A peek at global house prices
The housing market crash knew no national boundaries, so it can be interesting to examine Australia's recovery in terms of the global market as well as by comparing our local markets to each other. One way to do that is to look at the Global Property Guide's latest summary of official house price statistics for Q2, 2010.
The key point is the of the 36 countries they have statistics for, 18 countries showed property price increases, including Australia. This is what the figures look like:
Generous price increases in Singapore and Hong Kong have lead people to speculate on the forming of another bubble in Asia. Prices there fell as they did elsewhere, and then bottomed out around Q2 and Q3 2009, when the governments there cut interest rates and introduced stimulus packages as in other countries. In Q4 things started to move more quickly and there's concern that there are now too many buyers speculating in these markets. So maybe don't look into the legalities of buying there just yet... Japan's recovery has been smoother, and Indonesian properties, while not gaining value, have lost only a little ground in Q2 2010.Stimulus packages in Europe seem to be helping prices there, especially in export oriented Finland, and Norway, where interest rates have been kept low but are gradually starting to creep back up. And UK prices, helped by healthy growth in London, are also much healthier. The U.S. is still struggling with a small reduction in the average value of homes, but Canada's housing market is in a growth phase again. Canadian house prices stopped falling in July 2009, though there was a modest house price fall of 0.71% during the year to end-Q1 2010.Ireland is really the only country where prices have fallen more dramatically than they were at this time last year.
When you're an international company like us it pays to look broadly as well as narrowly. Come on Ireland...
Posted
by Kat Parr Mackintosh
