Businessweek’s The World’s Best Places to Live 2008
The World’s Best Places to Live 2008
Mercer Consulting’s annual roundup of the global cities with the best quality of life is here, and Zurich once again comes out on top. The best place in the U.S.? Honolulu at No. 28
By Carl Winfield
New York, London, and Paris are internationally renowned cities but consultants at Mercer Consulting have picked Zurich, Switzerland, as the best place to live in the company’s annual survey.
Consultants rated each city on a variety of factors including the level of traffic congestion, air quality, and personal safety reported by expatriates living in more than 600 cities worldwide. In the top 25, U.S. cities such as San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago were all edged out by Geneva, Switzerland, Vancouver, B.C., and Auckland, New Zealand. The highest-scoring U.S. city is Honolulu, which came in at No. 28. (more…)
Denmark supposedly is a very happy place to live.
Supposedly, the world’s happiest country is…Denmark. The country is #1 in terms of the Gini coefficient, #2 in terms of being the most peaceful country in the world & have the 6th highest GDP per capita.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Denmark, with its democracy, social equality and peaceful atmosphere, is the happiest country in the world, researchers said on Monday. (more…)
Less Real Estate taxes, less government money = less services to citizens
…at least this is what a recent Businessweek article is writing. Some more from the article:
State and local governments were flush with tax revenue during the five-year housing boom. They pulled from bulging pools of property, income, and sales tax to expand education, law enforcement, health care, and infrastructure programs without needing to burden residents and corporations with tax hikes. (more…)
Real Estate Websites galore
Too many sites, too little time (close to 100 to be exact)…
I decided to just copy and paste a bunch of websites I’ll be reviewing and reporting on later. These are courtesy of http://www.killerstartups.com
Keycanada.ca - Online Real Estate Community (more…)
Home Builders can sleep until 2024 in Seattle - potential deals in Seattle
Looks like Seattle’s already achieved 50% the number of housing units they were targeting for 2024 here in 2008. Approximately 47,000 housing units are built or being created right now which would represent the city’s 2024 housing targets. Specifically, Ballard and Eastlake take the cake as far as being the most overbuilt for now. Other areas in the Seattle region include Bellevue, downtown Renton, Covington and Maple Valley as far as areas that qualify as growing very fast in terms of housing.
My thoughts are possible good buying opportunities given the downturn in the housing market on top of a surplus of housing units.
More about how Seattle’s overbuilt in terms of housing here.
Embrace Public Transportation…
Sitting in a taxi cab driving home earlier tonight, I thought to myself “The Taxi rates are pretty low here in Korea. How long will this last given the increase in oil prices?” Very specifically, it costs a little less than $2 (U.S.) for a 5-10 minute cab ride and it only cost me $6 to drive across town from the express train station tonight. (more…)
House or Houses? What real estate keyword(s) do you target?
I’ve taken the liberty to do a little research for all the real estate agents out there taking advantage of online marketing. There’s paid online marketing and organic/natural online marketing, but both forms need to know what’s the best real estate keywords to target. “Real estate” is the highest searched term. Recent estimates say it’s searched over 500,000 times a month. So, competing for such a phrase would be almost impossible to win with the big budgets of the Move.com Network (owners of Realtor.com, Moving.com, WelcomeWagon.com & much more) or the new up and comers like Zillow.com and Trulia. (more…)
Best Real Estate Websites Roundup 2008
As consumers, we’re getting more and more fortunate every day in terms of information available about the real estate world and for the savvier real estate agents, so are you! The year 2008 has a plethora of online virtual properties for you to do almost anything real estate related due to all the online ventures in the real estate world. I’m not going to recreate the wheel here, but instead provide you 5 great lists of real estate oriented websites online ranging from January 2007 all the way up to this past month of May 2008.
8 of the Best Real Estate Websites provided by PC Magazine (May 2008) (more…)
Don’t raise your kids in California or Washington state — at least if you have a budget
Businessweek with data provided by a New York firm called OnBoard identified the top 50 locations throughout the U.S. to raise your kids based on crime rates, cost of living, schools, test scores and cultural amenities.
The top were:
No. 1 Groesbeck, Ohio
No. 2 Western Springs, Ill.
No. 3 Deerfield, Ill.
No. 4 Echelon, N.J.
No. 5 Arapahoe, Neb. (more…)
Buying opportunties in some of the biggest cities in the U.S.
Another list of potential places to invest in:
http://images.businessweek.com
The slide show argues some markets have seen as much as a 40% drop in home prices and so it’s wise to get in. A friend of mine in the business says “business is picking up” probably due to the drop.
Cities listed are Sacramento, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Atlanta, San Diego, Boston, Miami, Chicago, Seattle, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Houston and Denver.