Andy Xie and Dennis Ng Comments on China Property Market...

[Dennis Ng]

4 Aug 2010 - Andy Xie on China’s 64.5 million Empty Apartments

my comments: just remember that all Bubbles eventuallly burst. Thus, the China Property Market bubble is also likely to end in tears.

People forgot that in 1992 to 1993, Shanghai property prices did crash by over 50% then.....I remember.


Of course, 10 years from now I have no doubt that China property prices would be higher than NOW, but the FACT remains that in between, there'll be Property Booms and Busts....the current Boom has been going on and on....just when everyone thinks that there is NO such thing as a Bust, the Bust will come, I'm not sure when, may be year 2011, maybe year 2012....but all bubbles Burst.

China should remind itself the lesson of Japan. In 1989, before property bubble burst, the Record was the price of the most expensive house in Tokyo is MORE than the worth of all properties in California combined. After the property bubble burst, despite a "healing period" of 21 years, today in year 2010, property prices in Tokyo have NOT recovered back to the "heyday"...What undid Japan and caused its fall might also undo China, if China is not careful in managing its property bubble, which is getting bigger and bigger by the days...

Be Warned.

Please note down this posting on 21 Aug 2010 by me, Dennis Ng, http://www.HousingLoanSG.com

Below are more information/news on China Property Market.

Cheers!

Dennis Ng

I recall a presentation on China at the Asia Society on the eve of the financial crisis, in which an economist commented on China’s extremely low interest rate on deposits (less than 1%) versus its markedly higher inflation rate, and commented that that was a recipe for hyperinflation. Well, that hasn’t been and is unlikely to be the result. Instead, we are seeing an even more extreme version of what negative real interest rates in the US produced: leveraged asset speculation, particularly in the biggest asset class, residential real estate.

Recent articles in media have illustrated how out of line prices are with incomes and rental yields. Reader Glenn Stehle highlighted a key factoid in a recent New York Times article on China’s real estate bubble boom:

And as the prices of new apartments soar — in Shanghai, for instance, they often exceed $200,000, while the average disposable income is about $4,000 a year — the trend also threatens to undermine the central government’s goal of affordable housing for the rising middle class.

We noted that the Chinese officialdom is worried about the social implications of overpriced housing. Richard Smith, who provided a series of posts on China’s real estate markets (here and here), tried making sense of the investment math:

The residential RE stuff is completely baffling: the valuation differences between cities are large; but none of them look cheap. Shanghai may be extreme – but even at the more modest (!) house price = 8x salary in other cities, a 30-year mortgage @ 6% or so takes 60% of gross average income (unless my calcs are completely shot) . So I can’t understand who is buying housing at all or how or what they are living on – even if the parents and grandparents are helping out their 1 child, it is quite a stretch. Rental yields 2-4% depending on location so that’s no good if there’s much gearing.

Another piece of the puzzle comes from Andy Xie (Caixin via MarketWatch), that the number of vacant apartments in China, the result of speculative warehousing (purchased as an investment but kept vacant) plus new construction languishing unsold is much greater than commonly realized:

How many flats in China are sitting empty? The media recently floated a story — denied by power companies — that 64.5 million urban electricity meters registered zero consumption over a recent, six-month period. That led to a theory that China has enough empty apartments to house 200 million people….

What especially distinguishes China’s property bubble…is an unprecedented amount of living space. This huge stock of empty flats equals the nation’s quantity bubble.

Quantity bubbles are less common than price bubbles, and they don’t last as long…A quantity bubble is sometimes a construction bubble, and it fizzles out when a building cycle turns over, crashing prices as soon as new supply becomes available….

Quantity and price bubbles may grow together. Southeast Asia, for example, experienced a quantity-cum-price bubble that lasted several years in the 1990s. As regional currencies were pegged to the dollar, loose monetary conditions were imported from the United States, fueling a property bubble. Due to few restrictions on urban development, rising prices led to massive increases in supply. Liquidity inflow fueled speculative demand. But when U.S. monetary policy tightened, the market crashed and triggered the Asian Financial Crisis…

One useful figure for analysts is China’s living space per capita….Based on this limited data, however, we can confidently conclude that China does not have a housing shortage. Moreover, its per-capita living space is higher than in Europe and Japan. Indeed, if we adopt Japan’s standard, China already has sufficient urban housing space for every man, woman and child in the country.

