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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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The real estate market is in crisis; from North America through Europe to Japan the prices are falling. The experts predict two, three, even more years of market depression. In fact, they may turn out to be wrong. Several years of market turmoil is a bad news, but considering the average human lifespan, it isn't something most of us should be worry about. The real problem may come from prolonged deflation, a situation when a whole generation will forget about the real estate as safe investment. The examples aren't far from the sight; Japan since the early 1990s is in such a situation. Some industrialized nations now are in a similar situation.

That the incoming years won't be easy, nobody doubts about it. Whether the crisis will be short or prolonged, the experts don't even try to think of. They usually talk about two or three "meager" years before the "normal" market activity takes over and the new era of market growth starts. They believe this will be the case; they can't even imagine that the real estate may cease to represent a viable option for investors around the world for a very long time. First the economy will turn around the corner, then people will start spending, then the market will stabilize before going up, then everything will go to its "place".

There is another option that the market won't get up any time soon. Either because the economy won't pick up soon; or because it will, but people won't start spending much more; or because they will spend, but not on new housing. Rich countries are getting "older", and many retired people are looking for cheaper destinations. New industrial nations are getting stronger, and nobody can predict whether they won't to take over the lucrative markets, thus leaving the "rich" societies without enough sources to get their economies back on track soon.

A good example for such development is Japan. It started the postwar period as a defeated nation, but strong with its large population of more than a hundred million, with strong social cohesion, and with plans to take revenge on the economic front. Up to the end of the 1980s it went up. It became the second most advanced industrial nation on the planet; its high technologies conquered the world; its real estate market was second to none in terms of appreciation. Then suddenly all that stopped. A minor, on the global scale, crisis (who in America or Western Europe still remembers that there was a crisis in 1991 and 1992?) put an end to the boom.

When Japan was ready to go up again, the world has already changed irrevocably. The foreign markets were gradually occupied by other "tigers", the new technological twist came form the American computers, not the Japanese robots; and the domestic population was already in stagnation. As a result, Japan today is more or less where it was 20 years ago in terms of economic activity; except that the rest of the world has moved ahead with giant leaps. This is a real prospect for many advanced nations today. The rest of the world may definitely overcome this crisis, like many crises before and many to come, but some countries will remain in depression long afterward.