Vacation

Repeat foreclosures may be on the rise and the underwater mortgage may now be a permanent fixture in the US housing market, but you can certainly forgive the 0.01% — for whom none of that is relevant — for not caring because when your net worth exceeds $30 million, the question isn’t “can I pay my mortgage?,” but rather “where should my fifth residence be?” For these buyers, who understand Janet Yellen’s contention that accumulating financial assets is important and who have thus benefited from the fabled “wealth effect,” it’s as good a time as any to buy (another) vacation home, which is why vacation home sales soared nearly 60% last year on top of 30% the year before that. Furthermore, one in five home sales in the US is now a vacation home and as Moody’s told WSJ, there’s no reason why that figure shouldn’t rise going forward — “more or less.”

Via WSJ:

Last year’s estimated tally topped the previous high from 2006 to become the biggest year for vacation-home sales volume since the Realtor association started tracking the market in 2003. Vacation homes accounted for 21% of all sales last year, the highest share since the survey’s inception.

The small sample size of the Realtor group’s survey, which was based on responses by just 1,971 people who bought U.S. homes in 2014, led some economists to posit that the results might be exaggerated. Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, suggested that the gains in the report might “overstate the strength” of that market.

Still, Mr. Zandi noted that vacation-home sales account for one-fifth of all home sales and “that should more or less rise over the next five to 10 years” as the income and number of vacation-home buyers increases...

The number of buyers is likely to grow in the years ahead as 76 million-plus baby boomers advance in age and buy vacation homes that eventually will become retirement homes.

Meanwhile, the prospect of rising prices has spurred buyers to act sooner than later. Rates on 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages, which have hovered below 4% since November, are poised to rise later this year as the Federal Reserve increases short-term rates. And median resale prices on all homes, which increased by 7.5% from a year ago to $202,600 in February, are likely to rise further if the overall inventory of homes available for sale remains tight.

Kris Anderson, team leader with Your Premier Team at ReMax Excalibur in Scottsdale, Ariz., said her team of six agents handled 10% more vacation-home transactions last year than in 2013...

Two of her agency’s clients, Steven and Roberta Strader, bought a three-bedroom home in Surprise, Ariz., last month with the intent of spending up to five months a year in it. The couple, both 72 years old, split time between Arizona and Lacey, Wash.

Mr. Strader said the value of an Arizona condo that he and his wife bought in 2005 had risen enough to justify selling it this year and combining those proceeds with some stock-market gains to buy the house in Surprise for $225,000. “We felt that the market was strong enough that we could take some assets to spread around in more than just stocks,” he said.

With the global population of ultra high net worth individuals growing at a 6% annual clip, and with the middle class set to becomes extinct thanks to, among other things, slumping wage growth for everyone other than America’s “supervisors,” we suspect Moody’s may be correct to forecast robust demand for vacation homes going forward, which we suppose is a good thing for the US because as we noted less than a week ago, the US is the most popular country on the planet when it comes to secondary residence purchases by the world’s 0.01 percenters and New York boasts the largest number of ultra high net worth individual-owned residences in the world.





Meanwhile, in Russian oligarch world, economic instability and the prospect of having to pay taxes is becoming too much to bear which is why, as The Telegraph reports, the 111 people who control 20% of Russia's household wealth won't be buying their next vacation home in Russia:

Russia’s richest and most powerful are set to leave in droves, seeking to avoid a tax squeeze and the fallout from the country's economic crisis.

The majority of oligarchs interviewed for a new report on Russian have said that they are likely to leave the country in the next few years. Of the 30 Russian nationals included in a study by Campden Wealth, in partnership with UBS, more than half said that there were likely to move abroad, although not imminently.

Of those living in Russia, more than one in four said they had plans to leave within five years. Participants in the Campden study jointly control $2.5bn (£1.7bn) of personal wealth, and businesses with turnover of $6.5bn last year.
One Russian national interviewed by Campden said: “Russians, if they haven’t done so already, are considering relocation out of Russia. Clearly London is a key jurisdiction of choice.”

