50 a week. For twice that you get something really nice. Lisbon should be much better, and at least Alfama is a hip place to be.

On the other hand, to put things into perspective, in this week’s Unique Members’ Bulletin there is a hotel in Cumbria going for £35,000. That is the price in a well known beauty spot in a wealthy country. You have a home and a business for a pittance. You cant get that kind of value in Portugal. Wages here are about €1,000 a month. That’s less than half what they are in the UK. House prices have to fall considerably in Portugal. They are still extortionately high.

I have been asked to look at Turkey and Sicily next. Let’s see what turns up.

john

Start a Business in Lisbon?

I’ve been asked a question. It’s an old one. Those of you who have been reading my material for some time will know my views on buying homes abroad, and especially holiday homes. But what about businesses?

I’ve been asked whether it’s a good idea to buy a property (or two properties) in the Lisbon area. The problem with this is that every deal is unique, but let me throw out a few questions, and make a few observations.

First, I would be very wary of starting any business in the eurozone at this time. You may be successful, but it is a time to be wary. You would need to check out how similar businesses are going, and what the competition is. Is there room for more? In my experience there is very little room for many traditional businesses. The way to find out is to rent somewhere for three months and wander round the businesses and see for yourself how they are doing.

The second thing to look at is the business climate. Some countries are pleased to see you. Panama is one, Singapore is another. There are good places to work in. You dont even have to work in Singapore. How about KL? Dont want to go so far? Then why come to Portugal? There is an anti-business climate here.

You should go where the tax structure favours business ventures, especially start-ups, which is why I mentioned Panama. Check it out. Portugal has a tax structure that seeks to close down businesses.

Let me show you something very simple which will show you what I mean. Tax structures are put in place to do one of two things. The first is to bring in enough money to fund government expenses. The second is used to discourage some activity. Tobacco is taxed highly, ostensibly to discourage users. Certain activities are taxed heavily because they pollute, and so on.

However, let’s have a look at how Portugal’s tax system works. A small business is heavily taxed, and the level of purchase tax (IVA) is punishingly high at 23%. At that rate it is set to discourage the purchase of goods and services. This will tend to depress the manufacture of goods and the provision of services, and so the economy will contract. That is apparently what Portugal’s government wants. Is that the kind of business environment you want to enter?

Let me explain how revenues are usually collected. All taxation is primarily based upon the maximising of revenues. This is done by using a bell curve model and test taxing. A bell curve is a mathematical structure which looks like a pregnant woman, or a guy with a beer gut, viewed sideways. In other words we have a straight line to the right, and a curve to the left. The curve starts at 0 at the top and ends at 0 at the bottom. Each of these points represents the collection of zero tax.

What any government seeks to find is what is called the sweet spot, the band where most tax is collected, the fattest part of the curve, or the furthest extent of that beer belly. When you find that region you keep your tax levels close to that point. If you move away from that band you will automatically get less tax. So, if you raise taxes it means either of two things. It either means you haven’t found the sweet spot yet, or that you want to decrease the tax take for some reason, or, alternatively, seek to depress that particular market.

Portugal has decided to make its tax system punitive instead of productive. It has moved away from the sweet spot. There will therefore be a lower tax take, and people will be discouraged from making money. That’s not a good environment in which to start a business.

It doesn’t mean you wont be successful, but it does mean there are head winds to cope with.

There are other points to make on this subject, but I’ll come to them next week.
john

What’s Next?

I’ve just deleted this week’s blog on the housing market. It’s a waste of time.

The strongest currency in the world appears to be the Norwegian Krone. The weakest? God knows. The euro? The yen? The US dollar? Sterling?

It’s all become a joke. The US is bankrupt, half of Europe is bankrupt, and yet life goes on. The euro isn’t worth a lot, so they print some more. Greece cant pay its debts, so Greece just takes on more debt. It’s just surreal.

I still think that somewhere along the line common sense has to poke it’s head up through the idiocy. Perhaps not. I still think interest rates in Europe are going to have to go sky-high or several countries are going to have to go bust, which will bring down half the continent’s banking system. Perhaps not.

It is quite possible that sometime soon those holding properties with a high level of debt are going to be squeezed. It is also quite possible that those buying any property in the eurozone with foreign currency are going to see a big loss. Anyone buying in Greece now has to be a lunatic. Probably the same is true of Ireland and maybe Portugal.

Italy’s largest bank is bust. Things will probably get worse in Italy, and maybe in five or six years time, maybe in ten years, then will be a great time to buy. I can wait.

I have always said that now is not the time to make investments in Europe. If you have euros, by all means put them in property, but dont convert into euros and then buy. As Shakespeare once said: “Something nasty this way comes.”

