Safe As Houses? A Historical Analysis of Property Prices

Neil Monnery has tried, and I believe successfully, to write a readable and relatively informative book on a highly complex subject. I feel, however, that there is a great deal more that could have been included.I would like to say how much I enjoyed this book. It is easily read and flows well, there are interesting bits to it but there are also areas that were missed out which are important to properly make a realistic discussion of the property markets. I found that the book raised more questions that it solved such as:Property prices are notoriously inaccurate - where do you source your data? Estate agent asking prices or land registry prices? What makes up the index as each property is unique and each region has its own supply and demand factors? An exploration of this would have been an important factor and should have been a chapter on its own. Page 152 uses a house in Dover from 1900-1999, the house would have had no running water, plumbing, inside toilet, central heating, double glazing etc in 1900. The capital cost of making these additions would have changed the real and nominal price appreciation of this property over the period.As a subset, it is vital to mention population mobility (rural to urban, industrial to services, clustering and agglomeration -such as City deregulation and the resulting increase in demand in London for bankers, lawyers accountants, IT, employment of well-paid overseas professionals.How do you determine "value"? Is it £ per sq foot, number of bedrooms, loan to income, LTV, rent versus interest expense should interest expense include some capital value repayment on the debt and if so over what time period?) etcOther important chapters would have included a deeper discussion on rent and its importance in calculating capital values and rent and its relationship with transport/ travel costs. Rent as a yield and as a theoretical yield against a risk free rate (Capital Markets Model) and other assets.Tax and Legal. My understanding is that a mortgage is on a property in the US whilst in the UK it is on an individual and therefore it is much harder for an individual in the UK to walk away from mortgage debt. Mortgage interest rates are an income tax deductible in the US. Any individual can set up an offshore vehicle and put their property in it and thus quite legally avoid the purchaser from paying stamp duty. For a UK resident, there is no more tax efficient investment than owning a property. A mention of the movement of hot money or international capital flows around the world is an important input into the demand side equation ( Russian, Greek, Italian on the residential side and the German investment funds on the commercial property side.There is no mention of the relationship between commercial property and residential property. This deserves a chapter in its own right.A deeper discussion on psychology should have been mentioned. The fact that prices have risen for an extended period enforces the view that property prices never decline for an extended period. If 25-35 year olds believe that property prices will decline for an extended period, they will not purchase - and they will be happy with their decision, whilst those who have high LTV's will no longer view themselves as fortunate enough to own a house.A more in depth discussion on financial deregulation for mortgage lending and its effect on banking capital adequacy ratios, slicing and dicing (asset securitisation) of residential and commercial lending and the access the banks had to wholesale lending markets enabling an enormous increase in lending to the real estate sector would have been beneficial.I liked the scenarios on page 171, I would have devoted more time to this and done a deeper supply demand analysis.I also liked Table 9.2 Drivers of real house prices, I would have used this as the basis of the book and given less geographical examples of changes in house prices (and given more regional examples of changes in supply and demand in the UK, as it is dangerous and difficult to compare and contrast different international real estate markets - Grafton Street in Dublin being a prime example of using specific data to come to any informed opinion). I would have dramatically expanded this particular section as there are a number of gaps that need filling.My third to last chapter would have been to explain why property markets are beneficial to the economy; my penultimate chapter would have been a robust discussion on why an obsession with property prices is bad for an economy (store of value in an unproductive asset).My final chapter would be how do we change the sector so that it remains healthy, affordable, promotes mobility and is in the best interests for the economy and those who live in it so that that we never have such a balance sheet disaster again.

Very informative, well researched. I'm not sure if the writer is including the monthly rental income in his house price index, he is mainly calculating the inflation changes over the time. Also gearing up element of a house investment is not been considered? Over all very good book, think you will not find any other books in this subject.

This book is a very interesting and fairly comprehensive study of real house price trends across time in a number of markets across the world. It's fascinating looking at how prices have trended in parts of Amsterdam since 1690, compared with the normal housing data you see that rarely extends back more than 20 years, a relatively short sample period for a market like property.The book is good as it doesn't seek to push a particular view, or try and make any hero call on the market, it simply presents the data in an interesting way. Recommended reading for anyone looking to buy or already in the market.

bit boring

Book is not captivating enough. Basically discusses history and I have not picked it up after the 2nd chapter. Perhaps it would become interesting later on a bit but for me a book has to interest from page 1.

Fascinating book, deeply insightful, pleasantly written and entertaining. A refreshing and important antithesis to common popular wisdom about the housing market.

Interesting

Firstly this book fulfils the brief in the title; the author has managed to compile some amazing long term data sets and gives a robust historical account of each. As such if you find the idea of learning about other markets and periods of history instead of using the last 20 years in the UK for forming your view on UK property then this book is highly recommended and I learned a lot.However, I would say that the analysis is more like a factual history lesson rather than meaty fundamental analysis. There are pros and cons to this approach; the main pros being scope and accessibility. He covers quite a few markets (Amsterdam, Paris, UK, Japan, Norway, Australia, Spain, Ireland etc) and this book can be easily understood by non-financially literate people. The process the author employs is to present the index in nominal and real terms (bearing in mind finding the data is no mean feat!) and then discusses some of the key events - war, famine, bank failure, commodity boom, interest rates etc that caused a change first or second derivative. This is good because after looking at so many 100+ year indexes it is pretty clear that long term growth in real house prices should be somewhere similar to long term real wage growth of c.+1% pa and the last 10-15 years in the UK have been a bubble brought about by a credit boom.I would of liked to see more analysis on credit conditions, affordability, owner-occupation, demographics, property vs. other asset classes and rental conditions/yields throughout the book which is why I have given it a slightly harsh 3 out of 5.