Word: normalization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Here's how it works: if the price of buying a house divided by the cost of renting an apartment is higher than usual, then houses are more expensive than they should be. A lower-than-normal ratio suggests good value. Changes in these data are of interest not just to potential buyers trying to figure out if it's time to finally jump off the sidelines but also to current homeowners wondering how much more pain they're due for, as well as to policymakers angling to prop up prices. At TIME's request, Moody's Economy.com ran numbers...
...year average of 17.7 but significantly lower than where the ratio stood three years ago, 24.4. By doing some additional math (which we'll explain later), we can surmise that house prices still have to drop 4.6% over the next five years, assuming the price-rent ratio returns to normal over that period. Funny how that almost doesn't seem so bad at this point. And if we look at the entire U.S., which includes many rural areas unaffected by the house-price run-up, the picture is even better - we should be seeing average house-price appreciation...
...some assumptions about what will happen in the apartment market. Property & Portfolio Research does such a forecast, which is how Economy.com parlays price-rent ratios into projected house-price appreciation. Those figures tell us that the housing market remains a lumpy place - were price-rent ratios to return to normal, San Antonio would see a 22% drop over five years while San Diego would experience a 28% gain - but, again, price-rent ratio is just one tool for understanding where home prices are headed. Plus, there's that reality, sadly familiar to us all by now, that house prices...
...many of Iran's 65 million people, responsibility for the downturn has settled on one man: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. International sanctions have tightened during Ahmadinejad's fiery presidency, resulting in oil exports dominating Iran's economy even more than normal. According to energy analysts and economists, Ahmadinejad has also spent billions of dollars from Iran's Oil Stabilization Fund, which is supposed to act as a safety net during an oil crash, to pay for social programs for his millions of supporters, most of whom are poor - though there is little public accounting for where the money has gone...
...shot so that the Spaniard plays not less classically but more classically. As Nadal prepares for this year's first grand slam event, in Australia beginning Jan. 19, the top seed and his coach seem to be posing a new challenge: Can tennis's great outsider win by embracing normal? (See pictures of an alternative look at Wimbledon...