Far more important than general data, however, are the housing figures pointing to a huge quantity of empty flats apparently being held only for speculation.

In a normal market, the vacancy rate should be equal to the number of households relocating, times the average transition period, plus newly formed households times the average purchase period. For example, a vacancy rate of 1.5% could accommodate a market in which 6% of households relocate every year, and the transit time is three months. If new household formation is 3%, and the average period for a property purchase is six months, this factor requires a vacancy rate of another 1.5%. The total normal vacancy rate should be 3%. This figure includes the new properties ready for sale.

Although the government doesn’t publish vacancy data, I think the vacancy rate for the nation’s private, commercial housing stock is between 25% and 30%. That’s at least double what’s required in a normal market. The gap between what’s needed and what’s available can be viewed as speculative inventory. The value of this inventory held by speculators is probably around 15% of GDP. It’s being kept on ice, just as copper and other commodities are hoarded in anticipation of rising prices…

Right now, tight credit is holding back the market, and supply is piling up on the developer side as inventory. The government’s tightening squeezed buyers of second and third homes, and transaction volumes across the country collapsed. What I’ve learned from intermediaries is that most property demand now falls into restricted categories, i.e., speculative.

It’s reasonable to assume, therefore, that the supply would be close to 15% of GDP in value this year and in 2011. That’s because when the policy is relaxed — as most expect — speculation will probably revive and lead to a doubling in the total value of speculative inventory.

Chances are good that policy makers will indeed relax policy. In some cities, banks are already loosening a bit. A key reason is that local governments have a lot of debt — commonly five times more debt than revenue — and could get into financial trouble without a decent level of property transactions.

Local governments in China depend on real-estate deals for revenue and could default if the market falls too far. Thus, the central government may loosen policy to help the locals without making a formal announcement. Such a change of heart would ease short-term government difficulties but double the trouble down the road when the property bubble bursts.

So even if China’s stock of empty flats is only half that recent estimate of 64.5 million, it would still be equivalent to 20% of all urban households. That’s higher than Taiwan’s vacancy rate at the peak of its bubble. Moreover, as credit rules are loosened, the stock could rise to more than 30%.

China’s housing oversupply isn’t surprising. Excess supply reflects the under-pricing of capital, and China’s system is structured to increase supply quickly. But rising prices alongside rising vacancy rates are surprising. Normally, speculators are spooked by high vacancy rates. But China’s phenomenon is unique for at least four reasons:

1) A sustained negative real interest rate has led to a falling demand for money and rising appetite for speculation. Greed and inflation fears are working together to form unprecedented speculative demand for property.

2) A massive amount of gray income is seeking safe haven. China’s gray income of various sorts could be around 10% of GDP. In an environment of rising inflation with a depreciating dollar — the traditional safe haven — China’s rising property market is becoming a preferred place to park this money.

3) Few people in China have experienced a property bubble. The property crash in the 1990s touched a small segment of society, such as foreigners and state-owned enterprises. Geographically, it was restricted to the country’s freewheeling zones in Hainan, Guangdong and Shanghai. Most people didn’t even know there was a property crash. This ignorance has led to a lack of fear that’s now turbo-charging greed.

4) Speculators think the government won’t let property prices fall. They correctly surmise that local governments rely on property deals for money and do all they can to prop up prices. But their faith in government omnipotence is misplaced. At the end of the day, the market is bigger than the government. The government can delay, but not abolish, market forces. Nevertheless, faith in government is replacing fears of a downside, and speculative demand will continue to grow as long as credit is available….keeping interest rates low will only worsen the nation’s bubble problem. Periodic credit tightening and crackdowns on speculation won’t work because they are not taken seriously and never last….

One only needs to glance at modern-day price and quantity property bubbles around the world to understand the stark consequences. What’s happening to the U.S. economy now is a prime example, and it should be lesson for us. Otherwise, China’s economy will look like America’s.

Notice the bind China is in. It has to keep the bubble going to preserve local government finances. They’ve become a classic Minsky Ponzi unit. And efforts to move away from the dollar as reserve currency, something which China desires from a practical and prestige perspective, only makes the domestic bubble worse.

We’ve pointed out repeatedly that creditor nations typically fare the worst in severe financial crises. China appears to be defying that pattern, but the implosion of its real estate bubble may prove it to be no exception.

