Global Housing Cycles

Date Published 9/12/2012
Author Marja Hoek-Smit
Theme
Country

IMF and BIS have collected Global House Price information on 52 countries (Go to HOFINET property price cycle page for more info), and are continuously expanding the number of countries for which information is collected. IMF’s Deniz Igan and Prakash produced a Working Paper and summary “Global House Price Watch” which explain and show the results of their Global House Price work. They produced two types of indices: an equally-weighted index and a GDP-weighted index. Results for the first quarter of 2012, show no sign of uptick in the Global House Price Indices. However, price developments across countries vary considerably. The data on houseprices relative to income and relative to rent are still well above historical averages in most countries, indicating that there is a potential for further corrections. The authors’ comparison of actual house-price changes with predictions from an econometric model show that for many countries house-price declines have been close to model predictions, but for a considerable number of countries house prices are still well of predicted values by the model.



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