How International Is This Housing Bust?

Some anecdotal evidence to show that it wasn't just the US that got out of hand. From the New Zealand Herald:

Mr Bowie, 30, and his fiancee Charlene McFarlane, 29, have just taken out a mortgage for 100 per cent of the cost of their modest home in Birkdale, Auckland, which cost them $397,000.
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The couple are among a growing number of first home buyers who are willingly taking on huge financial burdens by borrowing 100 per cent of the cost of their homes.

"Going back three or four years, 100 per cent mortgages were only available through non-conforming type entities and second-tier lenders," says Mortgage Brokers Association chairman Geoff Bawden.

"Now you have a situation where most, if not all, of the mainstream bank players are able to offer 100 per cent funding on reasonable terms."

Most brokers put 100 per cent loans at around 5 to 10 per cent of all new mortgages...

Easier financing has helped to push up house prices. Although brokers say they aim for mortgage payments of no more than 30 to 35 per cent of household incomes, the Reserve Bank says the average is now nudging 50 per cent (see graph)...

"We are not good savers," says Ms McFarlane.

And in England...

A collective shudder ran down the spines of British homeowners on Tuesday April 8th when Halifax, a part of HBOS and the country’s biggest mortgage lender, revealed that house prices fell in March by 2.5%. The monthly decline recorded by the Halifax house-price index was the biggest since September 1992, when the housing market was enduring an agonisingly prolonged bust.
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Mortgage lenders are reluctant to talk down the market, so it says something that both the Halifax and Nationwide are predicting “modest” declines in house prices this year. Forward-looking indicators suggest a gloomier picture. The number of mortgages approved for house purchase was almost 40% lower in February than a year before. According to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, estate agents have been grappling with the worst conditions—measured by the ratio of completed sales to unsold stock—since September 1996.
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Last week a study by the International Monetary Fund found that Britain’s housing market was the third most over-valued of 17 developed economies, narrowly behind Ireland and the Netherlands. House prices were almost 30% higher than could be explained by fundamental factors such as disposable income, interest rates and working-age population.

These findings are not shocking given the extraordinary house-price boom of the past decade. Between the first quarter of 1997 and the first quarter of 2007, house prices rose by 214%. This was the third highest among 20 countries covered by The Economist. It contrasts with a rise of 135% in America up to its peak in 2006.

The housing bubble seems to have been a global occurrence.

Update*- Great article from the comments.

As Mr Greenspan pointed out in his response to his critics in the Financial Times on Monday, the housing bubble was not unique to the US. On the contrary, as the background chapter on housing in the International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook shows, US experience was far from exceptional. On the contrary, the biggest apparent overvaluations occurred in Ireland, the Netherlands and the UK.

The chart shows the proportionate increase in house prices between 1997 and 2007 that cannot be explained by the fundamental drivers: affordability (the lagged ratio of house prices to disposable incomes); growth in disposable incomes per head; interest rates (short- and long-term); credit growth; changes in equity prices; and changes in working-age population. Thus, the rises reveal the extent to which a country has experienced what seems to be a bubble. The US is in the middle ranks.