Recent content by amiga

I did a look on statistics from Spanish Ministry of Housing and according to it, only around 2% of housing transactions were done by non-residents/foreigners. Taking account also residents-foreigners, it's around 13% of transactions, what is already quite a lot. Anyway, I suppose the demand in...

UK: house price increased to average 213 807 GBP in Dec 2007, what is real increase of value by 144% compared to 1995, when housing market recovered from 90s bubble burst. See e.g. http://www.cml.org.uk/cml/statistics covering 98% of market, or indexes of nationwide, Halifax, ... which cover...

Seems ARM are the most dangerous form of any interest rate form. In UK there were "discount rates" for few years, what is moreless the same as ARM. Fortunately discount rates it became less popular in recent years. In 2000, 45% of new mortgages were discounted, while in 2007 only 7%. For the...

I can't sleep for the terrible affordability! I printed out few charts showing affordability, delinquencies, house prices for UK and Spain. See attached pdf. Affordability is so extremely tight, that maybe for first time in history we may see the delinquencies increasing despite growing...

OK, but the affordability is the weak also in UK, Spain, or other countries as in US. As a conclusion from the discussion I see that there's going to be a GLOBAL HOUSING troubles. And GLOBAL FUNDING troubles. Anyway, I still think that Europe is somewhat better as the securitization market...

Jayford: Yes, I also think so. Just I want to ask, to understand the mortgage market better. Why people would need to refinance? I think in current circumstances people are going to avoid it. Although the base rate was cut in UK, still the house price decline will cause not very good...

Ah, I haven't heard about the renting houses owned by government. Hm, yes, it's really possible to use it for avoiding foreclosures. However, I suppose, it must be done in smaller extent otherwise the borrowers get used to it and would get into more risky mortgages later. I'm wondering whether...

Having the experience with US housing, what do you think about UK, Spain and other markets? These countries have much in common with US half a year ago: 1. house prices dramatically increasing, recent data point to slow down or even decline in prices 2. risk of high inflation, interest...