After looking at one bedroom condos in San Francisco and finding the prices more absurdly inflated than ever ($700,000 for a studio in a crime-ridden neighborhood! Such a deal!), we are no longer in the market for a bit of the city life. Yes, prices are falling precipitously, yet not enough to bring prices towards anything resembling reality. There was a day not too long ago where you couldn’t spend more than 25% of your gross earnings on housing. Recently, greedy investors have erased the limits—and it shows in inflated housing cost.
It turns out that Italian prices aren’t exactly falling like a rock. Italy has evidently kept a tight rein on mortgages, not letting the rich make gambling instruments out of them like the US so graciously has. So house prices haven’t really decreased except in the biggest cities, they’re just not going up any more.
“We foresee nominal prices will remain stable in 2008, and therefore real prices will decline by the same amount as the inflation rate,” states the report. ~ Italian property prices grind to a (soft) halt
Maybe it’s time to buy in Italy. Who can know?
(edit: in 2020, the price of a house in Italy is very affordable as folks abandon their second houses in a bad economy)