Thursday, February 26, 2009

Nude sales

"Nude sales" is the Italian term for a boom area in the property market over there: elderly Italians are selling their homes at a discount on the condition that they can live there until they die. In this way, pensioners can increase their income and stay in their home. The older the seller, the closer the property is priced to the prevailing market value enabling buyers to profit from premature deaths.
The French have a similar system and also a cautionary tale. In 1965 a French lawyer called Andre-Francois Raffray was 47 when he bought 90 year old Jeanne Calment's apartment, expecting to move in within a few years. However, she lived on to the age of 122, dying in 1997, by which time Raffray had been dead for two years.

4 Comments:

Blogger kinglear said...

The lawyer made the mistake of all tyro property speculators - you need a minimum of 30 properties like this to make it work for you and get one free every year as a near-certainty. Even with 10 you can expect 1 every 3 years at worst.
Only the Italians would call it something as exuberant as " nude" - its actuall rather morbid.

12:03 pm  
Blogger Whispering Walls said...

Yes it is morbid.

10:15 am  
Blogger kinglear said...

I like Johnny Foreigner's attitude to exotic names. One of the nicest is at some French Airports, which have " Kiss and Fly" zones. None of that sort of nonsense here, of course - except at Warrington Station ( it of Brief Encounter fame") where there is a " NO KISSING" Zone where The Kiss actually took place. They do have a " Kissing Zone" - presumably to stop anyone actually doing it (aka if told not to do something, immediately do it - and vice-versa). In the carpark at Wigan they have a "Kiss & Go" zone - but I'm sure no-nonsense Lancastrians have no truck with such fripperies.

1:47 pm  
Blogger Welshcakes Limoncello said...

a cautionary tale indeed.

11:18 pm  

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