Canadian home prices rose in April from March as three strong cities in Western Canada more than offset weak showings elsewhere, while the annual gain in prices slowed, the Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price Index showed on Tuesday.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is dismissing fears about Canada’s housing market, saying the current slowdown is welcome news and that there is no need for further government intervention.

New statistics on the real estate market show home prices have risen by about 9% over the past year. Does this mean that real estate is back? On April 30, the Standard & Poors/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices release showed that a composite of real estate prices in 20 major metropolitan markets had increased by 9.3% [...]

Home prices today are rising nearly as fast as they did during the peak bubble years of 2005 and 2006. Since that bubble helped push us into the Great Recession, we should all be on high alert for the next housing bubble.

The post-recession recovery of the UK housing market revival is in full swing, an industry survey has shown. New buying inquiries soared last month and home prices continued to rise as property investment sentiment benefitted from government initiatives that give potential buyers greater access to mortgages.

Demand for property rose to its highest level in over three years during April, as the government’s ‘Help to Buy’ scheme began to make an impact on the UK’s housing market, the latest residential market survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has revealed.

Boosting the housing market to provide a feelgood factor is unlikely to work in the long term – and an economic study from Denmark suggests it won’t work in the short term either.

British Land is looking to exit its £255m retail property business in mainland Europe after their assets lost almost a fifth of their value on the back of the economic crisis in Spain and Portugal.

First quarter 2013 results for German institutional property funds and German retail property funds stood at 0.3% and 0.0% respectively. In both groups of funds, those vehicles invested in Germany substantially outperformed European-targeted funds.

The period from January to the end of April of 2013 in Poland came in strong with an investment volume of €748 million. So far, the office sector has the largest share 2013 transactions (€424 million), followed by industrial (€184 million) and retail (€126 million), with the hotel sector rounding things off with €14 million.

Moscow is one of the world’s most expensive cities. It can vary a bit depending on who’s doing the ranking, but for the past several years Moscow usually comes in 3rd place after Tokyo, Japan and Luanda, Angola. It’s true that some of Moscow’s most ridiculously priced items are not housing-related, and it’s equally true [...]

Actual demand for housing in the Kingdom is huge and the supply doesn’t meet the demand. “Saudi Arabia is a major player in the region both in political and economical terms; today the government is spending billions of dollars in infrastructure development, which is why we are noticing a new hub for infrastructure development in [...]

The residential property market in Doha appears to be stable and may see steady growth both in outright sales and rentals in the upcoming quarters, according to Al Asmakh Real Estate report.

Leasing activity in Asia Pacific’s Tier 1 office markets remained generally subdued in the first quarter of 2013, according to real estate advisory firm Jones Lang LaSalle, in its latest Asia Pacific Office Index.

Investment rises 21.1% in past four months, sales value eases to 59.8%. China’s real estate investment growth quickened in the first four months of the year, but property sales growth dipped slightly due to the government’s latest round of policy tightening.

A growing number of Hong Kong property investors are shifting their investment focus offshore - prompting local brokers to widen their sales’ lists in order to capture commissions on deals taking place overseas.

A flood of new homes is headed toward Singapore and it will carry with it a buyer’s market, analysts say. Developers in Singapore are already offering discounts and freebies such as furniture vouchers and will probably give away more expensive “toys”–maybe even cars–as new properties begin hitting the market in force, says Chris Comer, CEO [...]

New Zealand housing is already overvalued by about 25 percent and if it continues to rise may force the Reserve Bank to hike interest rates, according to the International Monetary Fund.

While far from their 2006 peak, home prices in major metropolitan areas have been rising since early 2012. If that persists, it should make it easier for Americans to move and for employers to match job seekers with available jobs, lowering the jobless rate and increasing overall economic productivity and growth.

Housing is usually more stable because the motivations of the buyers are for long-term occupancy rather than exclusively for profit. But by rigging the market toward speculators, the Fed may have queered the pitch.

A handful of companies that rent houses to single families are preparing to launch initial public offerings on the US stock market as their private equity and hedge fund owners take advantage of investor interest in the US housing recovery.

All you have to do is look at a price chart of Lennar Corp to see the proof that the U.S. housing market is on the mend. Since January 2012, shares of the Miami, Fl.-based new homebuilder have more than doubled.

Home prices in the greater Vancouver area are down 3.9 percent from a year ago, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. In West Vancouver, which is sometimes said to be the wealthiest municipality in Canada, home prices have fallen 5.6 percent. Sales are down 20 percent from a year ago.

European retail real estate investment totalled €5.1 bn in the first quarter of 2013, up nearly 60% on the year-earlier period, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.

A U.K. house-price gauge rose to the highest in almost three years last month as government measures to support the housing market spurred demand, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said.

Government measures responsible for pickup in demand that has yet to be matched by increase in supply, says Rics. Fresh evidence that Britain’s housing market is recovering from its long post-recession torpor has emerged as estate agents report the first upward trend in house prices in almost three years.

