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7 March 2011 | Property holding up...

 

According to data from the REIV, this weekend maintained a similar trend to previous weeks in the Melbourne market with a total of 565 homes from the 852 auctions selling, resulting in a clearance rate of 66 per cent. (Previous week of 65%)

Despite a third of homes not selling at auction, many real estate agents reported strong sales returning results well above their reserve prices.

U.S. Markets tell a different story…

According to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Index, house prices in eleven of the biggest US cities have hit new lows, showing a monthly fall in December in all but two of the 20 cities it tracks.

The continued pressure on housing prices has been widely seen by economists as a major drag on economic recovery.

In the once red-hot property market of Las Vegas, home prices fell to levels last seen in 1999, burdened by foreclosures and an unemployment rate of 14.5%.   

As quoted by the Index, speculators also built furiously in Phoenix, Arizona, and Miami during the boom and those cities have been hit hard.  Cities hit hard by foreclosures have seen some of the worst falls as people held off purchases hoping for lower prices.

The US national home price index declined 3.9% during the fourth quarter of 2010. It was down 4.1% from the fourth quarter of 2009, the deepest price fall since the third quarter of 2009, when prices were falling at an 8.6% annual rate.

 

David McCleery