Global Housing

By Leith van Onselen Former Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) and New Zealand Treasury special adviser, Michael Reddell, has made some outstanding contributions over the years.

By Leith van Onselen Former Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) and New Zealand Treasury special adviser, Michael Reddell, is a rare breed.

By Leith van Onselen In an interesting contrast to the Abbott Government’s do-nothing approach, the Conservative Government in the United Kingdom (UK) has announced that it will wind-back its own form of ‘negative gearing’ in a bid to give first home buyers greater access to housing.

By Leith van Onselen The shortsightedness of Glenn Stevens’ comments last year that macro-prudential controls on high risk mortgage lending were “dreaded” and the “latest fad” has, once again, been exposed with a new literature review from economists Kenneth N.

By Leith van Onselen Thousands of Londoners gathered outside City Hall over the weekend protesting over spiraling housing costs and the lack of affordable housing options across the capital.

By Leith van Onselen Interest.co.nz’s Bernard Hickey wrote an interesting post over the weekend analysing land banking in and around Auckland, which has been “turbo charged” by the city’s urban growth boundary (UGB), called the “Metropolitan Urban Limit” or MUL: Expectations are a powerful thing.

By Leith van Onselen CBRE Global Research and Consulting has released its annual Global Living report, which examines property performance across nations relative to London.

by Chris Becker I tend to give the Germans a hard time when it comes to their intra-European policy  – i.e take the benefits of a cheaper Mark (euro), overburden southern Europeans with cheap debt, delight in the profits and massive current account surplus and then demand fiscal austerity when it all goes pear-shaped.

By Catherine Cashmore, a market analyst, journalist, and policy thinker, with extensive industry experience in all aspects relating to property.

I like Krugman. He takes a common sense approach to economics and writes clearly for a broad audience. But, like others, I have to take issue with his insistence that quantitative easing (QE) and low interest rates punish the wealthy and fulfil some progressive distributional objective.

By Catherine Cashmore, a market analyst, journalist, and policy thinker, with extensive industry experience in all aspects relating to property.

By Leith van Onselen As noted by Houses & Holes earlier this morning, the Bank of England (BoE) has announced that it will implement so-called macro-prudential controls on higher risk mortgage lending by limiting 15% of all new mortgage lending (per bank) to 4.5 times income.

By Chris Becker It seems you can’t go wrong speculating on property, as capital gains in London – 19% for the year or £71,000 – are almost double the average post-tax income for Londoners!

By Leith van Onselen The International Monetary Fund (IMF) last night published a blog post warning of the reemergence of frothiness in the world’s housing markets, where values are once again rising at an accelerating rate (see next chart).

By Leith van Onselen While Australia’s Reserve Bank continues to bury its head in the sand, the Bank of England (BoE) has joined the Reserve Bank of New Zealand in issuing stern warnings about risks building in the housing market, and is now looking to implement macro-prudential controls on mortgage lending.

By Leith van Onselen Professor Paul Cheshire from the London School of Economics has produced a new report slamming UK planning policy, which has dramatically forced-up urban land prices, especially in the South East, and disproportionately harmed the poor.