Wednesday, June 09, 2010

The Globe of Bubbles!?: U.K. vs U.S. Home Prices May 2010

One of the more interesting and most dramatic features of the housing bubble days was how pervasive and broad the mania was, encompassing a multitude of regional housing markets across the United States and around the globe.

Today, post-housing crash, we are still seeing property markets continuing to move together somewhat as governments around the globe scramble to prop up quickly deflating housing assets.

Comparing the S&P/Case-Shiller (CSI) index to that of the two popular U.K. home prices indices you can see that while the CSI has slowed recently, the two U.K. series (more timely data) is showing a continuation of the expansion that began in early 2009.

Is the U.K. markets foreshadowing a stronger trend in U.S. prices?

The following chart (click for dynamic full-screen version) shows S&P/Case-Shiller Composite-10 series along with the Nationwide and Halifax U.K. series.