House Prices Increased in Colombia in 2010

The housing market in Colombia was especially strong in 2010 which is partly due to the burgeoning economy and partly because of the peaceful transition to a new president. It's expected that house prices will continue to increase this year and Colombia's investment rating was upgraded in March to investment-grade.

The average house price rose by 9.25% in 2010 with the average price of a new apartment increasing by 9.57%, and the price of new homes increased by 5.69%. Three cities in particular showed strong price increases last year, which were Bucaramanga with increases of 15.2% year-on-year, Bogota with increases of 10.5% and Barranquilla with increases of up to 8.6%.

Colombia has a housing deficit of around 2.4 million homes with 185,000 new homes being needed annually. There are signs that this demand is partially being met as housing approvals reached 153,903 last year, with this high level being partly accounted for by the reduction in construction costs.

The Colombian economy grew by 4.3% last year up from 1.5% in 2009. The growth during the last quarter of 2010 was especially strong, and as a result of this there was a 3.2% increase in the consumer price index during the first quarter of this year, but this is still within the central banks 2% to 4% target.

The country gained a new president in August 2010, Juan Manuel Santos, who succeeded Alvaro Uribe. Santos was formerly the Minister of defence and his main priorities include improving relations with Ecuador and Venezuela and reducing the high levels of unemployment.

Italian Property Market on the Turnaround

The Italian property market looks to have turned the same corner that many established markets did in the second half of last year, the corner onto the road leading to recovery.

Un the final quarter of 2009, property transactions declined by just 0.4% year on year, according to the latest housing market review from the Agenzia del Toro (Italian Land Registry). This is compared to a year on year drop of 18.6% in the first quarter. In the second half of 2009, Italian property prices were just 0.2% lower than in the first half, and just 0.7% lower than the second half of 2008.

This is hardly surprising. The trend in 2009 was buyers going for safety and stability. This made property markets where prices had held up well against the downturn much more popular than those that hadn’t.

Italian property prices fell by among the smallest amount in Europe throughout the entire course of the crisis. In fact, in Knight Frank’s index in Q2 of last year, Italy was the 10th best performing market in Europe (16th in the world), with prices down just 3.5% on Q2 of 2008. The same index in Q3 showed prices were still down only 3.5% year on year, by which time the market was clearly already on the turn.

Italy is a strange one though. The other markets that have seen prices holding have tended to fit certain criteria:

In economies that have not endured a severe recession, and, in some of these places, an economic stimulus has been far more than was needed, creating a liquidity surge.

Italy has endured a severe recession, and its stimulus has tended to be very measured. For this reason, when Italian property prices do start to grow now, going forward there will be no need for anyone to fear that a bubble is forming.

In terms of foreign demand, Italy may well suffer in the short term, as buyers look for bargains in the markets where prices have been slashed. Whether it does or not, Italy has now proven that the management of its property market is capable of preventing speculative bubbles, and this makes it a stable long-term growth market. This will do it more good than harm over the long term.

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Spain Property Set for Less Misery in 2010 as Brits Bag Bargains

Spanish construction is to fall by 25% by the end of this year experts have stated. The global financial crisis caused demand for Spanish property to all-but dry up, meaning a massive over-supply emerged causing prices to fall rapidly.

Developers were forced to continue working on developments that had been started, despite the over-supply. None the less thousands of jobs were lost, as developers cancelled projects in the pipeline, and found it nigh impossible to sell properties already constructed, and impossible to sell off plan.

However, now that development is finally calming down, and prices have fallen almost 30% from their peak, demand is slowly growing, especially when Sterling begins to claw back some ground against the Euro.

The shortening of supply combined should combine with the increasing demand to put a floor below prices next year.

The tide is changing in the field of overseas property; the Brits are once again getting out there and sticking a toe into the water.

You know things are improving when the Times runs a positive story on buying overseas property. The fact that Spain was mentioned several times in the article is evidence that things are also improving for Spain. This makes sense; Spain has always been one of the most popular countries for British holidays, and property buyers, so it is logical that when Brits start buying that Spain will be among the first to benefit.

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Conflicting Reports on the Future of Dubai Property Market

The United Arab Emirates -- and one of the world's -- most talked about property markets, Dubai is also one of the world's hardest to make forecasts about.

Almost every week a new research report is issued with conflicting data about what property prices are likely to do in the near and distant future.

This week a study by JP Morgan found that there would be almost 30,000 unsold units in the emirate by the end of this year. While another study by Jones Lang La Salle said that the market was stabilising, with the quarterly decline now slowed to 6%. Jones Lang La Salle are also forecasting growth in the market in 2011.

Earlier this month, one of the Dubai property market's staunchest advocates wrote a surprising article on how the Dubai market, where prices are now almost 50% lower than they were a year ago may have seen enough falls to call bottom.

He tempered this however, by saying that unless Dubai property could reinvent itself to be more attractive to lifestyle buyers, it may never be the investment hot-spot it once was.

My friend Frank Crowley, director of overseas property specialist Azure Overseas agrees with Jones Lang La Salle, he believes that growth will return to the market in 2011. He said:

"Dubai's biggest problem will be the complete loss of confidence in the market, with the volume of unsold units and unfinished developments a close second.

"The over-supply should slowly be rectified over the next year and a half with people buying as bargains become available to hold until growth returns whenever that may be. And then the negativity should all be forgotten about by 2011, at which point the sheer build quality and prestige of the developments will once again attract global buyers, who will also find the low prices a major attraction."

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