Having bought a property in Durban last January for £35000, I went over there for 5 months and have just returned after selling it for £70000.
Thats great! but it is definately a bubble(balloon), the average wage being approx £250/month.
they think that it is unique according to the estate agents, and the price they should be.

The builder are building like mad, massive shortage of property and the bulk of it being sold to BRITISH fools from equity release, oh and Mark Thatcher.
Once British House prices freefall as they are the money will immediately dry up overnight as it will in Spain France etc... and spending dries up as it will after Jan 2005 the ********** will deepen quickly.
What will cash strapped Brits do when the money gets tight, try to sell their foreign investments- Then the snowball efect starts increasing rapidly.
There is probably a couple of countries where there isn't a bubble and safe to invest, but personally i'm going to carry on renting (after selling up in OCT 03) and watch this one because I reckon -45% is becoming more of a certainty in Britain.
Personally I feel that a majority of the global House price bubble is in Equity release from British Houses, any comment?

[quote=consa,Dec 26 2004, 08:51 AM]
Having bought a property in Durban last January for £35000, I went over there for 5 months and have just returned after selling it for £70000.
Thats great! but it is definately a bubble(balloon), the average wage being approx £250/month.
they think that it is unique according to the estate agents, and the price they should be.
The builder are building like mad, massive shortage of property and the bulk of it being sold to BRITISH fools from equity release, oh and Mark Thatcher.
Once British House prices freefall as they are the money will immediately dry up overnight as it will in Spain France etc... and spending dries up as it will after Jan 2005 the ********** will deepen quickly.
What will cash strapped Brits do when the money gets tight, try to sell their foreign investments- Then the snowball efect starts increasing rapidly.
There is probably a couple of countries where there isn't a bubble and safe to invest, but personally i'm going to carry on renting (after selling up in OCT 03) and watch this one because I reckon -45% is becoming more of a certainty in Britain.
Personally I feel that a majority of the global House price bubble is in Equity release from British Houses, any comment?

I fully agree!

You raise an interesting point.......just how much of the World's property bubble can be attributed to the UK?

Certainly prices of property in Spain and France must be affected to some degree by the Brits buying up any old place, South Africa......I duno, but I'll take your world for it that many buyers are from the UK.

Places like Australia, NZ & the US are very unlikely to have been affected by UK property prices, but they are all 'Anglo Saxon' at the end of the day eh?

When do you expect to see the effect of a UK property price crash making an impact on Spain, France 7 South Africa?

Cheers.

Why do you say that? I think the US bubble is largely homegrown as a result of lax monetary policy, but certainly the house price bubbles in New Zealand and Australia have been fuelled by English money: case in point, couple down the road sold up their house in London and bought 10 houses in Oz with the proceeds (and moved over there as well). Same with New Zealand, especially Auckland. Think about it, they speak the same language, have the same culture: they are MORE open to the effect of English money, not less!




Exactly. Which is why they are MORE likey to be affected by English money, not less.




In the last crash it took about 2 years for the UK HPC to spread completely to the holiday home destinations.

Thanks for your reply,
I agree, its lax monetary policy globally give or take a few places.
Think about it, we brits have the strongest currency and therefore our buying power is/was overwhelming overseas.
This bubble is quite unique on its global effects and it doesn't take much input from the UK into property to start a bubble, the locals then suddenly think, hang on the property prices are rising and the same old thing happens.
Cape town has been overwhelmed by brits, in fact Boulders Rock(really exclusive area)is 90% british owned and is unaffordable for majority of South africans.
Its the crime that keeps South Africa Cheap and that is not changing.
Look at Spain and France, Stagnant waiting to see what happens in the UK, South Africa won't be far behind probably stagnate in first 6 months 2005 the start to freefall as the UK.
When I sold my UK Property 100% profit in Oct 03 it was purely because I believe the market peaked in 2002 and if someone will give you 100% profit in 4 years TAKE IT, "YOU ONLY GET IN LIFE WHAT YOU WORK FOR".

I also bought a run down house in spain last Jan £25K not for investment but to make a holiday home, this is valued at £35K but even if it halved its value it would be a loss i have accounted for (in fact even if it went to 0 it wouldn't matter) Ispoke to an agent over there last week and he told me the market has gone dead(Malaga).

Will everyone just up and leave the UK when the s##t hits the fan?




Looks pretty dodgy everywhere,

I would agree that there are thousands of Brits emmigrating to Australia & NZ each year, but to be honest I can't really see how this relatively small number of British people selling their houses and buy a couple of place 'down-under' is going to have much of an effect on the general property prices there.

You could equally argue, that there are as many Asian immigrants flooding into Australia......they would have just as much money, (if not more), than the average bloke from the UK. So why not state that the Australian property bubble is a result of Asian immigration?

Frankly, I go back to this 'Angle Saxon' thing, in that each of these Anglo Saxon nations, (UK, Oz, NZ, Ireland, USA), all have property bubbles........but I can't see the UK as being the root cause of the Worlds property bubble?

Still, I would certainly agree that the UK does have some impact, certainly to a large degree in Spain, France and other parts of Europe and to a limited degree to Oz, NZ and Canada.

I would also totally agree with you about the 2 years required for a UK HPC to filter down to those other parts of the World where people from the UK have bought property.

We live in interesting times eh?

Don't suppose we will ever find out where the global bubble's roots are,I expect there will be a lot of differences of opinions on that one, I would put my money on the UK(But not a lot) it could be US, China -I'm going to start a new Topic on the main discussion see what other people think.

I think the house price bubbles are particularly acute in these countries because they all share a common language, and so ideas are able to spread easily between one country and another (ideas like "property never goes down" or "property is my pension" ) whereas in other countries these property mania ideas are kept out by the natural language barrier.

Spoke to a friend in South Africa today, he says property is just not selling and the market has gone very quiet!!

I'm in Cape Town at the moment.

Discovered that property loan interest rates went from 16.5% to 11% within the space of 6 months from July 2003 to Dec 2003.

I feel the SA property bubble is a direct result of this.

I went to a couple of banks to find out how much I could borrow to buy a property and they both offerred me an amount equal to 5.65 times by annual UK salary !!!!

Lax lending is responsible for the boom here, pure and simple. I will not be buying that's for sure.

Funnily enough all my family and friends think that property has ballooned here because of the World Cup which will be held here in 2010 !!!! I ask you !!!

I despair.