Here’s the most surprising place for a construction boom

The city of Caracas is defying all expectation

Despite inflation running over 20,000 percent, money is still working in Venezuela, albeit in an unexpected way.

With a lack of alternatives thanks to cash and currency-exchange controls, the country’s wealthy are turning to investing in real estate and funding a spate of new ground-up construction in Caracas, according to Bloomberg.

“Investors are wisely deciding to invest in brick,” developer Alfred Scheer of Vantage Latin America told Bloomberg. “We trust that a political change will come sooner or later and we want to be prepared.”

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That attitude is behind the construction boom of about 72 ongoing projects in the Caracas neighborhood of Las Mercedes.

The problem, however, is finding buyers. At one high-end condo project, for example, a four-bedroom unit is asking for 1.1 trillion bolivars–a figure that’s about 411 times the average person’s monthly salary. [Bloomberg]Erin Hudson