Let’s take a trip down memory lane. It’s early 2006 and the median house price in Los Angeles-Orange County, California has hit $582,000. Demographia has just released its latest International Housing Affordability Survey showing that Southern California has the most expensive housing market out of the six nations surveyed. Property speculation is at fever pitched.
This is a first home buyer grant. From the UK Telegraph: [A] controversial new mortgage deal is being launched by five local authorities and backed by Lloyds Banking Group, one of the lenders bailed out by the taxpayer during the credit crisis. The scheme is aimed at struggling first-time buyers who are unable to afford the
I was disappointed with The Economist’s recent special reports on housing. Whilst the reports captured the psychology and the demand-drivers of bubbles well (discussed in an earlier post), they failed to adequately capture the role of supply-side constraints. As far as I could see, the only reference to the supply-side of the housing market were
One thing I’ve always believed about investing (as opposed to speculating) is that it’s important to step back and take a look at the long-term picture. In the shorter term, markets are subject to periodic “manias, panics and crashes”, as Charles Kindleberger put it in his classic study of financial crises. But in the long-term,
Canada and Australia have a lot in common. Both economies are commodity exporters. Both countries have experienced similar rates of immigration. Both countries largely dodged the global recession that has recently shocked the developed world. And both are said to have world-beating banking systems, with Canada’s ranked as the strongest and Australia’s ranked third strongest in the world by the World Economic Forum’s
In the latest Breakfast with Dave, David Rosenberg makes it very clear that the US housing market has begun another leg down and has a long long way to go before the bottom is found. The Case-Shiller home price index sagged 1% MoM in December with 19 of the 20 cities deflating. This was the fifth decline
Today I promised myself that I would take a break from the housing market in order to tackle other areas of interest, such as demographics, China, population policy, and investing. But then I was handed an article by a colleague entitled Why must we make the same old policy failures in the housing market? At
The Telegraph today published a disturbing article on the dire state of the UK economy: Households face the most dramatic squeeze in living standards since the 1920s, the Governor of the Bank of England warned, as he reacted to the shock disclosure that the economy was shrinking again. Families will see their disposable income eaten up as
No doubt many readers have heard that the Australian Government is looking to follow Canada’s lead and implement a Government guarantee of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), in order to foster greater competition in mortgage lending and reduce the power of the big four banks. Following on from David Llewellyn-Smith’s critique of this proposal, I thought it timely
Canada and Australia have a lot in common. Both economies are commodity exporters. Both countries largely dodged the global recession that has recently shocked the developed world. And both countries are said to have world-beating banking systems, with Canada’s ranked as the strongest and Australia’s ranked third strongest in the world by the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010. As
