Top Ten Worst Places to Buy Real Estate

All excerpts from Real Clear World: World's Most Dangerous Cities

10) London - For the past several years, the city has been increasingly plagued by knife-related crime and violence…despite disputed statistics, even conservative estimates show knife-related violence in London occurring at a rate of every 52 minutes.

9) Saskatoon - Saskatoon earned such infamy by placing first in aggravated assault and robbery, fourth in homicide and sexual assault, 20th in breaking and entering, and 21st in vehicle theft among Canadian cities.

8) Norilsk - How does Norilsk, a city of 134,000 on Russia's far-flung frozen tundra, make our list? Well, this is how Time magazine described it: Norilsk was founded in 1935 as a Siberian slave labor camp, and life there has pretty much gone downhill since. Norilsk is home to the world's largest heavy metal smelting complex, with little or no regulartory oversight. Polluted water and air make life expectancy in this city around just 40 years. Within 30 miles of the city, there is not a single living tree.

7) Johannesburg - In South Africa, one of the ongoing topics of discussion is which of the country's two major cities - Johannesburg and Cape Town - is the more likely to get your car hijacked or your wallet taken. While crime has ebbed and flowed throughout all of South Africa in recent years, the city of Johannesburg has earned a special distinction for theft, robbery and violence.

6) Rio de Janeiro - Plagued by violent gun crime, assassinations and drug-trafficking, nearly 50,000 people have died of crime-related violence in Rio between 1978 and 2000.

5) Detroit - The dysfunction starts from the top. Kwame Kilpatrick, after a 7-year stint as Detroit mayor that was plagued by all sorts of allegations of impropriety, just served 99 days in prison for obstruction of justice. The current president of the city council, Monica Conyers, is noted for her thuggish behavior and is also currently under FBI investigation for bribery. A separate FBI probe into city hall corruption is also ongoing. Detroit's violent crime rate nearly triples the national average.

4) Caracas - Since [Hugo Chavez’s] election in 1998, the homicide rate in Caracas has more than doubled, earning the city the 2008 award for 'Murder Capital of the World' by Foreign Policy.

3) Linfen - A number of Chinese cities could've made this list for the same reason - pollution - but Linfen takes the cake because it has the dirtiest air in the entire world…a result of being one of China's largest coal mining hubs.

2) Ciudad Juarez - The city of 1.5 million has already experienced 1,800 murders since January and is the epicenter of a violent battle between rival drug cartels, smugglers, kidnappers and criminals. Among the city’s grim statistics, over 400 women have fallen prey to “sexual homicide” since 1999. Dismembered bodies and large “common graves” stuffed with corpses have inspired the CIA and Pentagon to begin contingency planning for a “failed state” on America’s southern border.

1) Mogadishu - The capital of Somalia is nearly synonymous with chaos and violence…Just yesterday, 11 people were killed in a clash between Islamist groups. Over a million of the city’s residents have reportedly been displaced, with tens of thousands fleeing the "city of death" altogether.