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Tuesday, August 20, 2019

This is Nuts. When's the Crash? Philippine Home Prices Have Gone Parabolic!

Philippine Home Prices have gone parabolic. Home prices are now 116.03% above their inflation-adjusted basis.


On a year-over-year basis, home prices have increased almost 19% since the first quarter  of 2018. Since the third quarter of 2016, home prices have climbed 38%. This pace is unsustainable and will not last.




Tuesday, August 13, 2019

New Zealand Real Estate Market: Is it a Unicorn? Prices Keep Rising While Other Markets Fall

House Prices in New Zealand continue to rise. In the first quarter of 2019, it rose 3.5% year-over-year.

This is in sharp contrast to its next door neighbor, Australia, where house prices in the first quarter of 2019 have dropped 7.7% year-over-year and are down 8.27% from their peak in the fourth quarter of 2017.

In real terms, New Zealand's uptrend in home prices seems to have accelerated and verges on the parabolic, vastly outpacing real disposable income.


The ratio of real house prices to real disposable income seems to have reached a permanently high plateau. The ratio is now 2.29 standard deviations from the mean of 76.82%, implying a probability of only 1.10% that the ratio will go even higher. In other words, it's firmly in bubble territory and seems to be staying there.








Sunday, August 11, 2019

Is Trump's Immigration Crackdown Finally Starting to Work?



I know one data point does not make a trend but it's starting to look like foreign born workers are starting lose out in a Trump economy. The proportion of employed foreign workers has been dropping for five months straight since they peaked in February 2019.


Tuesday, August 6, 2019

US Real Estate Market: This is a Slowdown and Not a Crash

US Home Sales Volumes (both New and Existing Homes) are down 3.82% since their peak in 2016 even as their median sales price reaches new highs.

This trend is borne out by the market for existing homes where prices are still going up as volumes dip, indicating fewer and fewer people can afford the higher home prices.


The opposite trend is true in the market for new homes. Volumes are up while prices are down a mere 2.60% from their peak in 2018.


But since the market for existing homes is almost eight times the size of the new homes market, the existing homes market trend is the dominant one.

Are we in for another housing crash. In a word, no. Not yet. This is just a slowdown and not a crash.