Friday 26 June 2009

BARGAIN BASEMENT USA

Nowhere is safe. Property prices in The Hamptons, the Long Island playground of loaded New Yorkers, are falling for the first time after 20 years of continuous growth. Asking prices for one-third of Hamptons homes have been cut by an average of 11 per cent.

But if you think they have problems, then head west to the San Fransisco Bay Area where prices have crashed by 34 per cent over the past 12 months - masses of repossessed properties have been dumped on the market, accounting for half of sales.

A clue to what might happen next is found in Detroit where the car industry is becoming the stuff of history books. These days this city is less Motown than buy-to-let town. Prices for homes in the city have slumped by a third over the past year to an average of only USD80,000, a level so cheap, that investors from across the world, from Australia to Lithuania, are buying them up ten at a time.

These investors are banking on a long term reival in the city's fortunes. After all, this is not the first time the city has come through an economic crisis - the Great Depression of the 1930s is comparable. On that basis, a Californian investor has bought 178 homes in Detroit. Now that's confidence for you.

(All The World's a Home : Global Property News)

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