[JIMMYKKL]

Reproduced from Professor Lang's blog - http://langxianping.blog.cnstock.com


郎咸平：房价若降中国完了！　 作者 郎咸平 日期 2011-3-28 7:43:00

3月25日下午，著名经济学家郎咸平教授在香格里拉大酒店举行了一场高端讲座，来自我市制造业、教育界、房地产界、金融界等各行各业的上千人听取了讲座。郎咸平教授围绕当前社会的热点问题，对2011年我国经济何去何从，作出了独特的见解。定价权之争是一场没有硝烟的战争郎咸平讲，我们过去的一个重大失误，在于将中国定位于一个制造业大国，由此，将与制造环节无关的产品设计、原料采购、物流运输、订单处理、批发经营、终端零售六大环节拱手让给欧美。这样做的一个恶果，是我们的企业丧失了定价权，而一件产品90%多的利润都被这个环节掌控，制造这个环节只有不到10%的利润可拿。

　　中美之间关于人民币汇率的争议，实际上也是一种定价权之争。美国希望能够控制人民币的价值。近来，随着高盛进入中国，美国甚至启动了对于中国的第三场定价权战争：他们希望能够控制中国的股市。去年，高盛曾牛刀小试，导致中国的H股大跌。这给中国的投资者带来更大的风险。现行劳工政策未能追求企业和劳工双赢郎咸平认为，正因为企业缺乏定价权，作为制造商品的加工企业员工薪水"10年维持不变"。不是企业不想给自己的员工加薪，而是因为他们没有更多的利润拿出来提高员工的福利。而政府作出的应对方案也欠周全。比如普遍提高最低工资标准，使得湖北的最低工资标准只比江苏低5%，一个湖北的工人愿意为了这5%而跑到江苏打工吗？

　　现行劳工政策的一个误判在于，不是追求企业和劳工的双赢，而是打击企业。比如劳动合同法规定员工可以炒老板，老板炒员工不行，让企业负担政府所有错误决策的成本，这使1/3的制造业陷入困境。现在推行的"工资协商制度"，规定只要有20%的工人有协商意图，资方必须与其协商，否则当场罚款20万元。土地出让金拿出1/3可以解决老百姓"三座大山"郎咸平称，今天中国绝大部分产能严重过剩，只剩下最后一个产业还有强劲需求，那就是房地产业。房地产业是中国最后一个支柱产业。　　

近年政府出台了一系列政策打压楼价。许多人关心这种打压是否有效果。如果换一个角度考虑：要是打压成功了，房价降下来了，会是什么样的情况？那就是中国完了！中国的房地产业现在好比是一座火山，政府的打压即是试图把这个火山压住。如果强制压住了，熔岩不会自动消失，一定会从岩层中更为薄弱的环节漏出来，其后果是：恶性通货膨胀、经济再次探底，甚至引发火山爆发，最后一个支柱产业画上句号。

　　让房价上涨，老百姓住房怎么办？新加坡的做法是一个样板，即政府加强保障房的建设，以一个繁荣的商品房市场来构建保障房的基础。

　　2010年政府土地出让金2.7万亿，拿出10%建保障性住房，2700亿可以建设2亿平方米，10年20亿平方米足足够2亿人居住，如果从土地出让金拿出6000亿可人人看病不要钱，再拿出1000亿可人人上学不要钱，所以从土地出让金拿出1/3，可以解决老百姓住房、看病、上学"三座大山"。企业拥有更大的弹性才能应对危机。

郎咸平指出，要想成功应对危机，必须具备两个条件：其一是比其他人更早意识到危机的到来；其二，也是更重要的，是企业要拥有更大的弹性。

　　比如李嘉诚。他在2008年金融危机到来之前就清偿了自己的债务，降低负债比例，然后出售了一些股权，让手中保有大量的现金。在金融危机到来后，他又宣布停止所有的投资。这样下来，李嘉诚大概持有220亿美元的现金，那么这220亿美元当中，70%左右是以现金形式所保有，另外30%是以国债方式所保有，所以非常具有流动性。　　

此后，在所有人都无力投资时，李嘉诚抓住机会，在上海做了一笔投资，赚了一大笔钱。郎咸平语录：

　　·只要你在中国看到泡沫，那一定是一个更大危机的先兆。