Showing posts with label Global Housing Watch. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Spain’s Housing Market
The Spanish housing sector appears to have bottomed out, says the IMF’s new report on Spain. The report notes that the construction activity has started to recover, mostly driven by the non-residential sector. Moreover, construction permits have stopped falling and house sales are picking up. And housing prices started to increase slightly, albeit unevenly across regions.
Below are six charts that show the developments in the housing market in Spain.
Posted by at 9:00 AM
Labels: Global Housing Watch
Monday, August 17, 2015
China: How Big Is the Risk of a Real Estate Slowdown and Does It Matter?
How big is the risk of a real estate slowdown? The report says:
“All indicators point to weakness in China’s housing market. Housing prices have been moderating both at the national level and across all city tiers, with the weakest performance among the smaller cities. (…) Housing inventory ratio—floor space unsold to floor space sold—shows a buildup since 2013, suggesting oversupply. Even though there is uncertainty regarding the level (National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data show inventory of four months, while data from local housing bureaus suggest higher than two years), the direction of the buildup is clear. Inventory is especially high in Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities.”
Does it matter? The report says:
“Continued adjustment in floor space starts is warranted to let demand catch up with supply. (…) The adjustment will have significant impact on GDP growth. Given the estimated relationship between growth in floor space starts and in real estate gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), real estate GFCF could slow to -2 to -4 percent in 2015 from about 3 percent in 2014. As real estate GFCF accounts for about 9 percent of GDP, this would imply a drop of GDP growth by about ½ percentage point in the baseline scenario. This abstracts from the indirect effect arising from real estate linkages to upstream and downstream sectors. Some of these sectors suffer from oversupply, and a slowdown in construction activity could bring losses, exposing vulnerabilities and posing risks (…).”
“China’s housing market has softened visibly since 2014, reflecting oversupply in most cities. More adjustment is likely”, says the IMF’s latest report.
How big is the risk of a real estate slowdown? The report says:
“All indicators point to weakness in China’s housing market. Housing prices have been moderating both at the national level and across all city tiers, with the weakest performance among the smaller cities. (…) Housing inventory ratio—floor space unsold to floor space sold—shows a buildup since 2013,
Posted by at 9:00 AM
Labels: Global Housing Watch
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
House Prices in Jordan
“Mortgages slowed down in tandem with real estate prices; exposure of banks to real estate credit risk has remained limited”, notes the latest IMF report on Jordan.
Posted by at 9:00 AM
Labels: Global Housing Watch
Monday, August 10, 2015
House Prices in United Arab Emirates
“The real estate market in the UAE has cooled down after expanding strongly in 2013 and the first half of 2014. By end-2014, sales price increases moderated in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and in March 2015, growth in residential sales prices turned slightly negative in both Emirates, in year-on-year terms (…). These developments are taking place amid increased supply, particularly in Dubai, and reduced demand associated with lower oil prices and appreciating US dollar, and following the introduction of mortgage regulations based on loan-to-value ratios and an increase in the property transfer fee in late 2013. Read the full article…
Posted by at 9:00 AM
Labels: Global Housing Watch
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Price Expectations and the US Housing Boom
A new IMF paper by Pascal Towbin and Sebastian Weber looks at the shifts in house price expectations as an important driver of the US house price boom that preceded the financial crisis.
The authors find “that the contribution of price expectation shocks to the U.S. housing boom in the 2000s has been substantial. In our baseline specification, price expectation shocks explain roughly 30% of the increase. Another 30% of the increase in house prices remains, Read the full article…
Posted by at 12:00 PM
Labels: Global Housing Watch
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