How the OECD is like Hot Redheaded Economist Babes that Like to Play Halo

So another article in The Economist about how property markets are overvalued. They seem to have one every three issues. However, instead of quoting the regular ol' House Price to Rents or House Price to Income ratios, they took a report from the OECD which (adjusting for other factors) showed how over/underpriced housing was in different countries.


The report in the OECD was a little older and the above figures were updated by The Economist, so I went and looked for the original report.

Now if any of you know about data mining in the OECD you might as well look for a girl with a doctorate in economics who is a Microsoft Certified Halo Champion and dresses up in french maid outfits. Because these French geniuses who compile an amazing amount of economic data are idiots when it comes to organizing it or making it easy for normal people who land a date every once in a while to find it.

Thus, as with many of my trips to the OECD, it's like Best Buy;

No, they didn't have what I was specifically looking for, but I found some other stuff that I liked.

Particularly this report:

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/40/6/35816576.pdf

which has some good sh!t in it and particularly this chart that correlates home purchasing age with average increase in housing prices, suggesting the relationship between the proportion of a country's population that is of home buying age and housing prices.


Now, like Emril, you kick it up a notch and throw in a little dependency ratio action;

and the fact that the Baby Boomers (across Europe and the US) are going to retire, sell their homestead and secondary houses when they go into assistent living/nursing home, thus adding more supply to a housing market, and

BAAAM!(or whatever the hell he says)

I think, I THINK, it may just add some downward pressure on housing prices.