By: Christopher_Laird
Depression 1.0 started about 1929 and ended around 1940 with the entry of the US into WW2. Even then, many economists say that, had the US not entered WW2, the depression would have continued for years in the US, and the rest of the world.
Now, since WW2, the US and West entered a […]

By: Nadeem_Walayat
The credit crunch continues to ripple out across the global financial sector with banks outside of the US just as badly hit as those within the US. Today’s turn is the French Bank Natixis (Frances fourth largest bank) which declared that it has been hit hard by its exposure to the US subprime mortgage […]

From the looks of things at the newly built Aparta Hotel Residencia, you’d never know that it’s the high summer tourist season in Canet d’En Berenguer, a town of 5,000 just north of Valencia on Spain’s Mediterranean coast.The compound’s 308 apartments, completed this spring, are all unoccupied. Grass has started to sprout between the red […]

Spanish companies face much tougher credit conditions as a result of a dramatic change in perceptions of country risk, brought on by fear that Spain’s house price bubble is about to burst.
According to rating agency Standard & Poor’s, Spanish corporate debt is at an historic high point, totalling 106 per cent of gross domestic product […]

Javier Usua and Ruth Graneda never got out of the car when they visited Sanchinarro and Las Tablas, two of Madrid’s biggest new suburban developments. The concrete-block buildings and empty streets were all they needed to see…“We came to look at apartments but found ghost towns,” said Usua, a taxi driver. “You’d need to drive […]

Ghost towns have started cropping up in Spain as a decade-long housing boom ends
Javier Usua and Ruth Graneda never got out of the car when they visited Sanchinarro and Las Tablas, two of Madrid’s biggest new suburban developments. The concrete-block buildings and empty streets were all they needed to see.
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Shrewsbury Road, in the well-heeled southern suburbs of Dublin, typifies the frenzy of the Irish housing market over the last decade.  A house here once sold for EUR55 million  ($74 million) just so the new owner could demolish it and build two new properties in its place, as Ireland’s economy boomed.
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A Spanish bank repossessed a house and put it up for auction complete with the mummified body of the former owner who had missed her mortgage payments, newspaper El Pais reported on Wednesday.
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Panic selling of Spanish real estate stocks this week sent shudders through property markets worldwide. As investors bet that Spain’s 10-year construction boom is finally over, we take a look at global property hotspots to see who will be the next casualty.
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As reported by the BBC, Spain hit by property crash fears on the back of the lowest growth figures for 8 years. Oversupply of housing is leading to declining prices, with some 800, 000 newbuild and demand of only 600,000
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“A week after a sectorwide selloff… Spain’s biggest property stocks closed down Monday an average of 2.0%… house builder Parquesol Inmobiliaria y Proyectos…(- 5.5%)… Property investment firm Renta (RTACF) (-2.4%)… Commercial and Residential property investor Inmobiliaria Urbas, (-3.5%)… Fears… that Spain’s property bubble was about to burst were sparked by news of creative accounting at […]

“Spanish Central Bank: Spanish home prices have more than tripled over the past decade… Real estate lenders have increasingly targeted the country’s burgeoning population of poor, young immigrants, who very often have short and/or sketchy credit histories… A striking 98% of mortgages in Spain [are] structured as variable-rate loans…
More than 700,000 housing units [were started] […]

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti economic commentator Mikhail Khmelev) - Investing in real estate is one of the most attractive and profitable ways of making money everywhere.
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GERMAN CONSTRUCTION MARKET RESEARCH REPORT
After researching the German construction market development and taking into account various other factors the following conclusions can be drawn from MBD’s report:
MARKET REVIEW 2000-2004:
By far the largest construction market in Europe is found in Germany, which is estimated to have accounted for some 21% of output in 2004, with […]

Germany the best place in Europe to buy property because of low prices and sky high yeilds.
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Housing markets across Europe have strengthened over the past year, with all the major market indicators; house prices, transactions, mortgages and housebuilding, all showing strong growth, according to RICS’ European Housing Review 2005

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More than six years have passed since the real estate market began its dizzying ascent. Over the past six months, the market has seemed about to explode, without actually doing so. The main reason usually cited for the boom in bricks and mortar has been weakness in the stock market.