‘Prices Have Passed Their Peak For 2006′: UK
Forbes has this update on the UK. “UK asking prices for houses fell in August for the first time this year as the recent ‘mini-boom’ in house prices in the south-east of the country ran out of steam, a leading property website said. In its monthly survey, Rightmove said average asking prices fell by 1.6 pct to 214,040 stg in August. This is the biggest fall since November 2004 and the first time prices have fallen since December 2005.”
“Given the Bank of England’s interest rate rise earlier this month and expectations for further hikes to come, the record average asking price set in July is unlikely to be surpassed again this year, Rightmove said. ‘Prices have passed their peak for 2006,’ said Rightmove commercial director Miles Shipside.”
“‘The record price levels seen so far this year were driven by the south of the country. With that market cooling, and the signals from the Bank of England that interest rates may move up again, sellers may have to reduce their price expectations,’ he said.”
“Shipside added that with prices now cooling off, the housing market will ‘require no further intervention from the Bank of England’, as lower prices help buyer affordability but further interest rate rises will damage it again. ‘It’s a careful balance, but with more realism from sellers, we could be entering a period of stability again,’ he said.”
“Commenting on this month’s rate rise, Shipside added, ‘Activity in the property market virtually stopped dead after two successive rate rises in 2004 and took a year to recover. Prices are now cooling off and require no further intervention from the Bank.’”
The Sydney Morning Herald reports from Australia. “The stagnant property market has taken a toll on a favourite Australian pastime: converting bricks and mortar into cash. The boom in equity withdrawn from housing and used to boost superannuation, bolster share portfolios and buy cars, overseas holidays and plasma televisions has petered out, a report by the Reserve Bank says.”
“‘The strong growth in housing equity withdrawal over 2001 to 2003 contributed to strong growth in consumption relative to income (and a corresponding decline in the saving rate) over that period … [but] these trends have subsequently abated,’ a bank discussion paper published yesterday said.”
“Now many families who bought housing near the property market’s 2003 peak are facing negative equity.”
“The federal Opposition seized on revelations in the Herald yesterday that properties in St Clair, near Penrith, sold at the weekend for 42 per cent less than the previous sale in 2003.”
“‘Stretched beyond the limit by three interest rate rises, they are being forced to sell,” labor spokesman, Kim Carr, said. ‘Plummeting property prices mean that hard-working families are confronting the financial catastrophe of negative equity.’”
“Such a prospect may not be confined to Sydney’s outer suburbs, Tom Western, a valuer and NSW president of the Australian Property Institute, said yesterday. ‘Anecdotal evidence suggests the market is slowing down in areas closer to the city, and not just in investment units,’ Mr Western said. ‘Over the past six weeks, the second-home buyer market in the inner and middle rings has shown signs of price weakness.’”
“The spring market would be testing. ‘There are owners in the inner and middle ring suburbs in negative territory now. But they have been withdrawing their properties from the market. People have thought they can get their money back, but after the marketing campaign it is obvious the market has hit them between the eyes,’ he said.”
“Robert Mellor, of BIS Shrapnel, said Sydney house prices might fall a further 5 per cent this financial year because of higher interest rates, pushing more households into negative equity. The Reserve Bank study showed the bulk of housing equity withdrawal was undertaken by older households.”
It looks like foreclosures and forced sales have become a political football in Australia, on the issue of interest rates. Will we see the same thing in the US?
And then there are the politics of land supply:
‘More Australians would be able to afford homes if state governments stopped caving in to green groups and released more land, Prime Minister John Howard said yesterday. Amid fears of more interest rate increases, Mr Howard said no one liked rate rises but they were not the real problem.’
‘The main cause of the high cost of housing in this country is the lack of supply of land,’ he said. ‘Until this is faced, we’re going to continue to have this in a diminishing Australian dream for younger Australians.’
OT but hot off the presses..
Northern New Jersey July Sales Collapse
July - Northern New Jersey
Average Sales (2003-2005): 3495
2005 Sales: 3338
2006 Sales: 2428
(Down 29.8% Year Over Year)
Graphs can be found at the above link..
Caveat Emptor!
Grim
Correction, that is 27.3% YOY.
grim
Imagine if you can US Realtors Busted and Fined for rigging phony multiple bids like the ones in Australia.
Victoria: Big fines for dummy bids
http://au.pfinance.yahoo.com/021011/1/26n.html
New legislation to be introduced into Victorian Parliament today will provide for $24,000 fines for people engaging in dummy bidding at property auctions.
