Why Venice real estate will be a good investment:

Early draft.

1) The city was the most important city in the world for close to a 1000 years, accordingly, the buildings that were built and the sheer splendor of the place is extraordinary. Other than a causeway and a parking lot, there are no automobiles. No other city on earth uses water and foot paths exclusively in this manner. Geographically it is a totally unique place on earth.

2) is is rather nasty right now because of the regular flooding mixed with the canal system as sewer system.... and the leftover heavy industry of the industrial revolution around the lagoon.

2) Venice currently floods often, when it does, it is a total mess. It will continue to do so until the MOSE project is complete, about 8 years from now, 10 to be safe 12 to be Italian. The MOSE project is brilliant and should protect the city for a couple of hundred years of global warming and the predicted rise of the oceans. The design still allows the lagoon to be flushed by tidal and river action, which is critical.

3) The place is crawling with tourists, providing ready avenues for rental income from a property, particularly in peak season. This is both good and bad, but hey..... It probably isn't that hard to avoid them if you lived there.

4) When the Mose project is complete, it will change everything. Suddenly the inability to plan for the future because of the constant flooding, the city will be able to focus on being beautiful and restoring itself as a living antique.

5) Along with the MOSE project there are parallel projects that are underway that will affect the quality of living: A new sewer system that pumps the funky to the mainland to be treated. A new deep water port that will remove the need to bring in large tankers into the lagoon, reducing the risk of major accident.

6) Italy is currently kind of poor, but is part of the EU, and is ruled by law. The Euro will become very strong eventually and Europe will protect Venice, it is a treasure.

7) The coming information economy will mean a lot of people who can live anywhere with highspeed internet. Thus, they will be much more able to choose where to live. Venice is beautiful, if it smelled good, didn't have to wade to work all winter, and you could make a living there, why not live in such an amazing place? The complexity of the city would lend itself to endless interesting walks and with an influx of hipsters, cool parties.

8) This means that there will probably be a realestate boom in approximatly 10-15 years. It is already the playground of the rich, it will become more so when things stabilize and the information economy becomes more dominant. The time to get in is about 5-7 years from now, the flooding will still be a real problem, but the end in sight.