Real estate: what to do with it? Live in it, that’s all.

john

Wither Spain and Portugal?

Let us have a look at what is happening to real estate in Spain and the Algarve, and, armed with that knowledge, see what the year ahead has in store for us.

There are several factors that control what happens to the housing market. Let’s first list the factors that have little or no influence at all. Those who want to buy may be an important group, but more likely they are of no importance at all in the market. Why do I say that? Simple. I want to buy an aeroplane as I love flying. However, I wont be buying because I cant afford one. The same goes for that Ferrari I fancy.

How about those who do want to buy and have the equity but not the cash? The boomers are beginning to retire. There are a lot of them. They may well fancy retiring to the Algarve, but can they sell their home in Northern Europe?

We need to analyse these situations and see whether they are indeed favourable for the housing market in the south.

Secondly we need to look at the value of real estate south of the snow line. Are the prices realistic, or are they inflated?

Thirdly, we need to look at the current state of the market: how much real restate is empty and up for sale?

The retiree market is in trouble at the moment for the simple reason that people with homes in the UK, and especially in Ireland, are having serious trouble in selling. Unless they can sell for a suitable price they wont be buying here. There is also the problem set by the high value of the euro. When I first came to live here the exchange rate was about €1.55 to £1. Recently it has been trading around €1.20 to £1. That makes euro-priced houses much more expensive. The exchange rate alone has pushed up the price of a home to UK buyers by more than 20%. That’s some hike to cope with in a recession. As the English have traditionally been the biggest buyers that is a big dent in the market.

For the Irish there is the problem of house values back home. They have dropped by between 30% and 50% already. In some cases a similar drop is likely. They certainly wont be out in force as buyers any time soon. That is also another big dent in the market because two or three years ago the Irish were buying in droves.

Any buyers will have to be coming from countries like Norway, where economic conditions are still relatively rosy, or from countries where the number of existing emigrants has so far not been very high. All I can say here is that I hope they will be coming. We desperately need them.

With crashing economies in all directions the emphasis is now on value for money and downright cheapness. Is Spain or the Algarve cheap?
Let’s go back and do a simple bit of maths. There are two calculations you can do, but the most important is simply to work out what it would cost to rent, and then see how the price to buy stacks up against the rent. If it doesn’t stack up there is little incentive to buy when you can rent more cheaply, and if you want a change, you can just give in your notice and walk.

Alternatively you could look at your purchase as a business venture, and base the value on a simple rental return. Your ROI would then be the percentage return on the cost of the house or flat. If that return is less than about 7% (the usual market rate) it would be a lousy deal, and no businessman would entertain it. Conclusion: the purchase price would be too high.

You need to find out what your apartment/villa will realistically rent for. Let’s say you can get €100 a week for a small two bed apartment. If that €5,000 rental return equals a 7% ROI, then the purchase price would equal about €70,000.

The other way of calculating value is to see if the cost of the purchase is roughly the same as the cost of the money needed. If you rented that apartment the annual rent would cost you €5,200 a year. If you borrowed money to buy the property, would you be paying more than that or less? Money costs about 3.8% these days. What this means is that by this calculation your flat is not really worth more than €125,000.

So there you have it. If you can get €100 a week for your nice apartment it is in real terms worth somewhere between €70,000 and €125,000.
If you want to know where you stand on the value scale you first have to find out what you could realistically get from renting (always assuming the customers are there in the first place), and then ask yourself why any sensible person would pay more to buy than they would to rent.

Remember I am trying to compare like with like. I am comparing the cost of the rent with the cost of the money. And dont tell me you already have the money so it doesn’t cost anything. That ignores the opportunity cost. If you spend the money on a flat you dont have it available for any alternative investment, and in these hard times cash is king. You can get serious returns on money these days. If you are getting less than 10% you are simply not looking in the right places. 10% of €70,000 is of course €7,000. The rent is nowhere near that, which makes that alternative valuation of €125,000 look a bit high. Why would any sensible person give up an investment bringing in €7,000 to buy something you could rent for €5,000?

Capital gain perhaps? Ha ha. There wont be a capital gain on something that is too expensive in the first place. To get your capital gain you have to buy cheap, and in hard times, super cheap.

Finally, let’s have a look at the state of the market. By this I mean the number of properties for sale and the number of buyers out there.
Take a walk round Lagos. There are empty apartments as far as the eye can see. Try Portimao; the same problem. Behind me is a whole estate that has been built for two years. There are fifty or sixty apartments. About six are inhabited. Wherever you look are empty buildings. There are probably 50,000 apartments for sale, and half as many again would be for sale if there was any market for them.

Go across the border into Spain. There is a totally empty estate built where Ayamonte faces the Guadiana. The Esuri estate the other side of the motorway has about 12 residents. It’s about the size of Welwyn Garden City. Drive along the coast to Huelva. There are miles of the darn things. Keep going right round to Barcelona. It is going to take more than a decade to shift this lot. Prices of apartments should be on the floor. They will be for years.

I’m sorry to say the news is not good for tourist-land. Prices have gotten way over where they should be, and, sad to say, what goes up, usually has to come down. What a bummer!

Okay, that’s for tourist apartments, but what about villas perhaps in inland towns and villages?

Here things are slightly different. If you are out of a tourist trap you can at least sell to locals instead of relying solely on expats and tourists. That means you have a much better chance of actually getting a sale in the first place. That is a major advantage.

Secondly, there are far fewer units for sale. You dont have that massive overhang in the market that will keep seaside tourist spots in the doldrums for years. Inland you are far more likely to find that prices stabilise sometime over the next year or so. Not only that, you will find that by buying outside the tourist traps you will be buying into a far less risky market. I think tourist properties will continue to decline in value whereas those in proper independent towns will hold their value.

You will note that on the Unique Property site we dont sell apartments. We sell properties that already have an individual value. The individualness will in all probability mean that prices will be largely maintained, and any losses will be minimised.

What I cant predict is what will happen if the euro starts to fall apart. But if it does, prices across all of Europe will be affected, and I haven’t a clue how the chips will fall.

Cheap Villas

Cheap Villas for sale in the Algarve

I know I have taken longer than expected but we are ready to go.

We already own a building site in a quaint Algarvean village just three miles from the sea. We have been offered an old manor house with some parkland just a little further down the road which we will be developing next. We have done a deal with another guy who owns land alongside a golf course on an island in Indonesia. And we have done another deal with a guy who owns hundreds of hectares of land between two rivers, and bounded by a fabulous white sands beach in North-Eastern Brazil.

We are going to build our ultra modern villas on these plots of land, and they will be available for sale at silly prices.

The cheapest of the villas will be a two bed detached home, built from modern eco-friendly materials, and will be for sale for £50,000. You wont find anything as cheap and as good as this anywhere else on the planet.

If you want details, get back to me. I shall be making regular posts on this blog to keep you up-to-date on how things are going. Stay tuned.

Portugal and the Ministry of Invention

There’s something about Portugal. I dont quite know what the problem is. Maybe they have a naturally surrealistic turn of mind. Maybe the system of thought police is well organised, or maybe they are a nation living in some kind of fairy tale.

They deal with this quite simply by having a Ministry of Invention. Perhaps other countries have such a government department, I dont know. Portugal’s Ministry of Invention is quite busy.

A couple of years ago the tourist industry fell through the floor and we had the lowest number of tourists for a decade. The Ministry of Invention was soon on the job, and put out a news flash that it had been the fourth best year of all time.

When the news came through that there was to be a ban on smoking in bars there was uproar. No-one will take any notice, said most of my friends. But the Ministry of Invention was right there taking notice alright. It wont affect Portugal they said because only 18% of the population smoke, and the young people dont smoke at all.

Of course, what they meant was that about 18% of the population dont smoke, and they are the pensioners who cant afford to.

The weather has been unusual this year. We had a massive amount of rain from mid december. It just went on raining and raining. My swimming pool (which started the period empty) filled by 42 inches in four months. That’s nearly three year’s normal rainfall.

Not only that, but summer just refused to come on time. Month after month people were going round with coats on, asking when the summer was going to start. We’d have a few days of warm sunshine, then the clouds would be back, and we’d all be wearing pullovers again, and taking the umbrella with us.

I left in mid june, and still the weather was dodgy. We’d get occasional fine days, but generally speaking it was chilly. I certainly didn’t hear of anyone having to switch on the air conditioning.

However, now we have the official report from the IM (I assume that is shorthand for the Ministry of Invention). May and June in Portugal were the hottest on record!

Everyone I spoke to, not only in the Algarve, but in Northern Portugal as well, claims May was the coldest anyone could remember. So I suppose it comes as no surprise that the powers that be decided this could be bad news for the tourist industry and got onto the Ministry of Invention, and asked them to do something about it.

Portugal doesn’t like to be left behind. Global warming is still the in thing. Never mind that the harvest in Iowa was stopped by heavy snowfalls. Never mind that we discovered that the temperature reports had been “adjusted”, and that the whole thing was a massive fraud. Portugal was still staying with the old story.

