bengatta wrote:I am struggling to think what is a normal investment... especially one that does not rely either directly or indirectly very heaviy on property investors...
Finally! So the problem is that you can't understand how buying up properties directly drives the prices up, or rather how others don't. Fair enough.
But first of all, let's clear something up: I did not offer it as an advice, merely as my view. Opinion if you like.
Ok let's see a few alternatives, then;
Stock market. That does not drive property prices anywhere (directly).
There are many ways into that, you don't have to buy shares directly and chew your nails to bits over them (altho that's part of the fun for some of my friends...) just get some investment portfolio. Some insurance and other companies offer investment portfolios, which are either stock or commodity exchange based, sometimes linked to oil or other specific thing, you can even try and ride the far-eastern wonder and buy chinese portfolios, this is the sort of thing they have tried to offer me recently. Sounds fun
You can invest in currency exchange. It's another fun form, brother has been doing it for a while, it can be very profitable. And risky.
There are many other financial investments, eg government papers (can't tell the proper english name, but I've had a few back in hungary, it's a fairly safe form) but then you can put your money into long term deposit accounts as well...
On the other end of the safety spectrum there are investments, even around properties which wouldn't directly affect the price of housing the way buying them up does, in my opinion. Getting money into the building side would probably have a rather positive effect, instead of the negative one (thinking eg mezzanine funding) - and they are fairly short term, very profitable. Been thinking about it but I simply don't have enough to risk to make it worthwhile.
And of course investing in running businesses can always reap nice profits.
See what I mean?
Disclaimer:
I'm not saying, again, this is what one should do; many of the options around have much higher risks than a simple property purchase, altho it's often offset with the potential for very high gains.
In any case, do your friggen research before going into any investment.
Surprise, no sig. Now there is. Or is there?
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