Real estate firms will face fines of up to $60,000 if their agents accept dummy bids, or $20,000 fines if they’re involved in overquoting or underquoting. The auctioneer will also be required to state when the vendor’s reserve price has been reached during an auction.
Agents and vendors will be required to agree on realistic prices prior to auctions and agents won’t be permitted to advertise properties below the prices stated in the sale contracts. The Department of Consumer Affairs will be notified if an agent regularly sells properties above contract of sale prices.
The Victorian Consumer Affairs Minister, Christine Campbell, said the legislation aims to clean up the auction system and was introduced due to complaints about overinflated prices as a result of dummy bidding. If the legislation is passed, a buyer will be allowed to make a claim for losses incurred due to illegal or dummy bidding. Auctions will be policed by a team of consumer affairs inspectors, and there will also be follow-ups of complaints received from consumers and competing agents.
Watchdog to go after dummy bidding
By Aileen Keenan
Property Editor
September 26, 2003
http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2003/09/25/1064083128036.html
Real estate companies using dummy bidding at property auctions could face up to $1.2 million in fines in a crackdown by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel yesterday said vendors or individuals caught using dummy bidders faced fines of up to $220,000. Allegations would be investigated quickly and fast- tracked through the Federal Court.
Since speaking out against unscrupulous property transactions - including two-tiered marketing and misleading investment seminars - at the beginning of September, Mr Samuel said the ACCC had been swamped with complaints from consumers.
“There are some in the industry that do not understand that engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct is illegal,” he said.
The former trickle of grievances had swelled to 37 serious complaints with “two or three” being investigated by the commission in Victoria. Mr Samuel refused to elaborate on these complaints. He said vendors could no longer turn a blind eye to agents’ use of dummy bidding when selling property.
“Companies will face millions of dollars in fines and individuals will be up for hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said.
Mr Samuel’s comments are timed for the spring auction season, the peak selling time of the year. A ban on dummy bidding will come into effect in Victoria on February 1, although Mr Samuel said it was already illegal under federal trade practices law.
No doubt the green groups have something in common with the other “green” groups (developers) who would like to keep the stranglehold on land. I wonder how hard it is to keep the “running out of land” lie going in Australia? Granted, most people there live on the coasts, but the bloody outback is huge.
There’s more coastline in Australia than in the U.S. and the population is less than Florida.
If you want to get a feel for what the outback is like, take the old Route 66 from where it originally finished in California, and head East to, say, around Kingman. (Don’t take the parallel interstate highway, that’s way too good a road.)
Plus imagine all the little roadside businesses and hamlets are not there (even in abandoned form); in the Oz outback it can be hours between filling stations.
funny, this claim that the ‘greens’ are causing the high land prices are exactly the same as in the Netherlands - which contrary to Australia is a very densily populated country. But it is easy to prove that these claims are totally wrong. These claims always come from the politicians/parties that are closely allied with property developers. In the Netherlands high land prices are caused by zoning which has nothing to do with protecting nature but everything with protecting property values for rich farmers and big speculators (and local government is usually the biggest speculator).
Even in the Netherlands just 11% of the country is build area (including towns, industrial areas, roads and other infrastructure). 89% of the country is unbuilt and of that just a few % is protected nature.
I guess the recent run up was the “dead cat bounce”.
So it goes. Mini-boom - the King’s English for dead-cat bounce.
You beat me to it!
I doubt it, because exactly the same happened in the Netherlands and some other EU countries, which have their own central bank (ECB). The Netherlands also had another price surge, a refi surge and a spending surge in the last months. No data out yet regarding july prices but I’m sure there at least asking prices are still rising.
This is all part of a coordinated effort of the worlds central banks to keep the credit bubble alive and growing. Even a minor sign that house prices are no longer rising is now enough to prevent further rate increases from the central bank. No need to say more
I just noticed the july numbers for Netherlands are available, up 0.3% from June (note that this is just a monthly increase, not annualized like in the US). Minor increase compared to previous months but still increasing …
Notice the involvement of the politicians in Australia. How long until politicians in North America start echoing these cries?
Lay the groundwork against a bailout *now* before it gathers steam. Nip it in the bud.
Too bad the US Federal Reserve wasn’t smart enough to do this in 2003. We wouldn’t have the current mess we do on our hands.
Thanks Greenspan.
Actually, in 2003 the Fed really stepped on the gas, when you consider that’s when the subprime/exotic lending took off. Why didn’t they adjust rates in light of that trend?
