[rohry]

"Almost everywhere, house prices continue to outpace inflation. The exceptions are Japan, where house prices are now in their 11th year of decline, and Germany, where prices have been more or less flat since 1992."

The reason for Japan's decline is that they had their bubble in stocks and real estate in the 1980's. The reason in Germany is because they don't offer long-term mortgages on real estate. They have short term "balloon" mortgages which have to be rolled over every five years.

[babble-on]

and in Germany they had a bubble starting right after the wall came down. First east Germans and Eastern Europeans in general came looking for places to live which tightened the market, and then tax incentives led to massive overbuilding in eastern Germany.