The Lone Star state has gotten a lot of good press lately for coming through the economic downturn relatively unscathed. Since 2008, nearly 40% of all of the nation’s new jobs since have been created there. Thanks to that strong economy, housing in Texas’ biggest cities, including Houston, San Antonio and Austin, never suffered from the plunge in property values that struck the rest of the United States in the last few years.
So it wouldn’t surprise you to see them top a list of the nation’s most overpriced cities, places where the cost of living–especially housing prices–are the highest compared to median income………………………………………..Full Article: Source

If you’re watching the real estate markets, the good news is that the Federal Reserve has pledged to keep interest rates low through 2014. The bad news is that the market is going to need it. The November Case-Shiller housing numbers, released this morning, indicate that prices tumbled 3.7% from the year before. That’s below expectations of a 3.2% drop.
Even worse, it contradicts a trend in which the rate of price drops had been slowing………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Residential real estate prices fell more than forecast in November, showing distressed properties are hampering improvement in the U.S. housing market.
The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities declined 3.7 percent from November 2010 after decreasing 3.4 percent in the year ended in October, the group said today in New York. Economists projected a 3.3 percent drop, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The housing market may be poised to begin its turnaround in the months to come, according to S&P/Case-Shiller’s Karl Case.
“If you look at the fundamentals, such as number of existing sales and number of new sales, and look if they are going in the right direction, they are,” Case, co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values, said today in a radio interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene and Ken Prewitt………………………………………..Full Article: Source

A federal limit on the amount of loans Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. is allowed to insure could lead to stricter lending conditions and a cooling of the housing market, TD Bank economist Sonya Gulati said Tuesday.
“It may serve to tighten the housing market,” Gulati said. CMHC had insured $541 billion in loans at Sept. 30, compared with $501 billion a year earlier and $514 billion as of Dec. 31, 2010. The limit was raised to $600 billion in total outstanding insured amounts from $450 billion in 2008………………………………………..Full Article: Source

According to Colliers’ report, which analyses real estate trends in 13 Eastern European property markets, positive economic growth is forecast across the region for the year ahead. Only Greece is set to witness a recession as the country gets to grips with austerity planning and the fall-out of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.
In all other markets economic prospects remain, although it is noticeable that forecasts have been gradually and regularly pared back over the last three months, as economic sentiment worsened at the end of 2011………………………………………..Full Article: Source

83% of real-estate professionals think sustainability is the highest priority strategic issue facing office real estate decision-makers over the next ten years according to Jones Lang LaSalle Offices 2020 research findings.
However, the path to consistent sustainable real estate is moving at different speeds across Europe with new legislation driving the evolution of best practice in countries such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom, while economic constraints are impacting overall progress in other countries………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The take-up of office space in the main office markets in Western Europe dropped slightly in Q4 2011 on a rolling year basis compared to Q3 2011, according to the latest research by BNP Paribas Real Estate.
The leading international property adviser’s Q4 market report shows the greatest level of activity was in the German cities of Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich and Hamburg, which recorded strong demand for offices in the year’s final quarter as throughout the year. The average vacancy rate of the nine major markets recorded a third consecutive fall in Q4 2011………………………………………..Full Article: Source

More houses were sold in the final quarter of last year but the average price fell, new statistics show. A report by Registers of Scotland says the average price of a residential property in Scotland dropped by 0.5% to £157,174 between October and December 2011, compared with the same period of 2010.
House prices in Inverclyde fell the most, dropping 12% on the year before. Domestic property in Edinburgh still holds the highest average value, at £226,000, up 4.5% on 2010………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Investment in commercial real estate in Russia skyrocketed to about $9.5 billion in 2011, up over 70 percent on the previous year, Russia’s S.A. Ricci real estate consulting company said on Tuesday.
“An important trend of 2011 is an over 70 percent growth of investment deals on the commercial real estate market,” S.A.Ricci said in its report………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The global housing market suffered its worst performance for more than two years in the third quarter of 2011, according to property consultant’s Knight Frank.
One bright spot appears to be Russia, thanks to a recent report that the country’s consumer price inflation dropped to 6.1 percent in 2011, according to the Federal State Statistics Service (Ross tat)………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The Greek government is pressing ahead with plans to privatise billions of euros of public real estate assets in an attempt to strengthen its beleaguered finances.
The debt-ridden state is set to sell off the lion’s share of its 100,000-property strong portfolio through the recently created Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, a body set up over the summer to manage Greece’s privatisation push………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The UAE’s commercial property market, which has seen prices slump dramatically from their 2008 peaks, has started to stabilise, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
In its Q4 2011 Global Commercial Property Survey, RICS said occupier demand in the UAE had “broadly stabilised”………………………………………..Full Article: Source

