“Congratulations, you’ve just lost $33,000. Good job! You are now a homeowner.”
Do you think this is what new homebuyers hear from their banker and real estate agent after they sign the bottom line? Certainly not. But they should.
Mark Zandi, Moody’s chief economist, declared, “On a national level, the housing market recession will continue through early 2009. [The housing market is] worsening and is already in the midst of its worst downturn since World War II.”
In addition to that, Goldman Sachs expects home values to decline another 15% nationwide. Since the average price of a house is currently $220,800, a decline that size would make the average loss for owning a home over the next year and a half $33,000. Not a time to be buying a house… quite yet.
Even Caterpillar’s CEO, James Owens, said, “The downturn in the U.S. housing market is the worst it has been since World War II and is likely to weaken further next year.”
All this just shows the worst has only begun for the housing bubble, and it’s going to take a few years to get the housing market cleaned up. However, all is not lost.
Granted, the bleeding won’t be over until 2009… at the earliest. The U.S housing market has propped up the U.S. consumer, and with no housing boom, there’s no consumer. With no consumer, there’s no economic growth… and on it goes.
It can all be a little frustrating. But there is one housing boom that still rages on, and investors have been making a mint.
The U.S. housing market is getting all the headlines for falling to pieces, but the Brazilian housing market is growing stronger and stronger by the day. It’s no secret that Brazil has been attracting a lot of attention from the financial community, but the local housing market has failed to really take off like those of China, India, Japan, the United States, Ireland… pretty much every housing market in the world.
All that’s about to change. According to The Economist, “President Lula of Brazil resoundingly won re-election last October, largely on the strength of support from the poor. Their living standards have been soaring. Income inequality has at last begun to shrink.”
Brazil’s poor are starting to earn money for the first time. They can finally buy the things they want. And, as we’ve seen in every other emerging market, one of the first purchases they make is a house.
It all boils down to basic economics. Brazil has lagged behind the rest of the emerging world. It hasn’t been the runaway success that China and India have been.
Brazil’s GDP growth rate over the past four years averaged 3.3%. That’s well behind the 7.3% average for emerging markets as a whole. That’s why I think Brazil is still just really getting started and there’s plenty more growth left in the country.
Brazil isn’t perfect, but it’s getting better. Poor infrastructure, out of control population growth, and a few other factors have kept Brazil down compared to other emerging economies. Basically, Brazil dug itself a big hole that it took a while to get out of.
Now, the ship has been righted and Brazil is about to really start booming. Exports are soaring. The country has foreign exchange reserves of over $100 billion. For one of the few times in its history, Brazil’s inflation is under control at only 3%. The country is finally getting cleaned up economically.
That’s why the Bovespa Index, which tracks Brazilian stocks, is up about 600% in five years. Although Brazil’s stock market has been on a tear, there’s still plenty of opportunity, if you’re willing to look for it.
According to Bloomberg, “Real estate developers’ shares have underperformed the Bovespa stock index.” In fact, real estate stocks have lagged the boom by about 33%. And it won’t be long until the Brazilian real estate stocks catch up with the other high flyers. But you don’t have to go down to Brazil to take advantage of this opportunity.
Gafisa (GFA:NYSE), one of Brazil’s leading homebuilders, is traded on the New York Stock Exchange just like GE and Exxon Mobil. And with the Brazil housing sector poised to catch up to the rest of the world, this one has the potential to deliver gains that U.S. homebuilders D.R. Horton (DHI:NYSE) and Centex (CTX:NYSE) have delivered over the past few years.
Brazil isn’t the only booming growth story in South America, though. The continent is covered with opportunity, mostly in oil. Although the continent has plenty of natural resources, it’s still relatively unexplored.
That’s why my colleague, Christian DeHaemer, is so interested about what he has uncovered there. Christian has been to places like Cuba, Egypt, India, Bulgaria, Libya, Israel, Turkey and Tunisia and developed a knack for turning crisis into opportunity. In fact, during the Internet bubble, he nailed 680% on Broadcom and 572% on Oracle.
But he says, this small oil company found in South America’s “Gunboat Basin” could return even more. The housing boom in Brazil is a pretty safe bet, and with that safety will come a decent return. But that’s not what Christian is looking for right now. He’s looking for the big win. And what he has uncovered could easily trounce that.
Good investing,
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