property

The National Association of Realtors® announced today that existing home sales dropped a hefty 7% in January, adding further evidence that the resurgence of the housing sector is stalling. Wednesday, we saw a very soft new home sales…

This comes today via Reuters: The Commerce Department said sales dropped 11.2 percent to a 309,000 unit annual rate, the lowest level since records started in January 1963, from an upwardly revised 348,000 in December. It was the…

The December 2009 data for the widely followed S&P/Case-Shiller Indices were released this morning.  The data are showing a mixed picture. On the one hand, the unadjusted numbers are down on both a month-to-month and year-over-year…

Xie believes the Chinese economy is in no near-term threat. But he does see problems down the line because of a property bubble. He recommends even more monetary tightening to reduce the ill effects of this bubble. Xie comments on the U.S.…

According to data released today by the Halifax, UK house prices are now up almost 10% above the levels of just 9 months ago.  Low interest rates have certainly been a big factor in the rise, with Nationwide’s figure showing an even…

Below is a Jim Chanos video on China now making the rounds in the financial blogosphere.  Chanos says that most financial bubbles are the result of excess credit creation and believes that is exactly what we are witnessing in…

If I could relate the concept of malinvestment to business administration I would do it using the concept of depreciation.  Depreciation is a term used in accounting and business to represent a writedown of a real asset on a…

A reader who invests in emerging markets sent me an interesting article from the South China Morning Post. Excerpts are below. China's economic stimulus programme has accelerated the already aggressive pace of urban development in the…

When I wrote about house prices six months ago, I said: house prices are bottoming because we have seen a trend in year-on-year changes from January through May that looks likely to continue into the present day.  If this trend (of…

Jim Chanos was on CNBC talking about, amongst other things, China.  And while he is bearish on China, the quote that jumped out at me was the one in the title. He is bearish on China because of an unprecedented credit-induced bubble…