If you are house hunting and you have the money, huge amount of money to spend for it, you may want to consider buying one at the most pricey country this year, based on price to income ratio.
Where is it? New Zealand.
Fitch ratings agency, according to a CNBC report, says that most countries expected to have increase in house prices this year due to the improvement of employment as well as low mortgage rates.
Now, for those who wish to buy a house in Australia, they may have to look harder and probably dig deeper as the country, along with New Zealand, will keep the high prices due to the still low mortgage rates.
Meanwhile, when it comes to the United States, the agency expects a price growth of four to five percent on average, also indicating that the house prices in the country is still at 20 percent below the peak levels.
Considering that most markets are expected to have price growth, the biggest challenge to many is the affordability of homes. In addition to this, Fitch says, ownership of homes in the U.S. is at a quarter a century low, and is even falling behind compared to many mortgage markets. Despite the effort of regulators to address hits major concern by looking at investment properties such as buy-to-let, it will remain a struggle to handle the effect of the ongoing low interest rates.
Meanwhile, looking at Canadian home prices, it is still expected to grow between two and two point five percent this year.
On the other side of the globe, which is Europe, Fitch listed countries that have a better outlook. UK, for example, is forecasted to rise between four and give percent due to shortage of housing supply, although a possible interest rates is also seen from the Bank of England which may put a lid on any big gains.
Unfortunately, Italian house prices expected to dive and Greek prices may keep falling for another couple of years. France, may also have a two percent fall this year.
Meanwhile, Brazil, South Africa and Singapore's outlook have been downgrade by Fitch. The reason for the downgrade in Singapore is the over-supply while Brazil, South Africa is due to a weakening economy.
