Housing prices decline around the world.

A house flipper advertises to buy homes on September 23, 2008 in Pasadena, California.

The Baltics, the United States, UK and Ireland led the global decline dur¬ing the period, the latest date for which comprehensive global statistics are available.

Prices in Estonia's Tallinn fell during the year by 11.02 per cent in nom¬inal terms and 14.06 per cent in real terms.

Latvia's Riga saw the largest quarterly decline during the second quarter of the year, with average dwelling prices falling 5.20 per cent in nomi¬nal terms and 8.16 per cent in real terms.

Since last year, there has been a dramatic turnaround in the world's housing markets. Only five countries out of 33, at this stage last year, had seen yearonyear declines in house prices in real terms. This year's total is 21.

Even in countries that have con¬tinued to record houseprice rises over the past year, such as China (Shanghai was up 36.32 per cent year on year in nominal terms at the end the second quarter, 27.28 per cent in inflationadjusted terms), transac¬tion volumes have fallen sharply, sug¬gesting that buyers are now nervous.

While property markets in some regions, such as the Middle East apparently remain in boom, it is hard to confirm this by reliable data. With the exception of Israel, none of the Middle East's property registries, sta¬tistical institutes or central banks pub¬lish reliable data on housing markets.

It seems interesting that Slovakia's house prices are still accelerating, having risen 32.2 per cent this year (a rise of 25.57 per cent in inflationadjusted terms), as against a rise of 20.47 per cent year on year to the end of the second quarter last year (a rise of 17.56 per cent in inflationadjust¬ed terms). Clearly, the boom in Eastern Europe is not entirely over.

In the US , the authorities are seek¬ing a US$700billion (Bt23.7trillion) "motherofallbailouts" package to purchase almost all of the country's bad mortgage debt in an effort to unfreeze the country's credit markets.

In the UK, the stamp duty exemption has been raised to £175,000 (Bt11 million) from £125,000 for houses purchased from September this year to next September. The government also unveiled a £1billion package to assist first time homebuyers and households struggling with their mortgage payments. In September last year, Northern Rock, one of UK's largest lenders, was bailed by the Bank of England.

In Spain, the government released a ¤3billion (Bt150 billion) rescue package. Certain real estate investment companies were given tax breaks to rent out unsold new homes for a fixed period.

In Ireland, next year's budgetwill include a stimulus package providing assistance to firsttime homebuyers.