Whereabouts with Miranda

In this episode of Whereabouts, we find ourselves in Detroit, the financial power base of the state of Michigan. Following a hard economic downtown in the start of the 2000s, in the last ten years Detroit is turning around, fueled by private and public investment in infrastructure, housing and jobs. The Detroit of today is a diverse and eclectic landscape of historic buildings, modern high-rises, and urban gardens.

On this timely episode of Whereabouts, we enter the fascinating world of Hong Kong. A global trade and financial services player, Hong Kong has grabbed headlines in recent months with anti-government protests rocking this vibrant, young city of 7 million. We look at how current events, government initiatives and the strong Chinese tradition of the importance of home and family, are shaping Hong Kong's real estate market.

On this episode of Whereabouts, we cross the pond to London, England, where newly-seated Prime Minister Boris Johnson is planning Brexit, the country’s controversial and drawn-out withdrawal from the European Union. Since 2016 Britain’s housing market has been in a sort of limbo, as home buyers and investors alike try to understand what the long term effects will be on the economy and the population once Brexit goes through. And yet, London remains a world-class financial center a higher-education metropolis, and is newly exploding as a burgeoning tech hub.

In this first episode of Whereabouts, we find ourselves in Silicon Valley, California home to thousands of high-tech startups, including giants like Facebook, Google, and Apple. And when the most successful of the startups go public, they often create dozens or hundreds of millionaires – or billionaires – overnight. In 2019, locally-based companies including Airbnb, Uber and Pinterest, have or will soon make their stock public and bring the area its next wave of young, cash-ready homebuyers.