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All statistics I've seen show a fall in median house prices over the past year, and massive drops in the volumes, both signs of things not going quite so swimmingly.

I'll dig up numbers.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Sat Mar 3rd, 2007 at 05:17:24 AM EST
Drops in volume are bad... a nice little graph about house price and transaction volumes :



Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Sat Mar 3rd, 2007 at 09:58:41 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Interesting graph, and a little complicated.  Just to make sure I am reading it right?,,,,:  It seems to show that in Paris, housing became more affordable in the early 1990's, housing being measured as a ratio of appartment prices to disposable income.  The ratio fell steadily from 1990 to 1996.  Then leveled off in 1996 to 1998.  And it has been climbing very steadily from 1998 to 2005, with very large increases in 2004 and 2005.  It's a little hard to read the scale, but it would appear the price index was something like 130 in 2003 and 165 in 2005, which would say the "affordability index" increased 27% over that two year period.

Is that your interpretation?

by wchurchill on Sat Mar 3rd, 2007 at 12:38:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Yes.

Will the market bear a drop in people willing to purchase in Paris? It's beginning to be very hard buying in Paris.

I know that where I work - IT engineers in a large bank, couples can't buy a two bedroom apartment in Paris.

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Sat Mar 3rd, 2007 at 04:20:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Is it true that a lot of people rent in Paris rather than buy.  I don't know a lot of people who live in central Paris, but the ones that I do rent.  I was under the impression that they were in appartments that were to some degree rent controlled, so there is great incentive for them to stay in their place.

What a wonderful city, of course.  I can understand how prices would be bid up there.  But of course it's a huge problem if you work there to not have affordable housing.

by wchurchill on Sat Mar 3rd, 2007 at 05:14:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]
There is some sort of rent control - rent cannot rise higher than a government statistic on construction prices, for a length of 3 years.

Also, renters are very thouroughly protected by law - it's impossible to evict a renter unless at the end of a 3 years term, and then the owner must warn 6 months beforehand.

Central Paris is not much attractive to children, and thus not attractive to buyers - most are likely to end up living in the suburbs or the rest of France when they get children.

The big problem in Paris is that Paris "intra muros", which is the size of Manhattan in a New York -sized city, is the only part that is well connected with mass transit. So the suburb are not very attractive.

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Sat Mar 3rd, 2007 at 06:18:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Are you working for BNP Paribas by any chance? (I am :).
by Laurent GUERBY on Sun Mar 4th, 2007 at 02:37:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Nope, I work for the one which is red, black and rising :) (Although the amount of IT types going from BNP to SG and back, or to CaLyon, is impressive, considering that IT knowledge is not very bank-specific...)

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Sun Mar 4th, 2007 at 05:59:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The salient feature of the graph is that it took a year for the volumes to collapse by 50% but seven years after that for the price level to go down from about 170 to about 100, where it hit maximum volume.

Another feature of the graph is that it goes mostly counter-clockwise [as expected, if you think about it: volume increase -> price growth -> volume decrease -> price decrease] and that when it goes up or to the left it can do it straight, and [the first point I raised] quite fast in the case of going left [rapid contraction at constant price, halting expansion and price decline, sustained price growth at maximum capacity].

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Mar 4th, 2007 at 04:13:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]
to me the salient point is it's pretty darn expensive today to live in Paris or London (see Jerome's charts below).  It's interesting that his affordability index shows things are much more affordable in the States.  That has usually seemed true to me.  When I shop for groceries or clothes, it always seems to me the prices are far better in the US--not very scientific I admit.
by wchurchill on Sun Mar 4th, 2007 at 02:29:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
There are definitely drops in volume.  There is no question there is a housing slowdown--everyone has been predicting one for close to a year now, and we have been certainly in it for a while.

The question is will it be a housing crash, with prices dropping 20% or more and the impact carrying over to start an overall recession.  Or is it more in the vein of the ups and downs of the housing market.

This is not a report I normally use, but it just appeared in my regular headline search of business and investing news.  I am as I said a little suprised with this data, in that it doesn't show some drop in pricing.  I would be very interested in other data, of course.

by wchurchill on Sat Mar 3rd, 2007 at 12:04:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]
When sales volume drops, continued growth in mean sales price is consistent with a fall in mean market valuation. A seller who expects rapid appreciation but receives only shockingly low offers will be unlikely to transact. Because of this expectation-based selection effect on transactions, sales prices can continue to rise (though at a decelerating rate), despite a drop in mean market valuation. A decline in sales volume despite an abundance of would-be sellers would suggest that this bias mechanism is operating.

There is some spiral causation here: Reports that sales prices still edging up will reinforce a seller's judgement that low offers should be rejected, which in turn will bias the statistics upward.

Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.

by technopolitical on Sat Mar 3rd, 2007 at 09:04:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]
yes, I agree with you, and I think your description of this process is an excellent one.  It is what happens in a housing slowdown.  

But a housing crash, is a step beyond a slowdown.  Some people are in a position where they don't have to sell, in a housing slowdown, and they just take their house off the market.  So unit sales drop, but prices don't.  A housing crash lasts longer, and eventually people have to sell, and to sell they have to lower their price.  I've been in housing crashes, and condo prices fall 30--40%, while home prices fall 20--25%.  And it's possible that this still may turn into the housing crash that Jerome and others have been predicting.  I'm just surprised that this far into the slowdown, that we haven't seen even a dip in housing prices.  So this enforces my belief that we are not going to have a "crash", but simply a "slowdown", and perhaps a milder slowdown than I, with my optimistic outlook, would have thought.  and no housing led recession.

by wchurchill on Sun Mar 4th, 2007 at 02:20:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Regarding predictions of a crash (as distinct from predicting the time of a crash), a good pair of questions may be:

  1. Is there a major housing bubble?
  2. Have major housing bubbles consistently ended in crashes?

Regarding (1), A friend of mine who experienced the Hong Kong bubble (and crash) says that the bubble pattern in the U.S. is very strong. For example, aside from conventional statistics, one sees many people leaving professional-level jobs to become real estate agents. It is hard to see what new, real factors now justify this reallocation and re-training of skilled labour.

Also regarding (1), a striking graph (thumbnail):

Regarding (2), an example of a crashless end to a comparable situation would be interesting.

Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.

by technopolitical on Sun Mar 4th, 2007 at 03:39:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]
look at Jerome's last graph on housing affordability, UK and US.  How would you answer your two questions for the UK?

would you expect the UK and US housing markets to behave differently?

by wchurchill on Sun Mar 4th, 2007 at 04:07:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I'd answer that it looks like the UK had a very nice bubble-and-crash in the late 1980s, and is now in the bubble phase of another, bigger one. (Real-estate crashes have less precipitate slopes than stock market crashes, of course, because of illiquidity, the inertia of occupancy, etc., etc.)

It's odd that the graphs compare UK means to US medians. The U.S. National Association of Realtors no doubt prefers the appearance of graphs that use the median.

Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.

by technopolitical on Mon Mar 5th, 2007 at 04:45:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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