INTERNATIONAL, October 2000; Internet Prospector

October 2000
Internet Prospector

INTERNATIONAL

CONTENTS:
Real Estate the World Over

REAL ESTATE THE WORLD OVER

I was asked recently how a researcher might find real estate values in Japan. You may know how properties are assessed in the U.S. but making such records public is not a world standard. Of course you know that asking price is not the same as selling price and that assessed value is an entirely different bird. Like most of what we do, there is an element of art to the science of researching property values. Here are a few starting points for your real estate adventures outside the USA.

THE GLOBAL REAL ESTATE PROJECT
The University of Denver's Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management has created a "reference tool for international real estate research." This will be your starting point. The most valuable aspect of this site is the Real Estate Property Issues under the menu choice, Compare. Here you may generate a table comparing the availability of property and ownership information, forms of ownership (joint tenancy and trusts, for example), mortgage and financing convention and property tax issues in countries across the globe. By using this table, you can determine what you will even be able to get. Next, choose your prospect's country and then Real Estate Trends to uncover a few statistics about home values and vacancy rates. This might give you an adequate benchmark for the information that follows.

http://director.dcb.du.edu/recm/

IRED
The leader in worldwide real estate information is probably the International Real Estate Digest (IRED). Let's trace our research process through this site. First, choose World Real Estate. For this exercise, we'll then choose Australia. Next, choose Relocation/General where you'll find links to a glossary of real estate terms, an explanation of the taxation system, and links to the government offices overseeing these systems. Scrolling down that same page will uncover links to Australian real estate sites, timely articles and other handy in-country tools such as regional search engines and mega-pages.

http://www.ired.com/

REALS
If IRED is a smooth ride to background information, REALS is the hammer method to actual asking prices. REALS is lists, lists and more lists of hotlinks. Choose International Real Estate, then Australia and you will get a researcher's delight -- dozens of links to real estate sellers in that country. Some of the sites are just what every researcher looks for but, since there are no descriptions, don your miner's hat. Winners are easy to find though: my first pick was Australian Property Access where I stumbled on a database of for-sale properties that sorts by price, location and type of property.

http://www.reals.com/

Cecilia Hogan

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