Generally I believe it is possible to make money investing in real estate in any country, but some offer better returns than others. A lot of this has to do with demographics and per capita income trends. Ideally you want your property to be in a country where the population is growing, the birth rate is high, there are many young people relative to old people, wages are rising, average wealth stably increases over time, and urbanization is rising. You also want to be buying in countries where there’s rule of law — you don’t want to be buying property in a totalitarian state where the state can confiscate your property at will.
For this reason, I would consider the U.S. to be a better place to buy property in than, let’s say Japan. Indeed, property prices in the U.S. have increased steadily over the long term, and only occasionally go down temporarily. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, average home prices in the U.S. increased by 280% between 1985 and today. And even during the 2008-09 GFC, whose proximate cause was the creation of a housing bubble, home prices only dropped 20% and recovered to pre GFC levels within a few years. Prices increase over the long term because of a growing population combined with rising GDP per capita. Having purchased a number of detached homes in the U.S., I am reasonably confident that they will be worth considerably more in 10 or 20 years.
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