Basra is booming!
And not in the same way it was six months ago, when the booms were generally of the high-explosive variety.
So says Major General Barney White-Spunner:
Property prices have more than doubled since March. One house is going for £90,000, a threefold increase.
Alas, despite our best efforts, we couldn’t find a suitable Iraqi house-price index, but we do have evidence that in Northern Iraq, prices are even higher.
FT Alphaville can reveal this little fixer-upper. Your very own Saddamist gin-palace. Are those swans in the lake or unexploded mines? Who cares when it’s yours for just £149,000!
Now perhaps if we could somehow capture Mahdi-army insurgency “default” risk, perhaps, say, by putting all these new Iraqi mortgages together in a basket and tranching them, then…
Related links
Basra – here’s the good news story – Ministry of Defence
Phantom decoupling, war on terror edition – FT Alphaville