REGIONS OF OPPORTUNITY: A Bold New Strategy for Real Estate Investment--With Forecasts to the Year 2010

by Jack Lessinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 1986

There's a wealth of demographic data and a surfeit of portentous twaddle in this genuinely original guide, which offers real estate investors long-run, big-picture perspectives. With the aid of an omnibus computer tape, Lessinger (urban development/Washington) has compiled a series of detailed economic indicators for every US county. His indexes feature statistical briefings on population needs (including the incidence of minority groups), incomes, industry, property values, and related matters. Applying comparatively conventional business-cycle theory to these figures, the author identifies so-called regions of opportunity--and obsolescence. Lessinger's by-the-numbers approach leads him to some provocative conclusions, e.g., that key census shifts are occurring within states, not wholly from Frostbite to Sunbelt. In the vanguard of the current migration, he says, are ""Caring Conservers,"" mainly young adults who seem to want it all, including space, gracious living in scenic settings with rural ambiance, old homes that can be lovingly restored, a creative community environment, recreational facilities within easy reach, short commutes to meaningful jobs--and so on. At any rate, these would-be Edenites are settling into not-quite-rustic areas collectively dubbed penturbia, i.e., prime regions of opportunity. Commendably, Lessinger does not claim an infallible Midas touch for his forecasting methods. Indeed, he repeatedly cautions aspiring land barons to make personal on-site checks. By way of example, the above-average population gains of counties that seem to rank well could be attributable to an influx of the unemployed or migrants working for substandard wages. In addition, the author warns, all economies (national as well as local) hold the seeds of their own disintegration, owing in large part to the eventual breakdown of consensus. Nearly half the chart-crammed text is devoted to tabular rundowns on counties in Lessinger's top three categories. The ultimately worth. while price of admission is plowing through cloying paeans to the new narcissists to get to the points of his macroanalytic concordance.

Pub Date: May 12, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Times Books

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION