Sometimes even us seasoned investors are amazed by how different some of the international markets are compared to the New Zealand Real Estate Market.

Being the owner of a $2.5 million dollar Penthouse I often take a peek at what is selling around the world in the Penthouse market.

Just a few days ago the herald ran an article featuring what is now the most expensive flat in Britain. It falls a long way short of the most expensive apartment or flat in the world but the price tag is pretty impressive to say the least and is many many times more expensive than New Zealands most expensive apartment.

Here is the article….

A three-storey penthouse overlooking Hyde Park has been sold for £136 million ($277 million), becoming the most expensive flat bought in Britain.

An unnamed buyer, using lawyers in Ukraine, has bought two apartments in the newly opened One Hyde Park development in Knightsbridge. They have been knocked into one to create a 2300sq m penthouse with a wine cellar and access to room service at the neighbouring Mandarin Oriental hotel, documents filed last week at the Land Registry show.

The price eclipses the value of landmark properties elsewhere in the world. In Beverly Hills, the 1.5ha Hearst mansion, where John and Jacqueline Kennedy honeymooned, is on the market for US$95 million ($119 million). And in Manhattan, luxury apartments in the Plaza hotel overlooking Central Park cost a little over US$50 million.

One Hyde Park has been developed by thirtysomething brothers Nick and Christian Candy, who began their property career with a £6000 loan from their grandmother and have been involved in other luxury projects, including an aborted plan to build on the site of London’s Chelsea Barracks.

Nick Candy said 45 flats in the building had sold so far for a total of £963 million – an average of £22 million each: “No one else has achieved that – not just in London, but anywhere in the world,” he said.

The £136 million sale was agreed to several years ago, but has only just been documented.

For the same amount, the buyer could have bought 1564 houses in Burnley, the Lancashire town recently named as Britain’s cheapest with an average property price of £87,194.

The penthouse was bought as an empty shell, and the buyer is spending £60 million fitting it out.

Neighbours include the Kazakh copper billionaire Vladimir Kim, the Prime Minister of Qatar and the Irish developer Ray Grehan. Nick Candy believes buyers are investing in London because of unrest in nations such as Egypt, Bahrain and Syria.

- OBSERVER
By Andrew Clark

This article demonstrates that in most parts of the world, the inner city markets and Penthouses at that are a sort after commodity, something that is rare and treasured, unlike here in New Zealand where Real Estate agents like to call anything that is on the top floor a Penthouse, whether it is a 35m2 studio with 7 other studios on the top floor or a 4oom2 true Penthouse encompassing the entire top floor.

As the New Zealand apartment market matures this will change.

Should You Buy, Sell or Rent?

It’s not surprising with everything we’ve written about house prices in recent weeks, your editor has gotten plenty of emails asking for personal advice.

Unfortunately, I can’t give individual personal advice.

But what I can do is repeat what I’ve written here several times before.

If your finances aren’t stretched – and you believe you’ll keep your job – then unless you want to lock in a profit on your home, you may be better off not selling… even if it means seeing the value of your home fall.

On the other hand, if you’re paying out a high proportion of your income on mortgage repayments and you’re concerned about servicing the loan, then you should seriously consider selling up and getting out.

That could mean renting somewhere. Or if you think prices will fall, but you’re not entirely convinced, then you should at least think about moving to a smaller or cheaper home.

At least that way you’re reducing your debt level and you still get to stay in the property market – even though the value will fall.

Is it worth it?

If you’re an investor, there’s no getting around it. You’ve got to do the numbers.

Are you really making as much on that investment property as you think you are? Is it really worth financing a property for another ten years with an interest-only loan?

Look at the numbers. For most property investors it means sacrificing income now in favour of capital gains in the future.

If there aren’t any future capital gains then why are you sacrificing current income?

Not only that, but you also need to work out the comparative returns on other investments.

As I wrote on Monday, it’s amazing to even say it, but right now there’s a greater chance of losing money on a property investment than there is on small-cap mining stocks!

It shouldn’t be that way. But it is.

And there’s even a chance you’ll be better off sticking cash in the bank rather than going through the hassle of owning and maintaining an investment property.

I won’t go through all the numbers again, but you should read Monday’s Money Morning to give you some idea of the capital gains needed to make housing investment profitable.

And remember, the actual return on housing is worse because we didn’t include all the fees for buying and maintaining the property.

But at least it’ll give you a starting point.

Finally, as an investor you need to figure out future returns. It’s all very well to say, “In the long run property always goes up”. But who says?