New rules introduced at the start of the year have meant that foreign business owned by Russians are now subject to Russian taxes, putting the squeeze on the wealthiest in a country where just 111 individuals control nearly a fifth of all household wealth.

nice post

Beyonce has just blessed her BeyHive with a few amazing pictures of her and her husband Jay Z's recent romantic getaway to Hawaii.







The superstar couple celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary by making even riding in the back of a pickup truck seem glamorous, as well as dispensing some sweet advice to a shy nine-year-old fan, and now Queen Bey is showing us just how lucky the "99 Problems" rapper really is.

The 33-year-old singer was gorgeous as usual in the multiple new photos she posted on her website on Wednesday, but it's these flawless bikini pics that have everyone really taking notice. Rocking a skimpy cream-colored crochet one-piece and her ever-present body chain, Beyonce wasn't shy about showing off her famous curves in this racy selfie.

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Why there so many Beyonce's photos in there?

Well, when I'm on my vacation, I always take my camera with me. I'm a photograph, but not on the regular basis, just for fun))) Also I always take my laptop with me and even during the vocation I'm all in Forex, Fresh doesn't let me go without joining new contest or a promo, he-he I also do a lot of diving and surfing and, so one day my back will tell me "thank you!"

Didn't sea you there, turtle.

A green sea turtle photobombed Diovani de Jesus' group picture while he was on vacation on Apo Island, in the Philippines earlier this month, according to a caption from Caters, a news agency based in the United Kingdom.

On his blog, de Jesus explains, the "shallow area" where the picture was taken "is a feeding ground for sea turtles."

"This is a reminder that humans and creatures like this gentle [sea turtle] can co-exist," de Jesus said.
Experiences like this could become more rare. The World Wildlife Federation notes that "nearly all species of sea turtle are classified as endangered."

A host of reasons account for the turtles' dwindling numbers, including poaching for their eggs, meat, skin and shells, habitat destruction and climate change. Global warming changes sand temperatures, which affects the sex of turtle hatchlings, the WWF said.


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Before having a child, my wife and I had always prided ourselves on being travelers and not tourists. We liked out-of-the-way places; my research often took us to absurd locations like the Democratic Republic of Congo near rebel-held territory or old Khmer Rouge bases on the Thai-Cambodian border. We hated anything that smelled of a prepaid vacation package and we generally avoided hotels, preferring guesthouses or staying in locals’ apartments.

Yet as soon as the baby arrived, our concept of an ideal vacation underwent a complete inversion. I’m not sure what happened; even now I’m embarrassed to recount how quickly we undermined all of our rules for travel. I remember sitting in our living room two winters ago, shivering in our long underwear and sweaters that smelled vaguely of day-old baby vomit and staring longingly at pictures of all-inclusive resorts that once upon a time would have caused us to break out in hives. It was almost hormonal, the urgency with which we were drawn to a place where you essentially beach yourself like a lost whale. But we would not be dissuaded; we were determined to get a little heat on the epidermis and so, as the East Coast was locked in the grip of a particularly ferocious and unrelenting winter, we flew with our 3-month-old son, Holt, to Central Florida. It was our first trip with the babe and we were, in a word, terrified.

As it turned out, that weekend in Clearwater Beach was one of the best of our lives, perhaps because it also coincided with Holt waking up to the particulars of the world, as babies often do around three months. You could see it in his eyes. He blinked, as if to say, “Oh, so this is where I am. O.K. — I can work with this.” A part of me felt bad that he was coming into consciousness poolside, surrounded by overweight and sunburned Americans lightly drooling to Jimmy Buffett tunes, but hey — the world ain’t all pretty, kid.

