The Global Perspective on Real Estate Investing

On today’s show we are talking about the global perspective on investing. At the heart of all investing is the law of supply and demand. 

In real estate that’s a combination of factors.

1. Demographics. Is population growing or shrinking based on birth rate? That variable has a slow but profound impact on demand for housing. We will come back to that later.
2. Immigration. Is population rising or falling based on migration of people from around the world?
3. Jobs. Does the area experience employment growth and does the local economy mean rising or falling prosperity for the population at large?

Most developed economies have shrinking population due to declining birth rates. People are not having as many babies as they once did. That’s true throughout Western Europe, Russia, the United States, Canada, Japan, China, South Korea, Brazil and countless others. 

This means that in the absence of immigration, demand for housing is going to fall in the long term. We see this in Japan where there are more than 11M vacant homes. This is a dramatic about face from the situation in the 1980’s when it seemed that Japan’s economy was unstoppable. 

Population is growing in the US and Canada through immigration, and to a lesser extent migration.

We talk about all of the problems in our respective countries. But many countries are not attracting immigration. 

I don’t know of millions of people moving to China, or Russia, or Japan. The population in the US is growing at 0.4% per year, largely through immigration. The population in Canada is growing at 1.8% per year, almost entirely as a result of immigration. It’s that growth that makes these destinations attractive for foreign investment when you layer it on top of the global alternatives.