For the most part property investors are looking at a short timeframe of ten or twenty years and assuming that’s representative of the long term.

Yes, share prices can fall

We could do the same thing by showing you a chart of the US S&P500 stock index between 1988 and 2000:

Source: Google Finance

If that was all the data we gave you, and you knew nothing else about the stock market, I’m sure I could convince you that share prices always go up.

But you’re not dumb. And I’m not a crook. Because now I’ll show you the S&P500 from 1988 until today:

Source: Google Finance

Now you can see the stock market doesn’t just go up. It goes down as well.

But if all anyone told you was that share prices only go up, and if the only period they’d shown you was a period when prices were rising, then you’d probably believe them. Right?

Let me put it this way: the next twenty years for house prices will look like the right-hand side of the above chart rather than the left-hand side – that is prices rising and falling, not just rising.

Look, the spruiking from the property guys is no different to the spruiking from the stockbrokers and fund managers of a few years ago.

Between 2003 and 2007 brokers told clients stock prices couldn’t fall due to the weight of money argument. It was the idea that with all the money pouring into super funds every day, month and year, it would provide a permanent floor under stock prices.

In other words, there would always be buyers of stock, regardless of what the economy was doing.

Not surprisingly, it turned out to be complete nonsense. Yet the weight of money argument isn’t so different from the population growth argument made by property spruikers.

They claim that with all the new people coming to Australia, it provides a floor under house prices.

What both arguments ignore is the human element. The mainstream and spruikers always view the market and market behaviour as though it’s a uniform reaction. But it’s not. The market – any market – is a collection of individuals acting in their own self-interest.

In the case of the stockmarket it’s individuals managing their own portfolio of shares… some are beginners taking a $500 punt here or there, others are investment “whales” punting $1 million a time…

And then there’s a whole bunch in between.

In addition you’ve got the fund managers. They’re investing for two reasons. One is to try and make money – or not lose money – for their clients. But they have another motive too: that’s to make their own money by charging fees or commissions.

If they make bad investment decisions, there’s a chance they won’t earn as much.

That means, you can have as much money coming into the market as you like, but it doesn’t negate individual actions. It’s those individual actions that cause prices to change.

I’ve used the example before, if no-one sells a share the price won’t go down. But there’s no cartel of share owners on the market. That means if owners believe others will sell then they’ll try to get out first. That can force the price down.

It’s the same on the buy side. If prospective buyers think other buyers will pay more for a share, then a buyer will be keen to get in quickly… that can force the price up.

Sellers bring out more sellers

Property investing is no different. I’ll repeat that… property investing is no different. For the past twenty to thirty years, prospective buyers and current owners have rightly predicted that people will pay more for property and so prices keep going up.

The more they’ve risen, the more owners and buyers believe prices will rise further.

But now the market has turned. Buyers don’t believe prices will always go up. That means sellers are starting to bail out. The proof of that is in the huge increase in houses up for sale.

The knock-on effect will be especially hard for investors who rely solely on price appreciation. They’ll now have to figure out if they can finance a property that’s returning a negative income yield and zero (at best) price growth.

Odds are they can’t.

And if owner-occupier buyers see the market flattening and then falling, what’s the rush for them to buy? There isn’t. Not until they figure that prices have fallen to a level where it’s worth buying.

But what about the shortage of homes and land? That’s simply not true. Falling prices will increase supply as developers fall over each other to sell their land at a cheaper price to other developers.

And sellers will decrease their asking price as they fall over each other to sell before prices fall further.

Just like in any other market.

The disappearing shortage

That’s when the lies about a housing shortage are revealed. Funnily enough, spruikers in California thought there was a housing shortage too. Over a year ago we printed an excerpt from an online community newspaper from 2006.

Here’s the quote:

“The Californian Building Industry Association (CBIA) continues to express alarm over what it calls an ongoing housing crisis in Southern California. Alan Nevin, the association’s chief economist, projected in a 2006 CBIA Housing Forecast that only 185,000 to 205,000 building permits will be granted this year, far short of the 240,000 new homes needed each year.”

“Southern California has been experiencing a massive population boom in recent years and it’s believed that 6 million new residents will be living in the region by 2020. The population increase, coupled with the housing shortage, has the CBIA worried that it will be increasingly difficult for first-time homebuyers to find a moderately priced unit.”

