Tuesday, May 10, 2011

The Globe of Bubbles!?: U.K. vs U.S. Home Prices April 2011

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 with boondoggles that quickly reveal themselves as being mere temporary distortions to a trend the remains "organically" in decline.

Comparing the S&P/Case-Shiller (CSI) index to that of the two popular U.K. home prices indices you can see that while all three indices were showing some significant signs of deceleration in recent months, now both UK series are showing some increases.

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.