Thursday, July 07, 2011

Really Interesting Interactive House Price Index

Over at The Economist there is a really interesting interactive house price index chart for 20 selected large countries . You can choose which country or countries that will be shown, as well as whether to look at levels for nominal prices, prices adjusted for consumer prices, rents or income or annual price changes (For some countries, not all of these variables are available).

One interesting fact is that if you look at China, while nominal prices there is up by 90% during the latest decade, they are down by 40% relative to average income, an even weaker development than in Japan and Germany (the two countries where nominal house prices have been weakest). China thus clearly doesn't have a housing bubble.

3 Comments:

Blogger Shane Leavy said...

Good Lord - it also shows how high house prices are relative to income in Ireland still, years after the peak. Should we expect continued falls in property prices?

2:22 PM  
Blogger stefankarlsson said...

Yes, that is very likely given how high prices still are and given the fact that the high growth in population and GDP that fueled the boom will not return soon.

3:45 PM  
Blogger Shane Leavy said...

The latest figures show that planning permissions for houses fell in 2010. Yet in Quarter 1 2011 there were still over 3,000 approved planning permissions for houses and nearly 600 for apartments. With the country awash with empty buildings, this seems odd.
http://cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/construction/current/planperm.pdf

So the supply of houses must be continuing to increase, even while demand remains low. I suppose some of the 'ghost estates' of recently-built houses which were never sold are gradually going to collapse and fall off the market through disrepair. But as you say, in the near future I guess prices will continue to fall.

6:53 PM  

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