Property in Russia

Click here for Real Estate Quarterly from Russia this PDF contains

• Russian commercial property market surveys
• Analysis of market trends and forecasts
• Investments in real estate
• Coverage of main real estate and construction news and events
• Lists of reliable real estate service providers and construction companies

It also contains info on fast growing Kazakhstan I wonder if it mentions anything about Borat's house?

Maybe interest rates won't continue rising through next year?

Bloomberg News - ECB President Jean- Claude Trichet said an increase in interest rates as early as next month may not be the first of many

FT - Slowdown in consumer spending in France and Germany

The poll is closed!!

Click here for the video clip!!

Note: This clip might take a minute or two to download depending on your internet connection. If you don't have a broadband connection try using google video the quality isn't as good as the first link.

The poll result is available here if ya wanna see more, then let me know...

ECB to raise interest rates? Will it be in December or January?!?

Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) -- European Central Bank (ECB) council member Klaus Liebscher said inflation is a growing danger and the bank "can always bite," the clearest hint to date that an increase in interest rates may come as early as Dec 1st

Property Snippets

West Cork: 3/4 of an arce with planning permission for just €38,000

Planning permission for a 4 bed dormer 2 storey house. Property has complete privacy with a high fushia hedge bounding 3 sides. There are panoramic countryside an mountain views from the site. Doh! Sale agreed (not surprisingly!!)

West Cork: "56 Acre" Site With Outline Planning Permission for just €100,000

Very nice providing you are "local"

Australia: €186,000 for an investment property in 'Noosa Heads'

Central Bank Ireland: Assessing Interest-Rate Risk

Any increase in interest rates will have implications for the Irish economy, and more specifically for the stability and soundness of the Irish financial system.

Ouch!! The report goes on to say...

Over the medium-term horizon (three to seven years approx), however it is likely that the euro area economy will revive and will see a much higher equilibrium real rate of interest. A steady state growth rate of 3 per cent, combined with an inflation rate of about 2 per cent (consistent with the ECB’s inflation objective) and a risk premium of 1 per cent would add up to an equilibrium mortgage rate of approximately 6 per cent. With the typical variable mortgage rate of interest being around 3 per cent now (October 2005), an increase in interest rates to this putative equilibrium level would double the repayments burden. For highly indebted borrowers, this would be an intolerable burden and would almost certainly mean a sharp increase in the ratio of non-performing loans. The full report is available online here

BBC News: Virtual property market booming

Bless what will be next? A gamer who spent £13,700 on an island that exists only in a computer game has recouped his investment, according to the game developers. Click here for more

Main Macroeconomic Shocks affecting Major Economies since 1973

More from the Central Bank Ireland. According to the CBI over the last four decades, the volatility of output growth in six of the G-7 industrialised economies has fallen significantly. However, over the last four decades guess the one commodity that effected the output growth?


See page 4 of the report

Robert Shiller: "Our experience with home prices is that they slow down, stabilise and then fall."

Who is Robert Shiller? Well he once famously predicted the stock market crash of 2000. He's a Professor of Economics Yale University and has drawn parallels between the irrational exuberance of the stock market in the late 1990s and the boom in international property prices in recent years.

“The high valuation that the stock market attained at its peak in 2000, and the relatively high valuations that it still shows today, came about for no good reason,” he writes. “The high valuations that the prices of homes attain in many markets are coming about for no better reason.”

Shiller has produced an index of US home prices from 1890 to 2004. His amazing finding is that real home prices were only 66 per cent higher in 2004 compared with 1890.Thatworks out at a singularly unimpressive return of 0.4 per cent per year.

Shiller finds that pretty much all of the increase occurred in two periods: immediately after World War II and from 1998 onwards, immediately after the stock market boom. Click here for more

OECD believes Irish property market overvalued by 15%

Senior officials from the OECD and the Central Bank recently accepted that the Irish property market is overvalued by 15 per cent, according to a confidential account of their meeting produced by the Paris-based body. Central Bank officials, however, were reluctant to disclose such a figure in case it might destabilise the Irish property market.

At a meeting of senior officials from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Central Bank on the subject of the property market, Irish officials were informed of OECD research which suggests that Irish prices were 15 per cent overvalued. Click here for more