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By John, on July 4th, 2006
The Economist has regularly published reports on how property prices are developing in different countries, and it has been very frustrating for us to see that while in the last 25 years, the average price of a house in the UK has increased from £23 000 to £158 000 (a factor of over six times), property prices in Germany have remained stagnant. (If you live in Germany, you might find that a little difficult to believe, but you can download an Excel sheet of UK prices since 1952 from the Nationwide Building Society and check the UK figures yourself). In fact, when we sold an apartment we bought in Munich in 1982 a couple of years ago, we sold it for 20% less than we paid for it. If only we’d kept our money invested in property in the UK, instead of transfering it to Germany…
What I haven’t understood until now was why the German market was performing so abysmally, when the USA, Australia and most European countries have been behaving like the UK market. However, this week the Wirtschaftswoche published an article (WiWo Nr. 27, 2006-07-03: Konjunkturkommentar – Kräftig durchluften) pushing for deregulation of the German property market and things became a little clearer.
What is different between Germany and the rest of those countries where the market has boomed for 25 years or more?
Continue reading Why German property hasn’t risen in value
By John, on April 1st, 2006
I don’t know if this is a general phenomenon at the moment, but I’ve noticed that garages locally charge the highest prices for petrol and diesel on Friday afternoon, and the lowest prices on Monday morning. The differential can be as much as 6-8 cents. The price then goes up later in the day . . . → Read More: Cyclic fuel prices
By John, on December 24th, 2005
This year a new un-word has been doing the rounds in German Christmas advertising: X-mas.
Now, given that the Germans like polluting their language with all sorts of English words and phrases, many of which get used to mean something different to what an unsuspecting native English speaker would expect, I am . . . → Read More: X-mas does NOT exist
By John, on December 4th, 2005
The Independent reports that UK retailers expect to lose Ł9bn of business to internet retailers like Amazon and eBay this Christmas. That is over 37% of their pre-Christmas business.
We will be part of the same trend in Germany – we went out two weekends ago to try and get our Christmas shopping . . . → Read More: Internet Christmas shopping will hit “brick and mortar” stores
By John, on September 7th, 2005
It has been really lovely weather this week in Frankfurt, and I noticed that the Alte Oper (the old opera house) looks really good in the morning light, so this morning I took a camera. And after waiting for about 10 minutes for a group of Japanese tourists to finish taking pictures of . . . → Read More: Nice weather in Frankfurt
By John, on July 26th, 2005
The New Scientist has published an article on e-money (subscription needed to read the full article) – using chip cards to make “micro-payments” to pay for tickets, meals and so on.
This isn’t the first English language article to report on e-money, but for some reason the authors have always managed to overlook Germany. . . . → Read More: e-money
By John, on July 22nd, 2005
What does a chainsaw manufacturer do, to demonstrate the power of his product?
He builds a bike powered by 24 of them.
By John, on April 24th, 2005
I found this a little late, but it makes an interesting read: …It started when the government, in the midst of an economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence . . . → Read More: The rise of…
By John, on April 20th, 2005
Sometimes I despair of German polititians. Do you have to ask why Germany has the weakest economy in the EU, with more unemployed than at any time since the Weimar Republic in the 1930′s, when leading members of the government tell the public at large to boycott German companies?
By John, on April 12th, 2005
I mentioned before that the local council is fighting graffiti by allowing artists to paint high quality “graffiti” in places which get vandalised. The previous example is still in good condition, but here is another example, also in Oberursel, on the road to Schmitten. Only a few hundred metres from here, you can see . . . → Read More: Medieval “graffiti”
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