Category Archives: Overseas Property

UK home market struggles to sustain recovery

Posted on 15 Oct 2009 | Comments Off on UK home market struggles to sustain recovery

Lobby group says transactions will remain low unless lending picks up

The UK housing market will struggle to sustain a recovery unless lending picks up, the head of Britain’s main homebuilding lobby group said.

‘It’s potentially quite fragile,’ Stewart Baseley, chairman of the Home Builders Federation, said in an interview in London on Tuesday. ‘Without mortgage finance, the housing market will continue to be at very low levels of transactions. It’s difficult to describe that as recovery.’

House prices have fallen 13 per cent from their peak two years ago and may drop as much as 30 per cent, Fitch Ratings said in a report last week. Banks are granting about half as many loans every month than at the end of 2007. Lenders remain constrained by a lack of capital and are looking to reduce leverage, Bank of England deputy governor Charles Bean said on Tuesday. Continue reading →

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Japan’s property sector looking upJapan’s property sector looking up

Posted on 15 Oct 2009 | Comments Off on Japan’s property sector looking upJapan’s property sector looking up

The number of new apartments put up for sale in the Tokyo area rose 26.2 per cent in September from a year earlier for the first rise in 25 months, a property market research firm said yesterday.

The data is a bright sign for Japan’s property market, which had been hit hard as Japan was stuck in its worst recession since World War Two.

New units put up for sale in the Tokyo area totalled 3,063 in September, the Real Estate Economic Institute said.

The contract ratio in the Tokyo metropolitan area rose to 73.9 per cent from 69.3 per cent in August, the institute said.

The ratio, the number of units sold as a percentage of units put on the market, is used to judge the market’s health and a ratio below 70 suggests a weak market where consumers are reluctant to buy.

Source : Business Times – 15 Oct 2009

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