As Munich continues to grow in popularity and property investor eyes are on Germany, there is an increasing shortage of modern affordable housing in Munich city.

It is no wonder therefore that the German’s are busy developing a solution. Enter the m-ch or micro compact home, the conclusion of a research project at Technical University Munich to design a 2.6m cube dwelling. Prof. Richard Horden initiated the project with his team of students and assistants in 2001 in response to another housing shortage: the university has about 90,000 students and just 10,000 flats. Japanese tea-house architecture was the seed of inspiration for this collaboration between TUM and the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Continue reading ‘The micro compact home is a Munich housing masterpiece’

So we move to Munich, which according to Heinrich Heine some 150 years ago “Nestles between art and beer like a village between hills.” With the advent, of the World Cup 2006 my guess is that more beer is the order of the day than art. Continue reading ‘A Munich housing shortage keeps property demand high’

In the context of valuable Internet real estate, RealEstate.com would be one domain name worth having if you are in this industry. In the dotcom boom business.com sold for $7.5 million, so the acquisition of RealEstate.com by Lending Tree Inc in 2003 was a savvy move.

This piece of Internet history started life as a realtor site back in the early days of the Internet. It’s had an unstable lifetime with multiple changing of owners, but never really maximised its potential until in December 2003. Its previous owners kept the domain for just 13 months and never really engineered the market for it and with limited experience in the online marketing industry it was probably a good time to sell and move on. Continue reading ‘Realestate dot com valuable Internet real estate domain name’

As this Friday sees the start of the World Cup 2006 Quarter finals, we thought we should feature the capital city of Berlin, whose at their new-look, 76,000-capacity Olympiastadion sees host country Germany take on favorites Argentina.

Berlin is similar to London, in that it houses a collection of communities rather than a mass of people. However matters were complicated by nearly 30 years of division by the Wall, which has created big differences between east and west. Look east and to the riskier former communist areas of Prenzlauer Berg and Kreuzberg. Whilst prospects are good, risk is higher as unemployment in higher in this area which is somewhat higgledy-piggledy in its development partly due to the legacy of the fall of the Wall. Totally renovated luxurious apartment buildings can often be found alongside collapsed ruins which can be off-putting however does leave room for the area to grow and gentrify itself. Continue reading ‘Berlin Property Investment Booms’

You would have to either be Martian or lodged in the deepest darkest corner of Amazonia or Antartica to have missed the 2006 FIFA World Cup, which this year is once again being hosted by Germany after 32 years. Since both the public and media spotlight is firmly fixed on the Wunderbar Bundesrepublik Deutschland, we felt Nubricks should follow accordingly so for the next few days we will be highlighting off-plan opportunities in Germany’s world cup host cities.

Home to Europe’s largest property market and therefore economy respectively, according to Moneyweek’s Sven Lorenz, Germany the only Western property market that has not seen any rise in prices since 1991 and therefore Europe’s worst performing real estate market in its failure to join in the global housing boom of the last ten years. This has been in part due a severely restrictive mortgage system, an economy where depressed is an understatement and fairly high unemployment and factors which have lead to it being a bad time to be a German property agent. Continue reading ‘German Investment Property is good overseas bet’

Lying 130 km from San Jose capital, the Punterenas province, Playa Jaco is one of the most popular beaches in Costa Rica. Offering a developed central location with proximity to San Jose, a night life with a reputation for the “fun and sun” spot on the Pacific coast, unique shops, close to 100 restaurants and bars and finally excellent surf have put Jaco on the Costa Rica property map. Infrastructure improvements have lead to downtown Jaco being paved, a commercial project for a major US Casino, a four star air-conditioned restaurant and a theatre with Broadway Shows developed in conjunction with active tourism promotion policy backed by the the ICB (Costa Rica Tourism Board). Other improvements include beach cleaning, boardwalk extensions and patrolling police officers to keep major tourism hubs safe. Finally the new highway linking Jaco and San Jose continues to move ahead with completion set for 3 years time which will reduce travel time to the airport and the suburbs of San Jose to just 40 minutes! Continue reading ‘Want a Property in Costa Rica Diamante Del Sol is a new Jaco Beach development’

This is an opportunity to invest in a brand new beachfront condo development, in Costa Rica’s happening Jaco Beach located in Puntarena on the Pacific coast. The tiny Central American country of Costa Rica has long since been touted in the US and Canada as a low-cost property investment location backed by a reputation as a safe and stable nation of friendly people. It also enjoys strong economic growth and continues to invest in an already well developed infrastructure, Costa Rica was recently ranked above the United States in a study of world healthcare systems. Add in year warm temperatures, low cost living and a variety of leisure pursuits Costa Rica is making waves in the property world. Continue reading ‘Beachfront Condominiums For Sale in Jaco Beach, Costa Rica’

Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus and that is just the start when it comes to the different sexes. At Nubricks we have found that 67% of property buyers that register for new development details are male with only 33% being female, many enquiries also come in at lunchtime between 11am and 2pm. On the face of those statistics it would seem that many more men are now doing property research on the net. Historically market research shows a general trend that women conduct initial buying research more so than men when buying most products, but with the net being so widely available, many men now have access to online information both at work and home. Continue reading ‘Buying property abroad the male female perspective’