The supply picture in California today? Well, according to a recent report in the Christian Science Monitor:

“By the CoreLogic analysis, the states with the largest ‘supply’ of distressed properties (measured in months it would take to sell them) are New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland, Florida, Delawere, Georgia, Connecticut, Alabama, California, Washington, and Michigan.”

Oh dear. So much for a housing shortage. Just as houses “appeared” from nowhere to flood the market in California, houses will “appear” from nowhere in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth too.

Anyway, back to the point. As an owner-occupier, the really important thing – before you do anything – is to rethink how you view your home. You need to forget about it as an investment. You need to just think about it as a place to live.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll soon figure out whether it’s worth paying a few thousand dollars a month in mortgage repayments for a house that may not increase in value.

Then you can decide whether to switch to a smaller home with smaller repayments or rent… either one will be dead money. The only important thing is how much it’s going to cost you.

Or to put it another way – just as an example – do you pay $3,000 a month on mortgage repayments on a big house; $2,000 a month on mortgage repayments on a smaller house; or $1,500 a month on rent.

If after doing the numbers, you figure out renting is the cheapest option then that’s the point you work from. You then need to decide if paying an extra $500 a month to have a mortgage is worth it.

If not, then don’t buy.

Treat your house like a car!

Your editor takes the same view with cars. I know it’s different, but you’ll get the point when I explain it…

Each day we drive about 40km from home in Frankston to the office in St Kilda. We then drive home each evening.

And that’s it.

So, all your editor needs is a car that can make that trip each day. That’s why we bought the cheapest thing we could find.

Now, of course we’d like to drive a fancy car. Who wouldn’t? But the point is, any car more expensive than our current car would be a luxury. The Hyundai Getz cost us about twelve grand, but it does the job.

If we upgraded to a car that cost thirty grand, it would mean we’re spending $18,000 more than the minimum cost of driving between Frankston and St Kilda.

So, we need to figure out if that’s a cost we’re prepared to pay. For the moment it’s not. We don’t need to impress anyone by turning up in a fancy car. And we’re yet to be convinced that the extra comfort of a more expensive car is worth the extra cost.

The same goes for housing. Do you really need the four bedroom home when a three bedroom home is cheaper?

Do you really need four “living” areas, when two or three would be fine?

If you answer yes to the above, that’s fine. And if you’re prepared to pay a higher price and higher mortgage repayments, that’s fine too.

But remember that anything above basic shelter is a consumption or luxury item. So it comes down to how much house you want to “consume”. And like with anything you consume, you shouldn’t expect to profit from it.

Does that make sense?

The Aussie housing market is going down the gurgler right now. And we’re seeing more evidence of it by the day. Housing is going back to what it’s supposed to be – being a home and not a money-making investment.

Trouble is, it’s going to make a whole bunch of people poor along the way.

Cheers.

Kris Sayce

Source :Money Morning Australia

This Auckland Apartment Market update is from a recent City Sales auction.

Club Property

Following on from the earlier post about what properties had sold in the Auckland Apartment Market recently this is an update from then with a few more sales going under the hammer.
These are the results from a recent City Sales auction.

Why Australia is Set to Follow US Path of House Price Doom

by Kris Sayce on 25 March 2011

Money Morning reader David wrote us an interesting note about the fall of house prices in the UK:

“I remember living in the UK sometime around 2006 – 2007 and house prices, like Australia now, were overvalued. As soon as property went on the market they sold at crazy prices…

“Just as you predict here in this email house prices crashed about 18 months after their peak.

“The media blamed it [falling UK house prices] on the world financial crisis, which did have an impact but they were already on their way down.

“So many people forget a house is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it.”

As time passes there’s always the tendency to compress events. Looking back now, it’s easy to think all the economic problems started in September 2008… around the time Lehman Brothers collapsed.

But that’s not the case at all.

For starters, the stock market peaked in October 2007. By the end of September 2008 – before Lehman collapsed – the Aussie stock market had already fallen 27% from the peak:

Source: Google Finance

Of course, the Aussie market fell another 35% before reaching rock bottom in March 2009.

Or take the fall in US house prices. That didn’t start in September 2008. In fact, it didn’t begin in October 2007 either.

In August 2005, The Times ran the headline, “US heading for house price crash, Greenspan tells buyers.“

His warning came just a few months before his retirement. After years of propping up bubbles and keeping interest rates at dangerously low levels, Greenspan was obviously thinking about his legacy… making sure in years to come he could say, “I told you there was a bubble.”

