A Auction is the best way for buyers to know they are purchasing a property for its true market value. However, the auction process itself can be a little intimidating for some buyers, so it’s advised to go into the auction with a firm idea of what you are willing to pay for the property in question and seek the advice of a professional. B Buyers Agents work on your behalf, as a buyer, to find you the perfect property and negotiate to achieve the perfect price. Relationships with real estate agents ensure that your buyer’s agent has access to properties that are fresh on the market and sometimes have not even been advertised yet. C Conveyancing is the process by which real property is legally transferred from one person to another. It involves gathering information concerning a property and preparing the documents for the transference of the property. Remember to ask your solicitor ...

Why Housing Prices Will Keep Dropping in Value

by Alexander Green, Advisory Panelist

Good news has been swirling around the housing market lately.

The Commerce Department reported on Wednesday that sales of new U.S. homes surged 9.6% in July.

A week before, the National Association of Realtors reported that previously-owned home sales in July jumped at the fastest rate in 10 years.

Realtors are now reminding us that sales have risen for four consecutive months. Thanks to low interest rates and government incentives, they tell us, housing prices will soon be heading back up.

Don’t bet on it…

I was in real estate for years. Asking my colleagues whether prices were likely to head higher was like asking the Army Corp of Engineers whether a river needed a bridge.

The answer was a foregone conclusion.

In many ways, this is understandable. Real estate agents

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But for the many reasons we’ve described in these reckonings, we doubt that we’ve seen the last of this bear market.

“Either cuts in spending or increases in taxes will be necessary to stabilize the fiscal situation,” said Ben Bernanke in response to a question posed by a Member of Congress. Then, he added…

“The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.”

That last sentence has a ring to it. It reminds us of Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook.” Surely, it is destined to make its way into the history books, alongside Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman” and the builder of the Titanic’s “even God himself couldn’t sink this ship.”

Monetizing the debt is precisely what the Fed will do. But it will not do so precisely. Instead, it will act clumsily… reluctantly… incompetently… accidentally… and finally, catastrophically.

That’s our prediction, here at the Daily

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Editor’s Note: This article has been excerpted from a free issue of Robert Prechter’s monthly market letter, The Elliott Wave Theorist.

The full 10-page market letter, Be One of the Few The Government Hasn’t Fooled, can be downloaded free from Elliott Wave International.

By Robert Prechter, CMT

“Who Will Benefit From The Housing Act?”

This question is an actual headline from a national daily paper. The real answer is: mortgage lending corporations, developers, real estate agents, speculators and politicians. The government is also pledging tax money to providers of “financial counseling” and grants for speculators who want to “buy and renovate foreclosed housing”; in other words, it will hand tax money to charlatans and unfunded wheeler-dealers. But a far better headline would have been, “Whom Will the Housing Act Hurt?” The answer to that question is: (1) prudent people, i.e. …

Austria is justifiably famous for its banking system—particularly for its bank secrecy law, which has the same legal status as the Austrian Constitution. But while Austrians take their financial privacy very seriously, there’s another aspect of Austria that doesn’t get as much attention: residence. With its world-class opera, museums, and galleries, Austria is truly one of the world’s most civilized countries. Vienna, its capital, is a cultural treasure. Indeed, Mercer’s, a major human resources consultancy ranks Vienna as the second most desirable city to live in the world (behind Zurich)—and Vienna is much more affordable. And within an hour’s drive of Vienna, you can visit three different countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. Austria is also a popular haven for English-speaking expatriates. While you won’t find the concentrations of U.S. expatriates that you would in places like Costa Rica, Panama, or London, you’ll find a high quality of life and reasonable ...

It’s a buyer’s market in Dubai, where mansions on coastal developments, such as Palm Jebel Ali and the Palm Jumeirah, are selling at up to 40% below their peak.  But that’s lead to government concern, and now, intervention.

From Sunday’s Financial Times:
The Dubai government on Sunday formed a high level committee to tackle the impact of the widening financial crisis on the emirate’s once booming property market.

Amid signs of a deepening real estate correction, Mohammed Alabbar, chairman of the region’s biggest developer, Emaar Properties, said the committee was exploring various options to restore confidence in the market. Real estate agents report a slump in sales activity and price reductions in some developments of as much as 40 per cent.

Emaar Properties, the main driver behind the property market boom in Dubai since foreigners …

Trying to make sense of it all?  Don't.  Like we've said before, When in doubt just Buy the SKF.  The good ol' ProShares UltraShort Financials (AMEX:SKF), it wins every time. NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks sank in thin trading Monday as worries about the credit ratings of American International Group Inc. weighed on the financial sector. The major indexes each fell about 2 percent, including the Dow Jones industrial average, which was off about 250 points. Bond prices jumped as investors fled to the safety of government ...

This is a painful blog post for me to write.

Back in February I predicted that New Zealand house prices would fall around 30% from their peak in November last year over the next couple of years. I said prices would then take a decade or so to recover to that November 2007 peak.

I was ridiculed. It would never happen, I was told. House prices never fall in New Zealand, they said. Prices just take a rest for a few months and then keep rising forever. Real estate agents, real estate investment scheme spruikers and even a few bank economists repeated the “accepted truth” that house prices double every 10 years. Stop being a scaremonger, I was told.

It turns out this 30% fall is happening even faster than I predicted in some areas. The trouble (for me) is it has happened first in

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“If lenders lent money that they are not going to get paid back, that’s their problem, frankly”, said Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRK.A)Warren Buffett yesterday. Finally, somebody gets it and is not calling for the Fed to bail lenders out.

Last week I said “The Fed will not bail out lenders that made dumb loans and now are in trouble. Bernanke is going to let the market work (as he should) and it is already taking care of things.