Real Estate Matters

Have you ever wondered where to find the world’s best quality of living? And what criteria would you use to choose a country? It is very difficult to attach a figure or a ranking to the experience of spending time in a place. However, International Living has been collecting data and crunching numbers for nearly 30 years, looking and ranking 192 countries. They took into account cost of living (15% of final ranking), culture and leisure (10%), economy (15%), environment (10%), freedom (10%), health (10%), infrastructure (10%), safety and risk (10%) and climate (10%).

So the country that won this year’s index was France, for the third year in a row with a final score of 85. According to IL’s 2008 Quality of Life Index, France is the best place in the world to live. Medical care, fast trains with Eurostar service across the Channel, museums, cafés, galleries, antique shops, restaurants, boutiques, jazz clubs, theaters, bakeries, parks and gardens along with three capital city airports providing easy and cheap air access to the rest of Europe made France their choice.

But very interestingly Switzerland was number 2, with a score of 84 followed closely by the United States at 83. Other countries in the top ten were Luxembourg, Germany, Australia, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and the Netherlands. To see the complete scores for every country in every category, go to: www.qualityoflife2008.com

Backing up these findings, are the results recently released by the property portal www.RightmoveOverseas.co.uk revealing that in the first half of 2008, it recorded some 10,200,000 searches for overseas property from potential buyers in the UK – up 26% from 2007. Among the 10 most popular destinations on the portal, the largest increase in searches was seen in the USA, where inquiries were up 50 percent and averaged 190,000 per month. Spain and France accounted for one third of all searches. However, buyers who want to purchase abroad but are reliant on selling their UK property have to hold out, because they are not finding buyers as quickly as they might have done a year ago. Other buyers are waiting for the Pound to get back to 1.3 or 1.4 against the Euro before committing, but the exchange rate between the Pound and the US dollar remains a clear value at 1.94, which makes investments in the US extremely attractive.

Here is my weekly real estate value in the Sarasota/Bradenton area. A four unit, turn-key furnished apartment building on Bradenton Beach, just an easy short walk to beautiful beaches and sunsets of Anna Maria Island. A very good money maker and now attractively offered at only $599,000. See more information at www.SarasotaAndKeys.com/BayDrNorth.

Cheers,

Bill Geller