Oddbean

What about taxes? What about upkeep? What about tenant damages? What about confiscation? Nonpayment? I agree it can be (depending on the jurisdiction) if you do this work on all these (and more) risks, but there is no “buy it and forget it” savings asset quite like bitcoin.

Anything is a bubble with a long enough (or short enough time scale) Housing was a bubble in 2008. Bitcoin was a bubble in 2013, 2017, and 2021. What matters is do you believe in the long term thesis. I happen to currently believe in the long term thesis of housing (in my jurisdiction) and bitcoin (and many other things) when measured against fiat. Bitcoin might disrupt those other things, but it is the measuring stick for now… poor one though it may be.

Challenging in Egypt. Most landlords aren’t able to pump their rent up 20% each year to keep up with money supply growth. The overall value of their property and income generally doesn’t do great in international purchasing power terms (eg vs dollars, gold, bitcoin, etc). And there is a lot of excess housing supply. Real estate is popular there because the money is so weak. So there is a lot of empty housing as people would rather hold that than the local currency. Now as a primary residence it can make sense. But for rental properties it is really hot or miss, and highly illiquid.

so the problem with real estate is the same as with bitcoin then. people buy it not because there is a legitimate need for it but because they see it as an investment opportunity. which ironically makes it a shit investment. we're frankly in a tough spot in history when WEF is clamping down on economic growth so how do you invest when the future is net zero, which realistically means net zero growth rather than net zero carbon. in the old days you would identify some area primed for an explosion whether it be Oil in Rockefeller days or Computers in Bill Gates days but those days are mostly gone ... Elon was still able to capitalize on the idea ( which was part fantasy part propaganda ) that there will be an explosion in Electric Vehicles ... but vehicles overall are on the decline in most of the west ( to be replaced with bicycles and mass transit ) ... China is the engine for Electric Vehicle adoption now and they will squeeze Tesla out as soon as they are done stealing Tesla's tech ... Honestly if i was an investor i would try to look for opportunities in whatever Klaus Schwab is pimping such as alternative proteins ... but have to be careful ! the reason Elon Musk succeeded is because his vision was backed by WEF but ALSO his product excited people ... NOBODY is excited about eating the bugs ... big difference ...