Property investors smarting from this year’s housing bust in the United States might do well to look farther afield — even out of this world.
Internet searches for lunar land prices show the cost of buying an acre of the moon’s surface has risen 40% since the start of 2007, investment bank UBS told clients in a tongue-in-cheek analysis.
Lacing a year-end note with caveats, and not a little holiday cheer, UBS strategists said their ”esoteric research” of archived news reports suggests lunar property trends may even be a leading indicator of United States house prices.
Rising sharply between 1997 and 2001, the cost of a slice of land on the moon suffered a mid-cycle retreat in 2002 and 2003 after the dot.com bubble burst, the bank said.
But prices defied gravity to hit record highs of $37 per acre in December 2005 — nine months before US housing peaked. – Reuters