The global housing bubble deflates

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This just in: Everybody else was doing it! They were flipping houses in Barcelona and overpaying for condos in Ireland!

The New York Times reports of bursting real estate bubbles around the world: ‘Once-sizzling housing markets in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states are cooling rapidly, as nervous Western Europeans stop buying investment properties in Warsaw, Tallinn, Estonia and other real estate Klondikes. Further east, in India and southern China, prices are no longer surging. With stock markets down sharply after reaching heady levels, people do not have as much cash to buy property. Sales of apartments in Hong Kong, a normally hyperactive market, have slowed recently, with prices for mass-market flats starting to drop.’

The Times floats the angle that the spreading global problem is a ‘result of American contagion.’ I’m not so sure. Overpriced assets and easy money are capable of finding trouble on their own. They don’t need help.

And the global bubble has been bursting for quite a while now. Check out this YouTube video -- I first posted it on this blog almost a year ago, on April 17, 2007 -- about the French housing bubble. The ‘bulle immobiliere,’ if you please.

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@.latimes.com.