Laos....Uber boom

I'm in Laos at the moment.

If you thought Sydney is unaffordable you gotta see what's going on in the developing countries bordering China....

Vientiane has had the mother of all booms. A House here has gone up to 300k (aud). A good wage here is $800 per month.

They were 50k 10 years a go.

China is literally buying the whole country one block of land at a time and paying a premium.

The lao landowners think it's Christmas!

The poor people get poorer.....

This is totally unsustainable..at least in theory...Lao as a country doesn't produce anything, and 80 percent of its nonRE gdp is foreign aid. However It's the kind of place where rabbits pop out of hats so anything is possible..

Anyway a bit of Sunday perspective...

Peace!

 

I went to Vientiane a few years ago and it is a nice place - except they drive on the wrong side of the road.

The chinese did the same thing in neighbouring Burma, and Camdodia. Hope their bubble bursts soon.

 

One less third world country for people on here to retire to cheaply. Might have to try Uganda.

 

I was in Laos about 10 years ago and have great memories of the place.

I remember paying $1 for a bungalow, $1 for a bottle of whisky and $1 for a days worth of food down around Si Phan Don. I wonder if any of the money has changed things down that way.

 

I was in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam at the start of this year. Me and the boys all bought 100 - 110cc Honda Wins in Saigon and rode around all three countries and sold them all at the end. Time of my life but good to be back safe and sound lol, the traffic is insane!

Accommodation in Laos ranged from $2 to $10 a night if we splashed out of somewhere nice. Whisky is still around $1 a pop, and one of the cheapest feeds I had was 15 cents for a big bowl of soup complemented with a frosty beerlao.

I can't even fathom how their real estate can be so expensive. You wouldn't read about it... Until now.

 

the chinese are very good to pounce on investment opportunities, you may think its unsustainable and stupid to pay these prices, but the chinese are buying up in these countries for a reason - china's one belt one road infrastructure boom bonanza, you might want to take a look into exactly what it entails

 

What a difference a year makes.

In Vientiane at the moment and there are for sale/rent signs everywhere. There are shiny new malls with no shops in them, and appartment complexes with no lights on.

The country is still developing at a rate of knots but you can't help but get the feeling that they've waaaay overshot the mark.

Apparently all the Chinese money has evaporated due to anti-laundering money policy from the Lao government. I also suspect the same things happening to Chinese investment in OZ are happening here too...

Anyway property prices are plummeting. It's going back to what it should be.

 

Yes yes. One belt one road will just pull the country out of the duldrums and creat a world leading indusry. Pfease.

Same happened when Chinese were buyers by domain names. The bubble went insane and popped insanely. This is what happens when there is a lot of money in a country and not enough places that invest. People start buying overseas and not knowing local market create bubbles.

 

we are told that we drive on the wrong side of the road
ONE BELT ONE ROAD....

 

It's a bit like monopoly...subtle...let me help you build but......

 

I was under the impression that foreigners couldn't purchase property or land in Laos?

 

With the right amount of cash going to the right people....foreigners can do anything theytwant in Laos...

 

Was there 20 years ago I remember a wallet was no use I had to carry all my cash in a plastic bag there was so much of it.

Things were dirt cheap and not many tourists, was better to fly between cities was too dangerous in cars and buses for foreigners. The plane tickets were 5x local prices for foreigners.

 

The way to get around the rules against owning land are to use a company to own the land with some local shareholders and yourself owning the shares. You might have an irrevocable power of attorney over the other shareholder to you can control their voting power. In addition you have a 30 year lease over the land for a nominal sum with options to renew the lease so it extends to 100 years. The other way is to use your spouse if married to a local.

Not sure about Lao, but under thai law a foreigner can inherit from a spouse and then sell within 12 months.


But it is still extremely dangerous. I have a client whose property in Thailand was stolen by someone who forged share transfer certificates and made the company sell it to another company he controlled, and then that company sold it to a stranger. $1mil property. Been going through the courts for almost 10 years now.

 

Yup. In my time over there I saw heaps of (usually) older Aussie men with younger Lao wives buying property. 90 percent of the time it ended in tears....

Lao is even more dangerous than Thai. The government itself is actually not that bad and mire or less tries to be fair....the problem is all it takes is one bad egg to want your property....then all of a sudden papers begin to get misplaced, "issues" happen with planning etc etc...

 

Back again in Laos for the yearly pilgrimage.

High rises are going up everywhere still. There are new, bigger malls replacing the massive empty ones....

It's all a bit surreal. They're building a city for the million or so people who haven't arrived yet.

A quick look through the real estate pages here shows property that has been listed since 2014...and is still not selling.

But maybe it is? It's all a bit bizarre. But then again it is a foreign country with completely different metrics.

 

Is this in Vientiane or another part of Laos? What's the average price of a 2 bedroom apartment?

 

Vientiane.

No idea about appartment. There are no strata laws here.....youre completely at the mercy of the developer..

There's no way in a bazillion years that I'd consider one.

Houses are asking around 200-400k US

 

China is probably funding them.

 

Not cheap, have to put my retirement plans in Laos on hold...maybe I'll try Luang Prabang