I’ve noticed that in every city we’ve been to—Cusco, Lima, Paracas—there are many buildings that have been partially constructed. Often, the bottom floor is complete (but perhaps vacant) and the top floor(s) still have exposed rebar and are roofless. This trend appears to be for both residential and commercial structures.
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As a peruvian I can say that families expect to build more floor in the future as they could get more money to do so. Sometimes they do Sometimes they don’t but it’s like a future goal.
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I visited Nazca 20 years ago and they said they don’t bother with roofs for two reasons.
1. It never rains. Ever.
2. No roofs are better when earthquakes.
In Honduras, there were TONS of houses like this. Nearly all were lottery winners. They figured, let’s build as much house as we can – generally just walls – and when we win again, we’ll finish…
Same in Egypt, leaves the option to build a higher floor later on if needed for your kids’ families
After one vacation, I said the same thing when I visited Cartagena, Columbia and no one seemed to care. It was so bizarre to see “most” things weren’t fully completed or built out.
Can someone put some pics ?
Can’t remember which Asia country I visited, but property value was based on the outside appearance of the home only.
Needless to say, homes look like dumps on the outside but beautiful mansions on the inside.
This happens in places without reliable banks. In the US, we are lucky to have things like FDIC, but many people in the world do not. Banks are unreliable, and holding cash means you can get robbed. It’s much harder to steal a house or parts of a house, so houses are slowly built out in lieu of holding cash as a store of value.
Weird property tax laws might encourage this behavior, but usually, the reason is the lack of a reliable and safe way for saving money.
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