While we all expected house prices to slow and even fall in bubble markets like Ireland, the UK and Spain, it comes as news to me that prices are slowing in Germany as well. I was just in Germany this past month, and while there were economic concerns, the atmosphere felt entirely different than it does in a place like the US.
Today, the Telegraph reports that fears are growing about European house prices.
European property began to freeze over last year, with almost every European housing market taking a turn for the worse and prices tumbling fast in Ireland and Germany, new research shows.
The majority of housing markets slowed sharply last year, according to the annual European housing review from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Cyprus and Iceland were the only countries to buck the trend, while prices in Poland soared for another year, as money earned by immigrants in the UK poured back into Eastern Europe.
For me, the key will be to how these housing markets respond this summer and thereafter. The summer months are active months of buying and selling. If markets sales and prices stagnate during this critical time period all bets are off for those markets in the months afterwards.
So much for global de-coupling.