I’ve lived all over the US, traveled longterm all over the world, and for the past 17 years, I’ve wintered in spain. I lease the same apartment for three winter months every year. I don’t see a lot of hope when it comes to housing anywhere. Sure if you’re coming from a country with a little money to a country with lots of people who are poorer than you, your standard of living will improve, but your maid’s won’t. I know hundreds of expats, largely Americans, Canadians, Germans and Brits. Many of them are retirees who have taken their pensions and moved to Mexico or Spain or Portugal, bought houses and hired gardeners, never learned the language, have no close friends with the non-English-speaking natives, and huddle in their own privileged little groups. They end up pricing the locals out of buying homes. In Spain, there are entire villages that now harbor German ex-pats with another village down the road that harbors British ex-pats. On my side of the Atlantic, Mexico is full of American and Canadian ex-pats. Cities like San Miguel de Allende which once was very affordable is now quite pricey. Mexicans now have jobs serving the expats as maids, gardeners, house sitters, but still can’t afford to buy a decent home of their own. In spain, during the Franco regime, people learned to hang on to property. Unlike in the US when grandma died and left her modest little house, the family kept it. Then the expats invaded and bought up properties right and left leading up to the housing crash of 2008. It’s a complex world problem. Rich countries are starting to feel the pinch at last and that’s shaking things up a bit. It wasn’t supposed to happen to us.