Well, for starters, property is good value these days. It's certainly cheaper than it was six months ago. While the official figures on aggregate surveys are talking about drops of two to three per cent in property prices, anyone who is out there in the jungle will tell you that it is a buyer's market bigtime.When I read this on Sunday I thought, well, maybe, but I doubt it. I don't read his columns too often, but nothing I've read by him makes me think he has any real insight into the functioning of the property market. He cites some people who spend more time studying this than I do, but I'm still skeptical.
There has been a lot of new housing added here recently and despite O'Connor's assurance that interest rates are still low, that doesn't mean the recent rises haven't seriously hurt those who borrowed when they were lower.
Some people have borrowed an awful lot of money to buy property and even a 2% hike in interest rates can be a terrible blow. There's no margin for trading up and the higher rates are not going to entice new people into the market. O'Connor seems to believe that what goes down must come up, but even if that's true that doesn't mean we're at or near the bottom yet.