UK commercial property performance remained largely unchanged at the All Property level in April, according to the latest CBRE UK Monthly Index. Total return increased from 0.5% in March to 0.6% in April, with the annual return also picking up to 3.1% for the year to April 2013. However, capital values remained flat, and have [...]

A German asset management boutique and a US property investor, both based in Germany, have launched a joint venture to create a new company targeting institutional and private clients looking to invest in US real estate.

Spanish politicians trying to cushion the blows of austerity plan to seize foreclosed homes to house the needy, discouraging foreign investment and threatening to violate terms of the European bailout of the country’s banks.

The Central Bank of Azerbaijan reports that turnover of country’s residential property market for 1st quarter of 2013 increased by 40.1% against the same term of 2012. In 2012 the index grew by 24.86% against 2011.

Property prices in Dubai rose 18.3 per cent in the past one year (March 2012 to March 2013), with the emirate maintaining it’s position among the top five best performing real estate markets in the world, according to a new report.

Property brokerage firms in Dubai are on a hiring spree with hundreds of new brokers likely to join company rosters in coming months. The local firms have stepped up hiring following Dubai property transactions rising 63 per cent to Dh44 billion in first quarter 2013 following rising global investor confidence in the emirate’s realty sector.

Average luxury property prices in Asia are continuing to increase with only Hong Kong and Singapore seeing values fall, according to the latest residential index from Jones Lang LaSalle.

The Mumbai residential property rates, touted as the most costliest in India, appreciated by a whopping 66% during the last four years, quashing reports of an ‘imminent correction’, according to a report. Other satellite areas such as Thane and Navi Mumbai saw an even steeper rise in property prices compared to Mumbai’s average increase, growing [...]

China’s home sales transaction value fell 13 percent in April from the previous month as the government’s new property curbs started to take effect.

The value of new home purchases in China rose at a slower pace in the first four months with home seekers feeling less panicky in April compared to a hectic March.

China’s policymakers will likely ease back on controls over the property market by the end of the year as such measures could hurt growth, a former academic adviser to the nation’s central bank said Monday.

Australian home-loan approvals rose the most in four years in March as central bank interest-rate cuts lured buyers into the market.

After a long and painful downturn in the housing market, home prices in many—but not all—regions of the U.S. are showing signs of recovery. According to Zillow, a real estate listing website, home values rose 5.1% across the U.S. between February 2012 and February 2013.

The U.S. housing market continues to recover. This week, we learned that the number of homeowners who are newly delinquent on their mortgages has fallen to pre-2007 levels. Housing prices also rose 9.3 percent in February for the biggest year-to-year advance since May 2006. To top it off, Fannie Mae, the government-owned mortgage financier, said [...]

The U.S. housing market’s recovery is gaining momentum, but there are still a number of issues for homebuyers to be cautious of.To get to the bottom of what’s really going on in the housing market, we talked to Gerri Willis, author of “Home Rich”, about the key things homebuyers need to know in today’s challenging [...]

Real estate enthusiasts are well aware of the seasonal strength usually seen in the business in the springtime. However, so far this season it has been hard to find sign of a spring fling, save perhaps in the performance of the iShares Dow Jones US Real Estate ETF (IYR), up 16% year-to-date through May 8.

In some ways, Yosuan Crespo’s real estate office resembles any you might find in New York, London or Tokyo. There are slick posters of hot properties hanging from the ceiling, a steady stream of hopeful buyers and sellers and a constant clack of computer keys.

The housing market is at its strongest in five years, according to Barratt Developments, Britain’s biggest housebuilder. “The present market backdrop, in terms of consumer demand and mortgage supply, is the most positive we have seen for five years,” Barratt said in a trading update on Tuesday. “The group expects to deliver a significant year-on-year [...]

A new $23 billion rail link in London could transform the property landscape around key stations as developers pour in; analysts predict big price bumps for Tottenham Court Road and Canary Wharf.

Valuations should be based on solid surmises rather than led by demand spikes. “It usually takes five or six years to recover from a downturn” — such a statement was repeatedly used by many after the Dubai property market’s decline in 2008… and they were right.

A $500 million investment fund targeting distressed and stalled properties in Dubai should be operational by the end of the year, according to the fund’s chief executive.

The real estate market in Sharjah remains resilient and is one of the Emirate’s top performing sectors, according to the latest report from property firm Cluttons.

India’s real estate market is likely to continue to remain sluggish in the quarter ending 30 June and developers may have to drop prices to revive demand for offices and homes, according to industry reports and analysts.

A long time coming, consolidation in China’s property sector seems to finally be starting. State-owned Greenland Holding Group Co. late Wednesday said it bought a 60% stake in luxury property developer SPG Land Holdings Ltd. for US$389 million, the largest-ever acquisition of a controlling stake in a Hong Kong-listed Chinese real estate developer by value.