(Bloomberg) — Canada, Australia and New Zealand are in the top ranks of the developed world’s most overpriced housing markets, according to Deutsche Bank AG.
Homes in Canada are the most expensive, being 63 percent overvalued, the bank said in a survey ranking Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries’ markets. The measure reaches 56 percent in New Zealand, the second-most priciest, 53 percent in Belgium and 49 percent in Australia.
In Wollongong, a seaside city in the Australian state of New South Wales, homes are more expensive than in New York when the median house price is compared to the median household income, economists Torsten Slok, Matthew Luzzetti and Peter Hooper wrote in the report. The survey compares home values to their historic multiples of rent and household income.
Central bankers have been using financial policy to reduce the risk of house-price bubbles in countries including the U.K., Hong Kong and Singapore. Restrictive policies reduce credit growth and price gains by 1 percent annually, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economist Hui Shan estimated last year.
Warnings by Canadian policy makers about overvalued homes are starting to sink in, with households the least optimistic since May 2013 about further price growth. In Australia, home prices have climbed 19 percent over the past two years, driven by a cash rate that’s remained at a record low since August 2013, contributing to record-high debt levels.
Home values in the U.S. are about 5 percent below their historical average based on the measurement, the Deutsche Bank report said. In the U.K., where the government has encouraged low down payments on mortgages, they’re 38 percent overvalued.
Values in Canada are 35 percent above the historical average relative to incomes and 91 percent higher when compared with rents. Prices in Belgium are 51 percent higher than the average relative to income, and in Australia 60 percent above the average relative to rents. – BLOOMBERG