We stayed at the Sheraton Sand Key Resort on a little spit of white sand overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. As is customary at these types of places, we didn’t do anything. I put Holt in a fancy sling contraption and shuffled him from the pool to the beach and then back to the pool. When Mom took him, I found myself desperate to feel like an adult again, even if only for an hour. Strange that adulthood equated to collecting about three towels too many from the towel boy, then elbowing my way to a prime spot on the deck so that I could slurp an overpriced piña colada and roast my pasty flesh while staring at the same page of a book for 20 minutes. And you know what? It was awesome.


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If you’re thinking about buying a vacation home, you aren’t alone.

Vacation home sales across the country are soaring, mainly for two reasons: Declining prices mean deals can be had, and empty nesters are flooding into the market.

Baby boomers looking ahead to their days of leisure are snapping up vacation homes at a faster pace than ever, particularly in beach resorts in the South and the West.

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MasterCard just released its 2015 global destination cities index.

The index provides a ranking of the 132 most visited cities around the world by looking at the number of international visitors that are predicted to visit the cities in 2015.

This year, Asian cities dominated the list, along with a few European cities.

Here are the 10 most popular cities in the world with international visitors.

10. Hong Kong, China: 8.66 million international visitors



9. Seoul, South Korea: 10.35 million international visitors



8. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: 11.12 million international visitors



7. Singapore 11.88 million visitors



6. New York City, USA: 12.27 million international visitors



5. Istanbul, Turkey: 12.56 million international visitors



4. Dubai, United Arab Emirates: 14.26 million international visitors



3. Paris, France: 16.06 million international visitors



2. Bangkok, Thailand: 18.24 million international visitors



1. London, England: 18.82 million international visitors



Read more..

Goals and vacation don’t sound like they go together. After all, vacations aren’t supposed to be work, and goals seem like work. But Harvard Business Review makes a valid point—setting goals for your vacation helps you prioritize what you want to get out of them.

It's often taken vacations with certain expectations in mind—mostly to relax. Then I’ll forget all about that expectation by trying to cram a month’s worth of activities into a week. HBR suggests a better way:

it pays to know upfront what success looks like in a vacation, so you don’t end up frittering away limited time. Your goal may be to reconnect with your spouse, spend quality time with your kids, catch up on reading, kickstart a new fitness regimen, make progress on a novel you’re writing, or literally just vegetate. Any of those are worthy goals, but they should be articulated upfront so you can prioritize them.

It’s a goal, but it’s more like a goal for having fun. I do think it’s important to make sure this is a low-maintenance goal. It’s more of a priority, really. You don’t want to come back from vacation feeling like you’ve failed at something, and you certainly don’t want to come back feeling like you need a vacation from your vacation.


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U.S. News & World Report Announces the 2015-16 Best Vacation Destinations in the World

U.S. News & World Report, a nationally recognized publisher of consumer advice and information, today announced its 2015-16 Best Vacation Destinations in the World. The new rankings – designed to help travelers plan memorable vacations, honeymoons and weekend getaways – feature the World's Best Places to Visit as well as region-specific lists, including the Best Places to Visit in the USA and the Best Places to Visit in the Caribbean.

"The U.S. News Best Vacation Destinations highlight places around the world that have charmed seasoned travelers and day-trippers alike," says Liz Weiss, travel editor for U.S. News. "With so many great options to choose from, travelers can use our rankings to narrow down their options and plan their trips."
To identify top vacation spots worldwide, U.S. News analyzed more than 350 destinations and used a methodology that combines expert analysis and user voting.

2015-16 Top 5 World's Best Places to Visit:

1. London
2. Bora Bora
3. Barcelona
4. Paris
5. Sydney

2015-16 Top 5 Best Places to Visit in the USA:

1. Maui
2. Yellowstone
3. Grand Canyon
4. San Francisco
5. Yosemite

2015-16 Top 5 Best Places to Visit in the Caribbean:

1. St. Lucia
2. British Virgin Islands
3. Cayman Islands
4. U.S. Virgin Islands
5. Curaçao

Regional ranking lists that have received a minimum of 10,000 user votes over the last year are identified as Best Vacations in their market; the top-third of those lists receive a gold badge.

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