The Times wrote:

“In a pre-retirement speech to fellow central bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Mr Greenspan said that people were investing in houses as if they were a one-way bet, not allowing for the risk of price falls. He said ‘history had not dealt kindly’ with investors who kept ignoring risks.”

No bubble here, move along

“Thankfully” for the US housing industry, but not for those thinking about taking a plunge into the housing market, future Federal Reserve chairman, Dr. Ben S. Bernanke was on hand. Two months after Greenspan’s comments, Bernanke downplayed fears of a house price collapse.

In a testimony to the US Congress, Dr. Bernanke said:

“House prices are unlikely to continue rising at current rates… a moderate cooling in the housing market, should one occur, would not be inconsistent with the economy continuing to grow at or near its potential next year.”

In other words, in October 2005, Dr. Bernanke thought the US housing market would [cough] plateeeeeeeeau. Sound familiar?

One year later, The Washington Post headlined, “Housing Slump Slows Economy“. It wrote:

“The cooling housing market sent a chill through the economy in the third quarter, helping to slow growth to its weakest pace in more than three years.”

Interestingly, the Post also wrote:

“Heading into the final campaign stretch, President Bush [Ed note: remember him?] and other Republicans have emphasized the good economic news, such as the low 4.6 percent unemployment rate…”

[Needle scratches off record]

What’s that? The unemployment rate in the US was just 4.6% in October 2006. More on that in a minute…

Then by the end of May 2007, MarketWatch reported that “U.S. home prices fall for first time since 1991“.

It noted:

“U.S. home prices dropped 1.4% in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the first year-over-year decline in national home prices since 1991, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index…

“A year ago, home prices were rising at an 11.5% pace. Prices have been falling for the past three quarters.”

MarketWatch even included a chart showing the price growth and price decay:

Source: MarketWatch

Unemployment lags house price falls

Before I go on, back to that US unemployment number. Take a look at it on the chart below [Ed note: click on the image to view annotations]:

Source: Google

In a nutshell, this timeline disproves one of the key arguments made by spruikers – an idea we’ve never believed anyway – that Australian house prices can only fall if there’s a major shock to the economy.

The chart above proves that isn’t the case.

The S&P/Case-Shiller index revealed house price growth was in a steep decline from early 2006… and went negative in the first quarter of 2007.

During that period, what was the US unemployment rate? That’s right, it was around 4.5%. That’s lower than the current Australian unemployment rate. It also tells you the US unemployment rate is just as rigged as the Australian unemployment rate.

At that time there was no major shock to the economy. In fact, the first of the big financial firms to collapse – Bear Stearns – didn’t collapse until March 2008. A full year after house prices had started to fall.

And even if you take the first signs of trouble at Bear Stearns – the USD$3.2 billion “self” bailout of two of its hedge funds – that was only in June 2007… months after house prices started to sink. And still long before the market received a genuine shock to the system.

As I wrote in yesterday’s Money Morning, in response to Jessica Irvine’s terrible Sydney Morning Herald article:

“All that’s required for house prices to fall is for people to think that house prices will fall. Just in the same way that share prices can fall when they reach a peak. Sellers look to get out first before everyone else gets the same idea.”

This is what’s playing out in Australia right now.

Housing discounted by half!

Each day we’re getting letters into the Money Morning mailbag with examples of falling property prices. Money Morning reader Rick sent us a flyer showing a Port Adelaide development having slashed up to 59% off the original listing price of some properties.

Or this one with a 51% discount to the original price:

Source: Brock Harcourts

And if that wasn’t a sign of desperation, check out what the vendor is prepared to do in order to shift a dog of a commercial property:

“A single waterfront commercial property – offered at a price representing extraordinary value discount by 59%. All State Government ‘Stamp Duty Conveyance’ to be paid by the vendor saving thousands of dollars.”

Wow! Desperate? You bet it is.

Today, Money Morning reader Katie sent us an article from The Advertiser in Adelaide, “Glut gives homebuyers an edge“:

“The number of homes for sale is at levels comparable to peak spring season, forcing greater competition, industry experts say.”

You know what more competition means don’t you? That’s right, it causes prices to fall.

Money Morning reader Phil, sent us this from Smartcompany.com.au, “Expert tips property prices on Sunshine and Gold coasts to fall 7% as region becomes a ‘basket case’”.

And the rest. Only 7%? We don’t think so. Try 40% in both those areas.

Few people are even thinking about buying investment properties or holiday homes at the moment. And we’ll guess the Sunshine and Gold coasts rely on these buyers for a big share of the annual property turnover.

