Where the world's super-rich send residential prices soaring - USA TODAY
A handful of elite cities around the world have increasingly become magnets for residential investments from super-rich foreigners looking for safe places to park their fortunes. They invested approximately $25 billion in cross-border residential real estate in 2014, according to Chicago-based Jones Lang LaSalle, an investment management company that specializes in property. Living in the world's most desirable cities has long been associated with exorbitant housing prices for a multitude of reasons, ranging from high infrastructure costs to demand that far outstrips the supply. Yet this vast injection of wealth is increasingly contributing to soaring home prices in places as far flung as London, Vancouver, Miami, New York, Panama City, Istanbul and Sydney. It has also distorted home prices in some city centers beyond the reach of all but the world's wealthiest individuals at a time when 330 million urban households worldwide live in substandard housing, the McKinsey Global Institute estimates. For millions of middle-class — and even upper-middle-class families — urban life in these cities is out of the question. Source: www.usatoday.com
