Johannesburg - In a year that saw global house prices on a shaky footing, South Africa's house prices for the fourth quarter of 2009 were 5.6% higher than in the corresponding quarter the previous year.
This performance placed the country's housing market 11th on the Knight Frank global house price index for the fourth quarter of 2009. In the third quarter South Africa had been 15th.
First National Bank (FNB) property analyst John Loos says this reflects the fact that the South African housing market had survived much better - largely because in this 12-month period the country's banking industry had been healthier than its foreign counterparts.
He said that even though South African banks had lent aggressively in the heydays, they had not been nearly as aggressive as those elsewhere.
The Knight Frank index measures house-price growth in 47 countries and in the fourth quarter prices were up in 24 other countries, compared with the corresponding period in 2008.
Hong Kong was the front-runner, showing growth of 27.6%, compared with the corresponding quarter in 2008, and was followed by China with 25.1% and Israel with 21.3%.
The three tail-enders were Latvia with a 49.8% decline, Dubai down 42.1% and Estonia down 40.3%.
Liam Bailey, head of residential research at Knight Frank, says in a report that the recovery in the global housing market is somewhat precarious.
He says that there is a clear polarisation between the countries at the top, where five countries showed double-digit growth, and those at the bottom, where nine housing markets were more than 12% down.
He ascribes the strong growth in Hong Kong and China to the Chinese government's fiscal stimulus package which gave the economy a massive injection of liquidity.
As far as Israel is concerned, he says continuing investment in properties rather than shares stimulated house price growth in the country. According to the Jewish Chronicle, 50% of the houses bought in Israel were second properties.
Bailey says the positive news is that the prices in some countries at the bottom end are stabilising and have begun to show slight growth in the first three months of this year.
But Ireland remains in the grip of the credit crisis. In the first quarter of this year house prices there fell 8.3%.
Source: Fin24
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