Apparently someone did a spot of research to show that temperatures in Portugal had gone down over the last century. We couldn’t have that. If temperatures were rising around the world Portugal was not to be left out. I dont know who alerted those clever folk in the Ministry of Invention, but they were on the job in a flash.

The figures showed, so we are told, that during the last 110 years no less than 304 months showed above average temperatures. Conclusion: Portugal is getting hotter. Reports were rushed out to the press. There were computer projections showing that if this went on, within 25 years the Algarve would be like the Sahara Desert.

When I went to school 304 months equaled about 25 years. The last time I looked 25 subtracted from 110 left pretty close to 85. So, if 304 months showed above average temperatures, that means that 85 years out of those 110 had temperatures that were normal or lower than normal. So that is apparently why the Ministry of Invention could boldly state that Portugal has been getting hotter.

It’s been a busy time at the Ministry of Invention. They must have employed some pretty clever mathematicians to find their average. 25 years above an average, and 85 years at the average or below it. Sounds suspicious to me. But then what’s a Ministry of Invention for if they cant invent a new mathematical paradigm?

And do have a look at my Algarve letters at the Unique Property Site.

Cheap Villas in the Algarve

A few pals of mine are at present discussing a couple of deals. I’d be interested to know if any of you would be interested. I do need to know if there is going to be a market for these deals.

Two sets of plans are currently on the table. The first is to open a camping site for motor homes in Portugal. There already are a few, but they are expensive, badly run, and have crummy services. We can do better. We are planning on opening one just outside Silves in the near future. If you’d be interested in this facility email me from the Unique Property site.

The second deal relates to cheap housing. We are over-run in the Algarve with highly priced apartments. You can buy one for €200,000. That’s about twice what they are really worth. (If you think that price is reasonable, just read my book on how to value a home both in the UK and anywhere abroad, you may be shocked at the result you’d get by following my valuation method: http://www.property.org.uk/unique/book/index2.html). However, we want to produce detached two/three bed villas with a starting price of £50,000.

We have a large stretch of land (over 200 hectares) with planning consent for 600 beds. That means we can build 150 villas. We would use very modern materials that are both cheap and eco-friendly. Some of the properties would be built on decking set partly over the edge of a small lake. They would be between 120 sq.m. and 150 sq.m. in size.

I think this is the way forward. Property has gotten too expensive. It doesn’t need to be that way. We can sell for just above cost. What I’d like to know is: Is there a market out there for cheap villas in the Algarve? Let me know what you think.

john

Move to Portugal

I dont believe what I have just done.

I’m sitting here in my living room looking out over a lake on the western edges of London. I am within a London borough but cant see another house. I am surrounded by trees, and I can just see through a tangle of undergrowth a swan gliding across the water. But it is drizzling, and I have had to put on a pullover. For pity’s sake, this is mid june! Global warming indeed!

Back home it is at least twelve degrees warmer, and it is a relief to dip in the pool to cool down. In fact my neighbour’s pool is now so hot she leaves the cover off so the wretched thing will cool down. So what the heck am I doing here in London freezing to death in mid summer?

Look guys, you can all move down to Portugal. It has a much calmer, nicer climate than the UK, and prices in Northern Portugal are really cheap. We have a heap of really amazing ruins to develop, and larger houses that can be made into something quite spectacular.

This isn’t meant to be an advertisement for some of the site pages…… well, I suppose it is in a way, and why not? But I mean it. What are you doing stuck in the UK? It’s time to move out somewhere nice. Life doesn’t have to be like this. Yesterday I would have had breakfast down by the pool, and maybe jumped in for a freshener. I’d have had lunch on the top patio under a massive green umbrella. Supper would probably also have been on the patio, maybe using the barbeque, and I’d probably have gone for a midnight swim, lazing around doing a slow backstroke and watching the bright moon slide down the sky towards a brightly glittering Venus in the west.

Now I’m sitting indoors and wondering whether I need to put on a fire. I’m drinking some vodka to keep me warm while I make up my mind. I need to find wellingtons to go into the garden, and I shant stay long out there as the wind is whipping across the lake…….

I dont believe I’ve had to come back here. Arghghgh!!!!!

Anyway, while I’m here, you can go out there. Look at the amazing places we have for sale in Portugal. There are ruins, large tracts of wild countryside for sale, rambling buildings, mills:
http://www.property.org.uk/portugal/central-portugal/eco-homes.html

Or there are some more classy joints, one of which boasts a river flowing through the living room! I’m not sure whether that is a good thing or a real pain, but it’s certainly Unique!
www.property.org.uk/portugal/central-portugal/investment-homes.html

Okay, I’ll stop advertising. Now where’s my scarf and gloves; and surely I haven’t drunk all the vodka?
John