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Official maintains lower interest rates will help the market recover faster

Although there is no shortage of people looking to buy property in Dubai, it is the steep mortgage rates that is hampering their decision, believes a real estate expert.

“Interest rates are still too high here and we can definitely say it is one of the constraints. It will probably fall… That will obviously help the market to recover,” Craig Plumb, Head of Research-Mena, Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), told Emirates 24|7.

http://www.emirates247.com/property/dub … 3-1.439017

Residential property prices are likely to continue to drift sideways this year, impacted by poor economic growth, according to bond originator, ooba.

But ooba chief executive Saul Geffen said with interest rates remaining at historically low levels, which may drop further in 2012, home buyers and home owners would continue to benefit.

http://www.iol.co.za/business/business- … -1.1218009

Overall home sales, median sales prices and the average number of homes in the local market inventory all declined in 2011, according to a year-end real estate report from the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors.

In 2011, there were 2,300 homes sold in the region, down 1.5 percent from 2010, but up slightly from 2009 levels, according to the report. The median sales price was $245,000, down 3.9 percent from last year.

http://www2.dailyprogress.com/business/ … r-1626558/

As we began 2012, there were only 56 single-family Santa Monica residences listed in the Multiple Listing Service (M.L.S.), which is 48 percent lower than the same time last year.  There were 234 Santa Monica homes sold in 2011 (which is two percent lower than this time last year), and there are currently 35 homes in escrow in Santa Monica.

Median sale prices are currently $1,450,000, which is down six percent from the same period last year.

http://www.smmirror.com/#mode=single&view=33925

Singapore, the tiny trade-dependent island state, has long kept open doors for overseas capital and labor to help power its economy. But as private-home prices here keep scaling fresh peaks despite a series of tightening moves, authorities are swinging the cleaver upon the focal point of many citizens’ ire – foreigners.

The government Wednesday tightened rules on the private-residential market for the fifth time in two years, with an emphasis on overseas buyers.

http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2011/1 … _news_blog

It's been a funny old year 2011, with the funniest unfunny thing that happened being the epicentre of the international financial crisis shifting from the United States to the United Europe, sorry the European Union, no, sorry, the Eurozone, which is the countries within the European Union that adopted the Euro.

European Union isn't really the European Union anymore anyway.

http://www.write-about-property.com/art … 12-746.php

Soho China Ltd. agreed to buy a 50% stake in a high-profile but pricey plot of Shanghai real estate for four billion yuan (US$632 million) in a sign of how China's real-estate crackdown is creating opportunities for the strongest property developers even as it pressures the rest.

Many of China's property developers have been forced to sell assets to raise cash and pay off debt as Beijing's two-year campaign to bring down real-estate prices starts to show results.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 … 13024.html

Sales of both new and existing homes in Beijing plummeted in 2011 as a result of the government's efforts to cool down the runaway property market.

New home sales in Beijing dropped 18.4 percent to 90,605 units in 2011 from a year ago, the Beijing News reported Monday, citing data from the city's housing regulator.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china … 339541.htm

2011 has not been a great year for the housing market, and one expert predicts more of the same in 2012.

American Family Radio financial expert Dan Celia says a huge amount of inventory is still coming into the market by way of foreclosures.

"We see new construction continuing, actually increasing [and] getting even a little better," he points outs. "That's going to put more inventories on the markets. So, I don't see housing moving."

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Defau … id=1505276

Matthew Green, the head of research at CB Richard Ellis, has inadvertently coined a new phrase that may turn out to be the slogan for the global property industry this year.

After struggling last year, the best the housing industry can anticipate is "pockets of positiveness", he says.

Mr Green is referring to Dubai, but he might as well be talking about the global picture.

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalco … rty-market

A poll of leading economists yesterday found that the majority expected Europe to return to recession next year – which would severely undermine this country’s economic fortunes.

The FTSE 100 index of Britain’s biggest firms yesterday closed down more than 5 per cent lower than it started 2011. In total, £90.5 billion has been wiped off the value of shares in the past year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ … -warn.html