BBC：房价下跌，房主遭殃

yangfuguang

【原文网址】http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7907631.stm% h0 d$ \3 c8 A


【译文】 Y7 q4 K) N. d0 |" p做好这个
房价下跌，房主遭殃

在金融衰退时期，房价下跌是英国和美国民众穷困潦倒的主要原因之一。

在中国，房主们也感到手头拮据。去年夏天开始，这里的房价就直线下跌。

一些分析家警告说，在一些大城市，房价可能会下降到其巅峰时的一半。

但对中国房主来说，这是他们首次面对负资产和价格下跌，因为市场还是很年轻。

上海的开发商仍在推出新楼

在上海郊区，年轻的销售员于北（音）向客人介绍新楼盘。

她没有戴安全帽，她的鞋子包在塑料带里。新公寓内部装修一新，外部却是建筑垃圾。在这楼盘的地方，每栋高楼都在建设。有36栋已经完工。

看起来很忙碌，但这些公寓只是中国3000万新建公寓的一小部分。

自由经济学家Andy Tsieh说：“在大多数城市里，每平米的价格差不多是月薪的三倍，参照国际标准，这太高了。在上海是4倍”。他认为如此高的价格，不会有太大的市场。现在的供大于求。他说：“开发商必须降价，尽管在现在经济条件下，他们没有太大的空间来降价”。

提供工作

在一个楼盘销售上，开发商用一种大胆的策略来实现降价。他们给每个买他们房子的买家提供工作。

张涛的公司可以给购房者提供工作

张涛（音），这家公司的副总经理说，这是真诚的付出。

他解释说：“如果你在规定时间购买住房，如果你想要份工作，我们将提供给你”。

“当然也是有条件的，你必须是合适的求职者。但我们有各种工作，高端的，低端的。我们给买房者提供工作，或他的亲朋好友，这样‘提供’的承诺就可以兑现了。”

张涛认为他的公司出奇的‘买房为我工作’的提议是个很聪明的市场策略，而不是当今市场低迷的表现，尽管这很难说出来。

问题是，现在几乎没有任何交易，特别是在二手市场，在那里人们销售自己的房子。王一清（音）在去年十月房价正高的时候买了他的住房，作为投资对象。

王一清没法把她的房子租出去

它在工业区，这里有很多人失业了。这使得这个房子很难租出去，它是空的。她可以把它买了，但会损失很多钱。

她抱怨说：“对我们这一代来讲，压力太大，我真真切切的感受到了”。她不知道接下来该怎么办。

她说：“未来太难测。当房价很高时，人们买房子，房价会节节攀升；现在人们认为房价会持续下跌。房市还没有到底。真的很难说会发生什么”。

更多的痛

在成熟的市场，人们习惯房产价格的循环。这里却不一样。市场太不成熟，所以有很多人像王女士这样第一次面对这种压力。她是家里第一个有房产的。

Savilles房地产公司的詹姆斯. 麦克唐纳说，缺少经验对于那些现在想是否进入市场的人是很混乱的。“中国市民从没有见到这种情况。在上海，我们看到房产价格在07年上升了40%—50%。我们现在看的是对以前的修正。人们不知道房产的真正价值在那里，所以他们推迟购房。”

房价在07年上涨了，现在却下降

他们仍在建设新房，就算价格下降，也没有停止。建房是劳动力密集产业，因此可以造就很多工作岗位——在目前的经济环境下，这显得更重要了。但中国不需要一个更大的房产市场，她需要一个健康的市场。

人们收入会增加，在人们负担得起之前，房价还会下跌；在房市变得更健康之前，价格还会下降。

这就是说，对于开发商而言，还会有更头痛的事情；对那些想要买房的人家来讲，也是这样。

【原文】

$ Housing slump hits Shanghai owners

In Britain and the United States the fall in house prices has been one of the main reasons many people are feeling poorer in the financial downturn

In China homeowners are feeling the pinch too. House prices have been falling here since last summer.

Some analysts warn that in big cities like Shanghai they could fall by 50% from their peak.

But for many Chinese homeowners this is the very first time they have ever experienced the pressures of negative equity and falling prices, so young is the market.

In a Shanghai suburb, young saleswoman Yu Bei shows visitors around a new apartment.

She has discarded her hard hat, and her shoes are wrapped in plastic bags. Inside the newly-decorated apartment it is immaculate, but outside it is a building site.

Eleven towers are under construction on this housing estate. Thirty-six have been finished already.

It appears to be a massive undertaking, but these flats are just some of the 30 million new apartments being built in China at the moment.

It is a mass market, but the prices are not affordable for the masses.

"The square metre price in most cities is about three times the monthly salary," says Andy Tsieh, a freelance economist. "It's too high by international standards. In Shanghai it's four times."

He argues that with such a high price it is impossible to have a mass market. The volume of supply is simply too great at the moment.

"Developers have to cut prices," he says, "and they don't have enough room to do that in the current economic climate."

Job offers

On one project, developers came up with an enterprising solution to try to get sales moving. For a month they promised anyone who bought one of their

apartments a job.

Zhang Tao, the firm's deputy general manager, says it was a genuine offer.

"If you bought an apartment during that period, and you wanted a job we would offer you one," he explained.

"There were conditions of course, you had to be a suitable applicant. But we had all sorts of jobs, high-end and low-end. We offered the job to the person who bought the apartment, or to his friends and relatives, so that way the 'offer' could be guaranteed."

Zhang Tao insists that his company's unusual "buy a place and work for us" offer was a clever marketing ruse - not a reflection of how bad the market is right now. In truth it is hard to tell though.

The problem is, there are very few transactions taking place, especially in what is known as the secondary market, where people are selling homes they already own.

Wang Yi Qing bought her apartment as an investment property last October not far off the peak of the market.

It is in an industrial area where lots of people have lost their jobs recently. That has made it hard to rent out, so it is empty. She would prefer to sell it but she would lose a lot of money.

"It's huge pressure for our generation," she complained. "I'm really feeling it."

She does not know what she is going to do next.

"It's hard to predict the future," she said. "When prices were high people thought they would go up and up, and now people think they will keep falling. The market's not at the bottom yet. It's really difficult to tell what's going to happen."

More pain

In mature markets people are used to the cycles of property prices. Here it is different.

The market is quite immature, so women like Miss Wang are dealing with these pressures for the first time. She is the first person in her family ever to own property.

James McDonald from the real estate firm Savilles' Shanghai office says that lack of experience makes the current situation deeply unsettling for those trying to work out whether to get in to the market.

"Chinese citizens haven't seen anything like this before. In Shanghai we saw property prices rising 40-50% in 2007. We are looking at a correction for those times. People do not know where the true value of certain properties are so they just hold off buying properties at the moment."

They are still building new homes across this city, even as prices continue to fall.

Building new homes is labour intensive and so creates lots of jobs - more important now than ever as the economy slows here. But China does not need a bigger property market. It needs a healthier property market.

Incomes will have to rise here considerably, and prices will have to fall a long way before homes become more affordable, before the property market here starts

to look more like that in other countries.

That suggests there will be more pain to come for developers, and for those families trying to find buyers for their homes in the months to come.