Success in Iraq... and you thought the housing crunch was only in the US

[liberal N proud]

Fear drives Baghdad's housing bust
Under threat and desperate to flee, some families sell at any price

BAGHDAD - Esad Ismael broke the most important promise he ever made.

As his father lay on his deathbed two years ago, Ismael, 43, vowed never to sell his family's home. His father and grandfather had spent all their savings to build the sprawling two-story house in Baghdad's wealthy Mansour district 70 years ago. Family memories were tucked between every tile on the floor.

But Ismael, a Sunni clothing merchant, was living in an area that was falling under the control of the Mahdi Army, Iraq's largest Shiite militia. Mindful of his promise to his dying father, he refused to move even after he began finding death threats pasted to his front door. After his brother was murdered, he gave up.

It's bad that I sold our home, but what is worse is that I sold it for only 145 million dinars," Ismael said, naming a price equivalent to about $118,000 -- less than half the house's appraised value in late 2003. "It's an insult to my father to sell it so low. But what choice did I have? They would have killed us."

With hundreds of thousands of Baghdad residents having fled their homes for the relative safety of segregated neighborhoods or foreign countries, a clandestine system of buying and selling property off the books has supplanted more traditional real estate practices. If families being pushed out are lucky, they are able to sell their homes for some small price, as Ismael did. Wait too long, and their houses might be seized at gunpoint.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20898777/site/newsweek/

[displacedtexan]

1. "When there's blood on the streets, buy real estate."

I heard that quote in the film, "Inside Man."

Just another version of "Buy low, sell high," I guess.

Very sad for that family.