Finnish Housing Market: Damned or Doomed?

Well still on Holiday and pretty happy about the title of this post. After all, some sun and fresh(?) air work give your the optimism needed to write that type of title.

Indeed Damned or Doomed will be the question (of the summer?) we would be asking in the next 12 months, but what does that mean?

Damned : The housing market will follow the Japanese path, an ageing population, ultra low interest rates and forever-ever falling housing market. This scenario is alluding to a non existing recovery- no or little growth the next generation or so.

Doomed : The latest stress test is showing that everything is under control, banks should not be afraid to loosely lend and maybe optionally behave in the same pre-crisis way- after all everything is fine, the banking collapse was just a bad dream. So recovery you asked, recovery you will get. A growth of 2 or 3 %? of course, there is a price to pay, and it is a rise in the interest rates. oops, I should not have said that... you know - 98 % of the Finnish mortgage rates are linked to 12 or 3 month euribor rates and on top of that, there are technical subtleties used by construction company (NCC, YIT, etc...)" that play intermediary between banks and mortgage holders...

Hard to choose between a Damned housing market and a Doomed housing market, I let you choose.

It is worth to note that Statistics Finland will publish the 2nd quarter result for the Finnish - gravity free - housing market on 30 July 2010. I will come back on that...

Gun Lobby 3 - 0 Population safety

YLE, 21 June 2010 : "Anne Holmlund (cons), minister of the interior, told in an interview with the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), that she would not push forwards to implement a total ban on semiautomatic firearms in Finland."

STT, 06 July 2010 : "Two people died and a third was seriously wounded in a shooting in a McDonald's restaurant carpark in Porvoo in southern Finland early on Tuesday."