There is nothing quite as safe as houses or so they say, but in this climate of the various stock exchanges going up and down is this totally true? Sure, the news about surging housing prices and rising interest rates is never out of the news. Loads of Home and Property programmes swamp our daytime (and our night time) viewing on the TV schedules and where does this all lead us? Well it is a well known fact that most of us have thought that we can all climb onto the property ladder at some time or improve our bricks and mortar assets to realise those ridiculous price levels that seem to be occurring time and time again. Now they say it is official. Property is now more reliable than our pension provision (though with the performance of a certain Mr G Brown at 11 Downing street this does not say much) and apparently it is also more reliable than Gold and yes we all knew this last fact that it can be more profitable than working for a living if you are lucky. The trouble with all of this massive growth in the domestic market for refurbishment and spiralling prices of reselling homes etc is it any wonder that the intelligent and smart property investor is starting to look elsewhere other than good old Britain to make smart gains and returns. But where? Well there are a whole plethora of reports that say that house prices and property in places like Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia and even Hungary are returning vast sums of profits for property developers so it would appear that the smart investor is indeed spoilt for choice. Well if we take a look at how the global property market performed in 2006 we can see where it would appear to be safe making an investment and where it might be unwise. In 2006 the country that lead the way in the growth of domestic property prices was Denmark with an average appreciation of 23.61% throughout the year. The worst performer was Japan where property prices stagnated and overall the market shrank by 3.88%. In between the leading contenders for growth prices in Europe were Ireland and France on 15.54% and 14.31% respectively. Elsewhere, in the southern hemisphere, South Africa has lost part of its shine as the growth in the property market slowed slightly to 13.54% (down from 20.62% the year before) whilst Australia and New Zealand had a growth rate of 7.18% and 12.28% respectively. In Asia, Singapore lead the way with 6.08% growth whilst Hong Kong saw its property surge crash from a growth rate of 23.9% in 2005 to a decline of 3.73% in 2006. As far as the western economies are concerned, the sleeping elephant in the room that no one wishes to acknowledge so to speak is the USA. In the USA, where the housing market has been on a bull run since 1995 the market is starting to soften and how this affects the rest of us remains to be seen. So to sum up it would appear that yes there are bargains and profits to be made still in property but you need to know where to look and when to move.
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