Is the global housing slump over?

In Australiahousegdp JPM prices have risen for the past three months. In America a widely watched index of housing values has risen by 1.6% from its low in January, and housebuilders’ share prices have done twice as well as the overall stockmarket. In the euro area the property market looks steady. “[M]ost of the drag from housing on growth from now on should be marginal,” wrote analysts at organ Chase, a bank, in a recent report about America. “[W]e believe the peak negative drag from the recent housing-market slump to private consumption is likely behind us,” wrote wonks at Goldman Sachs, another bank, about South Korea.Economists had expected a house-price bloodbath. In March 2022, when the Federal Reserve first started raising interest rates to combat resurgent inflation, the average value of a house in a rich country was 41% higher than five years earlier. Prices had bounced back from the financial crisis of 2007-09, then rocketed during the covid-19 pandemic (see chart). Since then central-bank policy rates have risen by more than three percentage points on average globally, making mortgages costlier and slowing the economy.