The Globe of Bubbles!?: U.K. vs U.S. Home Prices March 2011

One of the more interesting and most dramatic features of the housing bubble days was how pervasive and broad the mania was, encompassing a multitude of regional housing markets across the United States and around the globe.

Today, post-housing crash, we are still seeing property markets continuing to move together somewhat as governments around the globe scramble to prop up quickly deflating housing assets with boondoggles that quickly reveal themselves as being mere temporary distortions to a trend the remains "organically" in decline.

Comparing the S&P/Case-Shiller (CSI) index to that of the two popular U.K. home prices indices you can see that while all three indices were showing some significant signs of deceleration in recent months, now both UK series have shown some notable increases.

The following chart (click for dynamic full-screen version) shows S&P/Case-Shiller Composite-10 series along with the Nationwide and Halifax U.K. series.

U.K. Home Prices: Halifax and Nationwide March 2011

The latest release of the two most prominent home price indices for the United Kingdom are continuing to signal weakness with continued sluggishness.

The “Nationwide” series, indicated that U.K. home prices jumped notably rising 2.21% from February and climbing 0.14% above the level seen in March 2010 while the “Halifax” series increased 0.45% from February but fell a notable 3.96% below the level seen a year earlier.

Both indices are similar to our own S&P/Case-Shiller data series in that they both implement a methodology that seeks to standardize the quality homes included as source data and track the price changes occurring between sales instead of simply tracking the distorted average or median sales price.

The following chart (click for full-screen dynamic chart) show the price movement since 1991 to each index.