The places
The hotspot cycle
Prime markets do not move together. Dubai has fallen forty per cent twice; the Gold Coast of Zürich has not fallen in living memory. How the cycle works at the top, and how to buy through it.
Your result
The Yield Investor
Buys the numbers, lets the house, and sells when the numbers say so.
You buy a return. Dubai for the six per cent and the speed, the Algarve for the season, Marbella for the liquidity, Miami for the appreciation with a tax bill attached. The house is an asset in a portfolio and you would sell it on a Tuesday if the internal rate of return told you to.
What works for you
You are the buyer who reads the service-charge schedule and the letting accounts before the terrace, and who therefore owns houses that pay. Investors also sell well, because they price to the market and do not fall in love.
What to watch
Volatility, management and the exit tax. Dubai has fallen forty per cent twice; a villa without a licence in Spain yields nothing; the Portuguese exit takes a fifth of the gain. Model the fall, not just the rise, and hold what you could keep through a bad year.
Structure
A company where the letting volume and the jurisdiction reward it, personal ownership where they punish it. The yield instrument shows the difference with leverage; the financing instrument shows what the leverage costs.
The hotspots that fit
Dubai
Palm Jumeirah, Jumeirah Bay, Emirates Hills and Dubai Hills.
Marbella
The Golden Mile, Sierra Blanca, La Zagaleta and Sotogrande.
Algarve
Quinta do Lago, Vale do Lobo, the western coast and the hills behind Loulé.
Miami
Miami Beach, Fisher Island, Coconut Grove and Coral Gables.
Run the numbers
Yield & Return
Gross yield, net yield, cash-on-cash and the total return over your holding period.
Read next
The places
The numbers
Reading a price per square metre
The most quoted number in property and the least useful at the top of it. What it measures, what it hides, and how the Ranesta Index uses it anyway.
The numbers
The exit, decided at purchase
Capital gains rules differ more than prices do: nothing in Monaco and Dubai, nothing after ten years in Germany, a flat thirty in Austria, a taper in France. The exit is the part of the return most buyers never model.
The Private Letter
One letter a month.
One letter a month: what moved in the hotspots, one anonymised sale explained, one number worth knowing. No advertising, no tracking, one click to leave.