You know, that isn’t a bad idea. We could open up schools for… “gifted” youngsters.
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Not any more, apparently. That’s why you see “glass tower” condos - floor to ceiling, wall to wall windows - being built even in Canada. (And apparently at least a couple of them in Toronto have had to be re-clad at the condo owners’ massive expense after a few years.) They’re cheaper to build.
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A lot of these high-end properties are sold to shell corporations for people from unstable regions who just want to park their money out of the reach of the local despot(s). They don’t really care what it looks like or even if it’s a good value, just that it safely holds their money out of reach. If their money is ill-gotten to begin with, they won’t care about a loss on a sale, that’s just a cost of doing business.
Putting 500 million in a bank or a portfolio requires a paper trail. Apparently real estate works differently. Does the money get laundered by going through the hands of these builders who end up making the deposit? If so, there’s another opportunity to turn blood money into clean cash.
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A realtor friend posted recently on Facebook about a home in Medford, MA that got over 40 offers, most of them above ask. I responded that it sounded like an indication of a market top and incipient bust to me and someone else replied that Boston area is just so awesome that this is nothing to worry about.
Real estate has been internationalized over the last decade or so. Fast money from all over the world - Russian kleptocrats, Arab oil sheiks, Chinese billionaires - have been buying up prime property in London, NYC, Paris, LA, SF, and the Boston area. In fact, there is one Chinese billionaire buying up as much property as he can around Harvard Square. As we debate building more affordable housing, I keep on bringing this aspect of the problem up but get no good response.
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I know you meant “glass walls,” but it’s amusing that “big class walls” really has meaning in this thread. Well, maybe not so amusing.
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Gad. I hadn’t heard that. No wonder there’s SO much resistance to any kind of solution to the problem.
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I’ve read that; that risky student loans are being bundled into securities the same way that risky mortgages were. But I haven’t studied the issue.
Here in Canada the problem is a bit different: We have a major real estate bubble, with property values in Toronto, Vancouver and elsewhere having gone up FAR more than peoples incomes. There a perfect storm about to hit:
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All the baby boomers will be retiring over the next few years.
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Far more than previous generations, all their savings are in their homes. Big family homes.
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And so they’ll need to downsize when they retire. In the past this has meant selling to all the university graduates entering the housing market. However…
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Now all those university students are graduating with debt for life. They can’t afford houses.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that a house is going to be a bad investment. But for the next few years it’s not going to be the great investment it’s been in recent decades.
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The Japanese were way ahead on this. You may remember all the US property they were buying up in the '80s.
A new story at the time explained it as insurance. Eventually Tokyo will be devastated by another earthquake. At that point there’s a massive sell-off in the US, and the proceeds go to rebuild Tokyo.
Now the international billionaires are doing it on a personal level.
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So, they made a house with a 7 car garage and no bidet in the master bedroom?
Typical anglo-saxon style!
She was not italian, wasn’t she?
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That’s what I thought.
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No, you are talking about two different things. Windows in a wall in a house - windows cost more than a wall.
Glass walls on high-rise condos are a totally different animal. Costs more than windows or walls in a house, but generally the fastest and least costly way to clad a tall building.
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and that’s why these properties often are impossible to sell. Its like selling a custom suit.
I’m talking about one thing: Glass walls. Not windows in walls, but glass walls. In both condo towers and houses. They’re cheaper to build than traditional walls with windows and windows frames.
(Presumably it’s harder to find an electrical plug or cable outlet on one of those walls though. Harder to put in a nail to hang a clock too.)
If you can’t sell your $100,000,000 pad perhaps you’re more likely to cook the books.
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I have a hard time imagining having that much square footage to live in. I mean, I have lived in a 400 square feet, with a husband and a cat happily. It seems so weird.
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A home that size at that cost likely includes servant’s and nanny’s quarters.
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If you had $100 million, you wouldn’t have much in the way of a unique taste, and vice versa.
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Absolutely. Part of the reason tuition fees keep escalating is the availability of student credit to pay them, apparently decoupled from any economic reality. The loans sloshing freely towards anyone who can spell own name on a Trump University application are down to two things.
One. Originators of student loans do securitise, tranche and sell them on, just like subprime mortgages. Typically they don’t hold the risk themselves.
Two. Older folks need to lay claim on future product of younger workers (benignly known as “saving for retirement”) and for that student loans are a perfect investment. The richer, older savers have tremendous appetite for the young to owe them as much as possible through those securitised loans.
Think this forward and it ends badly for everyone involved.
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Say what now? I’m an American, I’m not supposed to do that!!
But seriously, thanks for the (scary) reply. Here’s hoping the likely implosion isn’t too painful for too many people. (What am I saying? Of course it will be.)
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