The feed includes blog entries, publications and page updates.
About 18 months ago I put down a deposit on an apartment at a to be constructed site on the lovely island of Cyprus. Its attractions were two fold: adjacent to the 14th hole of the to be constructed (there is a common theme here) PGA designed and built golf course and only 10 mimutes from the airport though not on the flight path. The investment’s economic viability was predicated on the golf course being constructed and even though licences were supposedly issued by the government and money spent on industry experts to oversee the construction and design there was little activity apparant on site when I visited it in April 2007.
Fast forward three months and still little discernable progress either off or on the “course”. In fact the anti golf / save our water lobby was quite logically pointing out the difficulty of providing scarce water resources (while in the midst of another drought) without harming the local population’s way of life. Ignore the fact that the farming community had a stranglehold on water and used 2/3rds of the available resources while producing less than 20% of the GDP of the economy.
All the foregoing could be located with a little bit of online research of local websites and news searches and trawling through the local forums set up by like minded expats / informed Cypriots. Where the forums were of less value was in the provision of the type of background information on which a sensible investment decision can be made. In his book “Wisdom of the Crowds” the author James Surowiecki argues that the aggregation of information in groups, results in decisions that, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group.
In this case it was very much the blind leading the ill informed. People with vested interests posing as owners talk up the investment prospects of a development, others express hope rather than facts and some adopt a head in the sand approach and try to denigrate the postings of more serious minded contributors. Why should I care: I exited a year ago at a minimal cost and the golf course is no closer to have the first sod laid?
I care because many people have lost their shirts on the overseas property market seduced by the attractions showcased by programmes such as “A Place in the Sun”. And I care more because today an online search will still take the reader to spurious adverts proclaiming the virtues of investing in properties around the phantom golf courses.
And the news for those who have bought or committed to buy properties just keeps getting worse: the new regime is looking again at the provision of water and the provision of licences for development.
Today RSS feeds deliver your news as you want it – at issue is the quality of the sources. Unfortunately there is no substitute for what my good friends in the intelligence industry call HUMINT – Human or Primary Intelligence augmented by secondary sources such as a Forum. Sure Forums can tell you about a good place to stay or who does a good meal or even who is a good lawyer, but as always its Caveat Emptor and do your own the research and make the decision based on a wide range of sources.
What do I take from this? Its all about Networks, the Orchestration of networks – the ability to mobilise information via people you know who might know people who know is an important discipline even though technology comes up with more 24×7 solutions. It is the power of conversation and human interaction that provides the best insight.
