Home Prices Bottomed February 2009

This week Standard & Poors released the January Housing Price Index. While the index showed a small decline from December, prompting some to say that we're in a double-dip, a look at the index over time seems to indicate that we put in a bottom in February 2009 and are leveling out after a little bump last summer. To draw your own conclusions, visit Seattle Bubble and take a look at the raw Home Price Index numbers in the fourth graph down the page.

Jim Rogers Says US Bonds & Chinese Property in a Bubble

Jim Rogers, author of “A Bull in China” told Bloomberg News today (Rogers Says Shanghai, Hong Kong Property in Bubble) that Shanghai and Hong Kong property prices may fall after being driven higher by speculative demand.

Rogers says the rest of the Chinese economy is “hardly in a bubble."

“Certainly, Shanghai real estate or Hong Kong real estate should decline.”

“China now realizes that they’ve created too much money, that prices are going up too much and they’re trying to slow things down,” Rogers said. “These things are designed to take some of the heat out of the economy. Let’s hope it works.”

“My goodness, if anything's in a bubble in the world, that and U.S. government bonds are certainly very overpriced.”

Bloomberg reported "China’s property sales jumped 75.5 percent to 4.4 trillion yuan ($644 billion) last year, led by the eastern cities of Zhejiang and Shanghai" while U.S. 10-year treasury notes yield 3.67% and the 20-year average is 5.54%.

More information:

• US Treasury: Rates at a Glance
  
  
• US Treasury: Auction Calendar