In a real estate market like the European one, characterised by increasing taxation and, moreover, by a constant and relentless decrease (since 2008) in prices and returns, investing is always a difficult choice and certainly not without risk.
The bureaucratic difficulties, the lack of protection of property, and the unclear and difficult regulations governing the purchase/renovation of real estate make the decision to invest in real estate in Europe a particularly risky one when you consider the risk/return trade-off.
For these reasons, many investors are increasingly looking to markets outside Europe.
Of these, the American real estate market stands out, where many investors have decided to invest for objective and clear reasons of distinct opportunity.
These can be summarised broadly as follows.

1. Minimal bureaucracy

The US real estate market is characterised by a lean, clear, and efficient regulatory framework. Moreover, the landlord is guaranteed by legislation that is more favourable to him than to the tenant (suffice it to say that in the USA, and in particular in Florida, not only is there a public database of tenants – which can be consulted even before renting out the property, thus avoiding chronic defaulters and serial fraudsters – but above all that, in the event of a defaulting tenant, the eviction procedure usually takes about 30 days).

2. Propensity of the US population to rent

As is well known, Americans often prefer not to buy a property but to rent for life. This mentality, which is very different from the cultures that see purchase as the end point of a real estate investor, allows the property owner to guarantee full occupation of their property, and above all protects them from the risk of a collapse in property prices: in fact, in the event of a downturn in the US property market, historically what happens is that this decrease in prices and therefore in the value of property either precedes or follows a financial crisis, the characteristic element of which is always the so-called credit crunch, that is, a lack of willingness on the part of operators to grant credit. When financial operators restrict the supply of credit, what actually happens is that the private citizen cannot access any form of loan to buy a property to be used as his own home, and is forced, willy-nilly, to rent one. This means that whether the US housing market grows or declines, the value of rents tends not to decrease, but to increase.

3. Trade-off between purchase price/yield

In the USA, for an investment of $100,000 (with which you can buy a medium-sized, medium-value property), you can easily achieve a gross annual return of over 10% by renting it out (and even higher with other types of investment). By comparison, in many large European cities, with a € 100,000 investment in real estate you can’t buy more than a double garage! And this is why many investors, either because they have limited resources available, or because they want to make a test investment, choose to invest in America: simply because in most of Europe it would not be possible.

4. Reduced taxation

Especially for non-US residents, and especially if they choose to invest not as individuals but as companies, the tax advantages and taxation achievable by an investment in the US real estate market are so numerous, that they are not even remotely comparable to those that could be obtained in Europe for investments and returns of the same degree

5. Frequent real estate opportunities

The United States, and Florida in particular (see our article: Where is it worth investing abroad?), has a very dynamic real estate market that allows you to evaluate many opportunities both in terms of houses to rent (to obtain a periodic income from rent, medium to long term operations) and properties on which to carry out quick renovation operations and then resell them (flipping operations, characterized by a duration of about 12 months). There are hundreds of opportunities to be selected, to be evaluated according to one’s budget, the type of investment one wishes to make and, of course, the return of capital and therefore the level of risk one wishes to obtain/take on.