My first encounter with real estate in the free enterprise system was a fiasco. Fresh from the boat and rather green, I got sucked by in by an smooth, but unscrupulous Aussie in buying a block of land from him to build on. Only to find out later that I couldn't build as part of the land was expropriated by the authorities for widening of Westall Road in the future. Lucky enough I was partly compensated and got most of my money back after a year or so, but it took nearly another 50 years to finally see the road widened.