Like most English-speaking nations, Canadian house prices boomed over the pandemic, soaring 32% since February 2020 according to Teranet: The surge in prices was led by Canada’s largest city Toronto where prices surged 37% over the pandemic. However, like most nations, Canada’s mortgage rates have begun to rise, jumping by around 0.8% since March, according
Investment legend Jeremy Grantham has labelled the pandemic global property boom the “fifth great bubble of the modern era” and has warned of an impending global property bust as central banks ‘normalise’ interest rates: Grantham is convinced that we’re in the midst of a fifth great bubble of the modern era, following the Wall Street
With Canada’s dwelling values rising by around 50% over the pandemic: The Trudeau Canadian Government will ban foreigners from buying homes for two years while also boosting housing supply in a bid to boost housing affordability: Canada will ban most foreigners from buying homes for two years and provide billions of dollars to spur construction
A new report released by the University of NSW (UNSW) and the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) documents the extraordinary growth in housing rents across the Anglosphere over the pandemic: At the national level, most of the Anglophone countries covered in this study (especially Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and the US) saw
Knight Frank has released its Global House Price Index for Q4, with Australia taking the top spot as the country with the highest rate of annual price growth in 2021. While global house prices increased by 10.3% in real terms on average in 2021, Australia’s recorded the highest rate of annual real price growth of
The 2022 Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey has been released and, once again, it ranks Australia as having one of the most expensive housing markets out of the countries surveyed. This year’s report assesses 92 major markets (metropolitan areas) in eight nations for the third quarter of 2021. The nations assessed are: Australia, Canada, Hong
Free-market Singapore has levied massive stamp duties on foreign investors and domestic buyers of multiple homes: From the Straits Times: From Thursday (Dec 16), the additional buyer’s stamp duty (ABSD) that must be paid for purchases of residential properties will be raised. The total debt servicing ratio (TDSR) for borrowers will also be tightened, while
Goldman Sachs has released a bunch of interesting charts on the US housing market, which has experienced its biggest and broadest price boom since the Global Financial Crisis. As shown below, median house prices across the US have surged by 17.7% over the past year with most of that growth coming in the past six
Goldman Sachs with the note: In the spring, we wrote that shelter inflation would rise to 30-year high on the back of substantial home price appreciation and a rapidly improving labor market. Since then, a number of alternative rent measures have increased at dizzyingly high rates, with some pointing to price increases that are almost
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) believes the nation’s dwelling values are not sustainable and it is now forecasting that prices will fall in every quarter starting from Q42022 all the way through to the Q3 2024: House prices in New Zealand have increased rapidly over the past year from an already elevated level.
The housing industry and policy makers tend to blame a ‘lack of supply’ for soaring property prices. They claim that unaffordable housing is caused primarily by restrictive planning and sluggish construction rates, and if these were eased then prices would fall and homes would become affordable. A new paper from the Federal Reserve challenges this
I am currently pulling property-related data for an upcoming subscriber special report on the property markets of English-speaking nations. Yesterday I uncovered a treasure trove of data on Ireland, which has managed to successfully deleverage from one of the world’s biggest property bubbles leading into the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The below charts tell
The world’s housing markets are growing at their fastest pace since 2007 according to the latest Knight Frank Global Residential Cities Index: Urban house prices are rising at their fastest rate since 2007 and of the 150 cities we track, 43 are now registering annual price growth above 10%. Cities are far from underperforming their
In Australia, major parties bribe voters with policies designed to inflate housing values in the knowledge that home owners will vote with their wallet. These demand-side policies come in a variety of guises, including first home buyer grants, stamp duty exemptions, and tax concessions. Sweden has emerged as an interesting contrast, whereby incumbent Prime Minister
CNN has released data showing the synchronised house price boom taking place across rich nations. According to CNN, real house prices across 37 OECD nations rose by 6.7% in calendar year 2020, which was the fastest pace of growth in 20 years: As expected, rock bottom mortgage rates are behind the price growth: Rock bottom
The Economist has released a new report looking at the synchronised house price boom taking place across rich nations. The Economist claims that this boom is unusual in that it is being driven almost uniformly by suburban houses rather than the inner cities: Across the 25 countries tracked by The Economist, real house prices have
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) released data yesterday showing that new mortgage commitments hit their highest level on record in January driven by strong growth in both owner-occupiers and investors. In the year to January 2021, $77.9 billion worth of mortgages were issued, 6% higher than the previous peak of $73.6 billion in
Morgan Stanley’s chief global strategist wrote an article in the Financial Times (republished in The AFR) suggesting New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, is a revolutionary for ordering the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) to add stabilising home prices to its remit: Housing bubbles are the worst… When prices fall, it can take years
The 2021 Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey has been released and, once again, it ranks Australia as having one of the most expensive housing markets out of the countries surveyed. This year’s report assesses 92 major markets (metropolitan areas) in eight nations for the third quarter of 2020. The nations assessed are: Australia, Canada, Hong
For years, utopian urban planners have predicted the end of suburbia. We were told that people would increasingly shun suburban life in favour of higher density living close to CBDs whereby families would choose proximity and convenience over space. This claim was always a myth, with urbanisation being mostly a suburban affair. The COVID-19 pandemic
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) yesterday performed a stunning U-turn, reintroducing loan-to-value (LVR) mortgage restrictions just 10 months after such restrictions were lifted to aid the nation’s COVID-19 response. Under the changes, most investors will need 40% deposits and most owner-occupiers 20% deposits; although there are explicit carve-outs for new residential construction: The
A new peer-reviewed study from Simon Fraser University (SFU) shows that the “decoupling” of property prices from incomes in Metro Vancouver and to a lesser extent Toronto has been caused by “significant sums of foreign capital that have been excluded from official statistics”. In particular, Richmond, West Vancouver, the city of Vancouver and Burnaby have
New Zealand house prices rocketed in October to another record high, according to the REINZ: Extraordinary growth is being recorded, with the seasonally adjusted median price surging by 4.7% in October and by 20.0% year-on-year: Sales volumes have also soared, rising 25.8% year-on-year: The price rises are being driven by the top half of the
The Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) has released its house price data for September, which has reported booming sales and record high prices: As shown above, the seasonally adjusted median house price soared 14.1% year-on-year in September, with Auckland rising 11.8% year-on-year and regions outside of Auckland rising 16.3%. Sales volumes have also
With the global tourism industry in turmoil, Airbnb has axed one-quarter of its global workforce: In the note, written by Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky, the company said that 1,900 employees will be laid off, or 25.3% of its 7,500 workers. The layoffs will impact a number of internal product groups, including Transportation and
