Monday, April 19, 2010

House prices in Victoria

With the new rules for borrowing money and the relatively high cost of houses in this city, I suspect there will be some dampening of the market.   The only thing I see working against this is misconception that new houses will be more expensive with the HST which could keep sales stronger than expected till July 1st.

Transitionally the best sales months are May through to August.   I expect that to happen again.

Where will interest rates go?   One measure says they need to rise to control growth, another measure says we need a lower dollar.  I make no predictions what this means.

All in all, taking these factors into consideration, I see the volume of sales decline dramatically in the fall.  Will the prices fall as well?  That is unclear.  House prices are sticky and resist downward price pressure for some time.

November to February should be a very good time to get into the market, many vendors will likely be desperate for a sale.

The biggest impact will be the new restrictions on heavily leveraged mortgages.   It will reduce the pool of people that will be able to get into this market and that will eventually force the price to fall.

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