Europeans to the Rescue!

Dutch Home Sellers Cut Prices in Market That Would ‘Never Fall’ By Maud van Gaal and Jurjen van de Pol Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Inge Fransen last month cut the asking price for her house in the Netherlands by 11 percent, as one of the final holdouts in Europe’s housing boom capitulates. “I’m concerned the whole market will come to a halt,” said Fransen, 45, who now wants 339,000 euros ($432,670) for... [more]

Dutch Home Sellers Cut Prices in Market That Would ‘Never Fall’ By Maud van Gaal and Jurjen van de Pol Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Inge Fransen last month cut the asking price for her house in the Netherlands by 11 percent, as one of the final holdouts in Europe’s housing boom capitulates. “I’m concerned the whole market will come to a halt,” said Fransen, 45, who now wants 339,000 euros ($432,670) for her five- bedroom home in Zwanenburg, a town built on land reclaimed from the water seven miles from Amsterdam. “Everyone will stay put, not buying or selling.” Eighteen months after real-estate markets in Spain and Ireland began to sputter, the Netherlands is following suit. Prices of properties including 17th century Amsterdam canal-side townhouses dropped in the third quarter for the first time since 1980 after doubling in the last decade. The boom has left the Dutch saddled with the highest level of mortgage debt in the euro region just as the economy slides into a recession. As recently as the second quarter, the Netherlands was the only euro-area country among 11 surveyed by the Global Property Guide with rising property prices. “In September, everyone still said the Dutch housing market would never fall,” said Klaske Woolthuis, 32, a communications adviser, who has been looking for a house outside Amsterdam for 18 months. “Now you see this changing. It’s becoming more of a buyer’s market.” Average prices slipped 0.3 percent in the third quarter from the previous three months, according to Nieuwegein-based NVM, the Dutch Realtors Association. In the Amsterdam region, where narrow houses loom over canals winding through the city center, prices fell 4 percent to an average 265,000 euros. More Declines to Come Prices may drop by as much as 10 percent in 2009 should the credit crisis worsen and buyers hold back, according to Peter Boelhouwer, a housing professor at Delft University. Irish real-estate prices have fallen 15 percent from their peak in 2007. In Spain, the collapse of the housing boom will leave about 930,000 new homes unsold by the end of this year, according to valuation company Tasaciones Inmobiliarias SA. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aOrLBJ1TNreY&refer=home We really need to translate a this book and send it over to them: "Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust - And How You Can Profit from It: How to Build Wealth in Today's Expanding Real Estate Market" http://www.amazon.com/Real-Estate-Boom-Will-Bust/dp/0385514352/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227538704&sr=8-1 [less]