Gold Coast prices to fall by 70%?

In fact, the article quotes Louis Christopher – the only property guru we’ve come across who seems to make any sense:

“For the Sunshine and Gold Coasts especially we’re going to see a decline, but it could potentially be worse [than 7%]. We’re seeing similarities to the Florida markets here, and they corrected by 70%.

“We’re not saying it’s going to be the same as that… But could we end up with a cumulative decline? Absolutely, we’re heading that way.”

Zoiks! Mr. Christopher doesn’t think Queensland properties will fall by 70%. But why not? Why shouldn’t they? There’s no reason they shouldn’t.

Still holding that Queensland property? I’d do the numbers if I were you. If you’re mortgaged up to the eyeballs, you might want to offload it while you can.

So much for the – what Jessica Irvine calls – “some large external shock”.

Can you see any large external shocks where you are? No, me neither.

What I can see, is an economy and a consumer that’s fast running out of money… borrowed money that is.

The mainstream press and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) can put any spin on it they like, the facts are facts, house prices are plummeting and over-leveraged homeowners are already copping it in the eye.

Not that the RBA will admit that. In its recently released Financial Stability Review, it states:

“Between August 2008 and April 2009, the average standard variable mortgage interest rate fell by almost 4 percentage points. There is evidence to suggest that some households used this period as an opportunity to pay down their mortgage ahead of schedule, for example by maintaining the size of their regular repayments despite required repayments falling. Around 58 per cent of the households with mortgage debt reported being ahead of schedule on their mortgage payments as at the 2009 survey…”

When extra repayments aren’t extra repayments

This is a good one. The only problem is that it omits an important fact. Notice this is a survey of households, not of banks. Ask banks the same question and they’ll quote a much, much lower number.

Why? Because as Money Morning reader Andrew points out:

“To the point on “people being ahead on their payments” providing a buffer to tough times in housing, people should recheck to see if that buffer can be accessed if they lose their job, or if the value of the property falls. I’m fairly certain the former is explicitly written to most bank contracts (it was in my NAB one), and that the latter could fall into the ‘terms subject to change’ clause.”

The fact is, people only think they’re ahead on their mortgage. With most banks, even though interest rates had fallen, unless you contacted the bank to ask for the monthly required payment to be recalculated, the “extra” repayments don’t actually count as extra to be withdrawn.

The “extra” just went towards repaying more of the principal.

In other words, it’s not available for re-draw, and if you did want access to it, you’d have to withdraw it from your so-called equity… which as we know, equity is just a smart banking trick of making you think a debt is an asset.

So forget this nonsense about home owners being ahead, because most aren’t… it’s just that they think they are.

But even more than that, the mainstream have fallen into the trap of thinking the large external shock must come first. Wrong. What comes first is the slowing and then contraction of credit.

It is the slowing and the contraction of credit that causes the shock, not vice versa.

Simply because – as we’ve written before – any economy built on Ponzi finance will ultimately become a victim of Ponzi finance.

That is, as less credit is created and less credit is demanded due to borrowers being maxed out, there is less air being pumped into asset bubbles.

Ponzi schemes must always have an ever greater net inflow of new money. As soon as that inflow slows, credit slows, price growth slows, and the consumer begins to see reality.

House prices can’t grow when credit is slowing and then contracting. If you want to call that a large external shock, then you can. The evidence is already around you that this is already happening.

If you’ve been looking at unemployment numbers as a sign of a future shock, I’m afraid – as experience in the US shows – you’ve been looking in the wrong direction.

Unemployment will rise, but only after house prices have already fallen.

But don’t panic, because our old pal, Peter Switzer writes:

“The judgement is in on the housing bubble in Australia and the decision is that there is no bubble but we are “uniquely positioned” with house prices 25 per cent to 35 per cent overvalued. But the question is when will this be reversed?”

He’s referring to a report from Goldman Sachs – you know Goldman Sachs, the firm that needed emergency cash flows from Warren Buffett and the US government to bail it out of bets it had made on the US housing market.

As always, I encourage you to make up your own mind. Which sounds more credible? The evidence I’ve give you above and in previous editions of Money Morning, or the idea that Australian house prices are overvalued by 25-35%, but there’s no bubble because Australia is “uniquely positioned”.

Which is just another way of saying, “Australia is different.” Er, no it’s not. The bubble-deniers really do need to lift their game… it’s getting quite embarrassing now.

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