10 October 2009

Saturday Open Thread

It's the Saturday Open Thread... you really should be outside though.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

So - are these Eurowallet 2010 soccer tourists going to push up house prices in CT, pricing the locals even more out of the market,or is that whole tournament going to be a lame fizzle ??.

I don't see much travel enthusiasm either, locally or abroad, what with job losses and portfolio losses all around the world.
But maybe I'm wrong - any wiews ??

ad said...

Soccer is big in the States no??

Americans snapping up World Cup tickets - Bush Radio

Chief organiser Danny Jordaan says Americans have bought the highest number of World Cup tickets outside of South Africa so far, and it is therefore significant that the USA has now qualified for the World Cup.

Jordan says now that the team has qualified even more Americans can be expected to buy tickets for the World Cup.

http://bushradionews.blogspot.com/2009/10/americans-snapping-up-world-cup-tickets.html

Anonymous said...

Anybody who thinks that the world cup is going to push up property prices has got rocks in their head.

No fan is going to come here and watch soccer and then decide what a geat place this is and buy property.

This whole notion of property being boosted is bulldust. One onlyhas to look at other cities and countries which hosted the world cup like Germany, Korea and Italy where prices hardly moved during and after the world cup!!

Bean Counter said...

Hello all, back from a brilliant holiday all over Europe where The Great Recession was completely invisible: everyone as rich, blinkered and jolly as always. Saw some FASCINATING house prices in the Tirol in Austria, though - R4-million for an alpine chalet on a lake, 2 acres of forest, all mod cons. Somehow puts that R4-million McMansion in Constantia or Somerset West in perspective...

I also see that Brett Kebble's Bishopscourt place is being/was auctioned for R28-million. Saw an aerial pic of it in a mag. I'm sorry. What is wrong with South Africa's super rich? Yes, it's got a conservatory and Roman fountain hacked out of the bedrock of the Palatine Hill, but FOR GOD'S SAKE YOU'RE ABOUT 50 METERS FROM YOUR NEIGHBOURS! If I'm paying R28-million for a pad I don't want to a) hear the rottweilers next door barking all night b) have tennis balls flying over my wall and into my pool c) look at my neighbour's slate roof poking out over the razor-wire. And it's Bishopscourt, Cape Town, South Africa, people. It's nowhere. It's the green and leafy dormitories of Slaapstad. Oi veh...

Anyway. Purpose of entry: I see over on UK House Price Crash that Kirsty "Prices Always Go Up" Allsop, the most poisonous cheerleader of the English specuvestors, is being touted as a possible addition to the House of Lords once the Tories come in. This suggests that our worst fears are well founded: the governments of the West are going to everything - EVERYTHING - to keep their economies floating on inflated property prices.

Interested to know: what's the long-term outcome of this? Surely this is uncharted territory, where we are determined not to pay the piper until the tune is over and the concert hall has burned down? How do we hard-working, frugal people position ourselves for what must surely be a complete meltdown in the next 10 years? Buy farmland? Gold? Guns? Or just sedatives?

Anonymous said...

@ beancounter

Learn Mandarin

ad said...

BC

To me the death of the dollar as global reserve currency is the immediate issue....and its complex.

For instance: An attack on Iran over their supposed nuclear ambitions? During 2007, Iran asked its petroleum customers to pay in non-dollar currencies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_oil_bourse

Didnt Saddam do the same thing?
Weapons of mass destruction anyone?

And today we read:
Chavez backs dropping U.S. dollar for oil trade Reuters
'Iran and Russia propose oil trade without USD'

If or when there is a collapse of the dollar then from our perspective....

THEN the Dollar Disease will go global. The only reason Japan or Europe have been able to generate their current meager rates of growth is the willingness of U.S. consumers to buy their Hondas and BMWs. As the dollar plunges, Asian and European goods, priced in suddenly-appreciating currencies, will become prohibitively expensive for U.S. consumers, who will respond by buying U.S.-made alternatives or nothing at all. Correctly interpreting this change in buying patterns as a threat to their vital export sectors, European and Asian leaders will respond with the only weapon they have left: monetary inflation. They’ll cut interest rates and buy dollars with their currencies, flooding the world with euros and yen the way the U.S. now floods the world with dollars. The result of these “competitive devaluations” will be a death spiral for all major fiat currencies, in which European and Japanese bonds will, eventually, fare as badly as their U.S. cousins.

http://www.dollarcollapse.com/faq/

What will Gordhan and Ramos do?
What will Mr "you sheeple be frugal while I will have this 1,2mil beemer over here" Manuel do?

Jules said...

The 2010 WC will have *maybe* a temporary positive impact on property because sentiment drives a market. I think the problems will only surface in 2011 and onward.

There aren't enough willing foreign buyers to prop up Cape property prices. The bulk of the market has and always will be driven by local demand. Only the Atlantic seaboard is an exception.

Fact is that locals haven't seen their income increase in line with prices. There are more R1 million homes than qualified buyers.

And to think foreigners are going to shell out 2 or 3 hundred thousand dollars for a vacation home in CT. you forget that there are BETTER buys for those people in the USA, e.g. Florida.