Housing markets are prone to the bandwagon effect, they continue rising when the fundamentals vanish, a year, maybe two years before. Stock market and commodity price volatility and declines are currently chronicled ad-nausea by the press without seeing the dramatic upswing of international property price falls. What is alarming is the pace of price declines. Even countries where prices are not falling, many are witnessing a rapid deceleration in price growth.
As China supplants Greece as the world’s key economic concern, and emerging markets look increasingly anaemic, there is a global quest for growth which is evident at a macroeconomic level but also when analysing house price performance.