“Actually, in 2003 the Fed really stepped on the gas, when you consider that’s when the subprime/exotic lending took off. Why didn’t they adjust rates in light of that trend?”
Can you say 2004 presidential elections?
with all the national news, and quite a bit of the international news, I can’t fathom how financial stocks aren’t taking a hit yet. the damage seems to be confined to homebuilders so far. I’m starting to see financials weaken a bit. in my marketocracy short portfolio(not real money) I see the financials weaken a bit. they aren’t nearly as bad as the homebuilders/fnm/gm and etc.
OT but for those who are interested in gold:
Some snippets from The Privateer gold commentary this weekend.
Gold Price Manipulation In A New Light
With the $US Gold price on the slide again this week, and again for no “apparent” reason, the Gold websites and forums are again alive with talk and speculation about manipulation of the price. This, we contend, is belabouring the obvious.
The only monetary system in which there is no “manipulation” of the Gold price is a system in which there is no “Gold price” to manipulate. Under a genuine Gold standard, Gold IS the money. As such, it forms the “denominator” in ALL prices…
But the fact remains that as soon as the US had a Central Bank in place, it became imperative for those in charge of the financial and banking system to manipulate Gold. …
With the separation of Gold from what is used as money comes the concept of a Gold “price”. Once that is established, the means by which to manipulate Gold come into the hands of those who separated it from what is used as money. Governments which repudiate Gold as money have no choice but to manipulate it. The questions of whether they manipulate Gold or how much they are manipulating it at any given point in time are beside the point….
Yes, the methods by which this manipulation is carried out have become more sophisticated in recent years, as have the methods by which all sectors of the “market” and the economy are manipulated.
Don’t waste your time looking for “manipulation” of Gold. It is ever present. Nowadays, it is blatant and unceasing. It has been said that the manipulators don’t care how obvious they are anymore. That is not the case. They have no choice but to keep the manipulation going and the only way they can keep it going “successfully” is to be ever more obvious about it. And the more obvious they get, the closer they come to losing control.
“Shipside added that with prices now cooling off, the housing market will
‘require no further intervention from the Bank of England’,
as lower prices help buyer affordability but further interest rate rises will damage it again.
- Outstanding! Sir Shipside certainly has a ’stiff upper lip’. His ‘lower prices help buyer affordability’….has me flummoxed.
I would not call him sagacious.
or said in another way: Central Banking is now all about keeping the housing bubble alive, and not about containing inflation or otherwise sound economic policy.
This is OT, but thought everyone would be interested:
http://www.anz.com/aus/promo/Homeessentials011/YourLoan3.asp
Consumer groups have welcomed the crackdown on auction antics, saying the new laws remove much of the uncertainty from buying at auction.
Victoria’s Consumer Affairs Minister, Christine Campbell, said the outlawing of dummy bidding make Victoria a leader in real estate practices.
Dennis Kalofonos, a Sydney-based buyers’ advocate, told the Sydney Morning Herald: “All of a sudden a little bit of power has come back to the buyer. It will take a little bit of that auction frenzy out of the market.”
Auction laws – NSW and Victoria
NSW
Only one vendor bid allowed
All bidders must be registered
New laws came into effect September 2003
Victoria
Only auctioneer can make vendor bids
Dummy bidding banned, punishable by stiff fines
Auctioneer must announce when vendor bids made
Bidders harassing or coercing other bidders prohibited
10% allowable range for under and over quoting
If gold prices are constantly manipulated, who but an idiot would trade or invest in gold? If you think it’s a rigged game, don’t play.
We’re screwed…
Thttp://www.drudgereport.com/flashpjb.htmotally f*cked…
Very “trollish”….but…. Florida condos for everyone
http://tinyurl.com/pl92q
Thanks ric. Dude, that’s PRICELESS!
Q: What’s your gut take on some of these really speculative condominium markets right now?
A: Well, just to give you full information, I’ve also bought a lot of condos in Florida… *chuckles
Oh no he DINT just say that!
Ouch! Ouchie! Owwwie! Ow! That’s GOTTA sting!
How about some insult, with a side of injury?
This is BY FAR the most informative, eduactional post that Ben been has made in months….props.
I’ve been monitoring closely the RE markets in UK and AU for about 10 months. I have been very “worried” that the US may experience the same ‘conundrum’ that has effected those nations recently. That was quite a dead cat bounce…but in the end I beleive it wa the massive undoing of the US market that put things in perspective over-seas and “nice to see” those countrie getting with the program.
That was all the proof I needed. US RE market is Officially Toast !..lol