According to Jones Lang LaSalle’s latest Asia Pacific Office Index, office markets in Asia Pacific experienced mixed fortunes in the fourth quarter of 2011. Despite a slowdown in average office rental growth and capital values, growth in some markets continued whilst others saw a slowdown in growth rates.
Rental growth in most major markets slowed in the final three months of 2011. Of the 27 featured office markets, only 14 saw an increase in net effective rents while for the remainder rents stabilised or recorded declines. Aggregate rental growth across the region averaged just 0.9 percent quarter-on-quarter, slowing from 2.5 percent in the previous quarter………………………………………..Full Article: Source

China’s Premier Wen Jiabao reiterated that the government will maintain curbs on the property market to bring prices down to a reasonable level and economic policies will be “fine-tuned” to support growth.
Wen also repeated his call to strengthen credit support to the “real economy” and small and medium-sized companies. His comments, posted on the central government’s website, were made at a meeting of the State Council today to discuss its work report to the National People’s Congress in March………………………………………..Full Article: Source

China is mulling a new round of efforts to regulate the sizzling property market after the moves it imposed about a year ago to limit purchases of residential apartments effectively brought down prices, analysts said Tuesday.
Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Jiang Weixin revealed that the ministry would complete a project to link databases of personal housing information concerning 40 major cities by the end of June, a measure designed to further curb house speculation, the analysts said………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The Year of the Dragon, representing wealth and power in China, is shaping up to be the opposite for the world’s costliest housing market, Hong Kong.
Mortgages that need to be insured by the government because of risk experienced the steepest plunge in six years in 2011, a sign the biggest home price decline since the global credit crisis is accelerating………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Analysts won’t read too much into the fourth-quarter results of Singapore’s property developers because of distortions caused by changes to when the firms can book profits from overseas and certain local projects under new financial reporting standards.
Investors will instead focus more on the developers’ responses to macroeconomic and policy risks amid a gloomier outlook for 2012, weighed by concerns over slowing growth and the impact of fresh interventions by the city-state’s government in early December to take even more heat out of the booming property market………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Indonesia is deemed the costliest country in terms of property registration compared to other Asia-Pacific countries. Property registration fee in Indonesia is worth 11 percent of the property value.
The report says that Indonesia applies high-cost property registration despite the fact that it has become one of the indicators of doing business worldwide………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Transactions for presale and newly completed houses nationwide dropped last quarter from three months earlier, while home prices held steady on a sustained standoff between developers and buyers.
Developers and construction firms produced 13,665 new housing units during the October-to-December period worth NT$212.9 billion, the quarterly report by Cathay Real Estate Development Co and National Chengchi University’s Taiwan Real Estate Research Center showed………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Australian house prices declined again in December, adding to growing concern among banks and property firms that a deterioration in prices across the country will resume this year.
The December decline came just a month after house prices rose for the first time in a year in November. That gain was supported by the first interest-rate cut by the Reserve Bank of Australia since early 2009, and occurred ahead of the removal of a tax exemption for certain purchases………………………………………..Full Article: Source

It looks like the Australian housing market will be a “tug-of-war” this year with low interest rates pulling hard on one end of the rope and economic uncertainty joining forces with subdued prospects for economic, income and employment growth at the other.
I expect the economic side of the equation to win out in the near term, influenced in the first half of 2012 at least by continuing global financial turbulence. This is likely to cause the RBA to drop interest rates once or twice in the first half of the year, and this should underpin our property markets………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The number of homes for sale in New Zealand’s three largest cities has fallen to its lowest level in four years, according to figures released today by property website Realestate.co.nz.
Its latest monthly report shows that 8,542 new listings came onto the market in January - 3 per cent up on the same month last year, but not at a level that keeps pace with buyer demand………………………………………..Full Article: Source