This Selected Issues paper for Belgium evaluates whether price increases in Belgium are excessive. It assesses the household and bank balance sheets and their vulnerability to a slowdown in housing prices, and identifies differences in real estate markets between Belgium and other countries. The...

Sharp increase in house prices combined with the extraordinary Chinese lending growth during 2009 has led to concerns of an emerging real estate bubble. We find that, for China as a whole, the current levels of house prices do not seem significantly higher than would be justified by underlying...