【中文标题】中国可以避开建筑热潮引发的泡沫危机吗？
【原文标题】Building excitement: Can China avoid a bubble?
【登载媒体】经济学家
【原文链接】http://www.economist.com/node/18250463
房地产市场的现状昭示出富有的国家与新兴经济体之间越来越大的差异。在大部分发达国家里（当然也有少数特例，比如澳大利亚和加拿大），政府在试图让房地产经济复苏。在发展中国家里，他们却在试图抑制过热的房地产经济。西方的问题是房地产价格什么时候可以停止下跌；而东方的问题是房地产价格能否停止上涨。
对于很多团体投资客来说，新兴市场尽管有上升的潜力，但并不值得押注。由于经济危机的发生，发达国家以最低廉的价格向流通市场投放了高质量的房地产商品。而随着新的住宅、写字楼和商场为了迎合需求以惊人的速度建造，发展中国家的发展前景却蕴含着危机。
需求无疑是巨大的。巴西大约还缺少800万所住宅；印度全国的酒店房间数量还不及拉斯维加斯酒店房间的数量；沙特阿拉伯期盼已久的抵押贷款法律即将出台，这将引发住宅建设高峰。但同时存在的危险也是深不可测的，法律纠纷是无法掌控的问题之一。投资者抱怨中国的制度体系变化无常，例如，一位大型基金经理曾经说：“中国在未来5年将成为世界上最大的房地产市场。但是如果你在中国投入数百万美元盖一座楼，我们很难保证你可以收回这些投资。”零售贷款银行也对于在发展中国家收回住宅表达了类似的担忧。
最大的担忧在于供给量的飙升，中国疯狂发展的速度从未在世界任何地方出现过。根据巴克莱资本提供的数据，未来6年里竣工的摩天大厦，有40％是在中国，中国的高层建筑物因此将增加50％以上。中国的城市景色一天一变。YouTube上有一个激动人心的视频，用快进的方式连续记录长沙一座15层楼的酒店在6天时间里用预制构件的方式建成。一位投资者说：“伦敦和纽约的现在建筑成果非常有限，但是在深圳，你建造一栋住宅楼的时间里，旁边已经立起了4座建筑物。”
降低供给过剩风险的一个方法是，尽快将资本撤出新兴市场。荷兰国际集团的房地产管理团队（其很快将成为世邦魏理仕旗下的组织）与本地公司合作，建造公寓和住宅房屋，在类似中国这样的市场中销售。凭借这样的策略，它在两到三年的时间里可以盈利。另一个方法是，进入市场中相对冷清的行业。世邦魏理仕的White先生认为，物流对外国投资者来说是一个大有前途的领域，部分原因在于当地市场被一群来自美国的全球公司所掌控。购物中心也是外国人占据优势的领域。
但是，很多投资者融得资金准备在新兴市场中大干一番的时候，却发现无法找到合适的投资对象。其中一个原因是这些市场相对贫瘠：几乎没有二手房产的置换交易。另外一个原因是本地的竞争对手。中国大陆的开发商非常乐观，因为他们看到了房地产在增值。一家律师事务所Mayer Brown JSM的David Ellis说：“他们用的是另外一套数据分析表。”
以上这些现象都可以解释为什么很多人对中国房地产市场敬而远之，尤其是住宅市场。一些高端的对冲基金经理，比如Jim Chanos曾经警告（其实也是出于自私的心理），中国房地产市场的崩溃会比迪拜更糟糕。1月份，香港列出的10家贷款差额亏欠最大的大陆公司中，有3家是房地产公司。从全国范围来看，中国收入水平的增长与房价水平的变化大体一致（见上图），但是国际货币基金组织12月份的一份报告中提到，在一些大城市中，房价“似乎越来越与基本生活水平脱节”。
自从2010年4月份，中国政府颁布了一系列的政策来抑制房价的上涨。其中包括：把购买第一套住房的首付比例从20％提高到30％；停止发放个人购买第三套以上住房的抵押贷款。这些措施取得了一定的效果，房价的增长幅度放缓了：12月份的房价年增长率为6.4％，低于总体通货膨胀的比率。
即使如此，房地产市场在很多方面来看还是极富上升潜力的。去年未偿还的贷款总额比前年上升了27.5％，至少比2009年的数字要低一些。政策制定者倾向于更加严厉的管控手段。今年年初，上海和重庆率先开始征收房产税，促使政策生效前出现交易高峰。根据当地房地产中介提供的数据，上海在1月上半月的成交量比去年同期增加了三分之一以上。中国总理温家宝说，他希望在自己2013年任其结束前看到，住宅市场恢复到“合理的水平”。
中国在抑制需求的同时，还在努力增加供应。对于一个自有房屋比例达到80％的国家来说，这个举措似乎让人难以理解。但其实，这种令人难以置信的自有率是90年代末期政府房屋制度改革，一次性转化住宅所有权性质的结果。很多房屋都破烂不堪，大多数人想搬到新房子中。仲量联行的Michael Klibaner说：“中国有积压了50年的潜在需求。”
普通购房者所面临的问题不仅仅是房屋的价格被众多购房人所催高，同时还有那些中央政府在背后撑腰的当地政府所策划的复杂的投机行为。土地出让是当地政府一大块的收入来源，通过草拟土地的规划用途，当地政府就可以让其价格翻倍增长。
直到现在，开发商仅靠很少的预付款就可以从当地政府手中买到土地。瑞士信贷的杜劲松说，一家公司仅用5亿元人民币（7590万美元）的流动资金就可以买到价值50亿元人民币的土地。而且，开发商可以把这些土地继续抵押，向银行申请25亿元的贷款。他们并没有把借来的钱用于建设，而是去买更多的土地。开发商并不担心资金链出现问题，因为在需要的时候，他们可以搞出一张建设图纸，把空地以商品房的价格预售给饥渴的买房人，并因此而大笔获利。
这种模式之所以大行其道，主要是因为不断增长的购房需求，通常是投机客在寻找盈利的机会。有些是富有的个人，但更多是企业，他们把原先用于资本投资的资金投入房地产市场，期望获得更高的回报。
中央政府的目的是让老百姓可以负担得起房地产的价格，但是所有这些都是让政府头痛的所在。一项巨大的住房社会化政策最终会给市场带来廉价的房屋。与此同时，政府试图抽空市场中的投机成分（通过限制以投资为目的的抵押贷款和禁止国有企业买地），让开发商迫于压力尽快建造并出售房屋。银行现在不得不把钱交给第三者保管账户，而不是直接发放给开发商。这样，只有房屋建设达到一定程度的时候，才会交付现金。开发商交给政府的购地首付款也在直线上升，目前已经达到地价的60％到70％。这些措施会紧缩开发商的资产负债表，促使他们降低价格。
房价增长放缓的事实说明这些政策取得了一些效果，但是价格上升的压力依然强大。为了规避这些新政，据说大陆的开发商开始在海外借贷，用净值股票的方式入境。限制政策的实施过程并不完美，尤其是在中小城市。2009年颁布的一条法律第一次允许大陆的保险公司投资房地产。个人储户依然在银行中保有低息的巨额存款，他们几乎没有其它的投资途径，这也增加了房地产的吸引力——当然，同时出现的还有通货膨胀。
尽管如此，中国和迪拜在两个非常重要的方面是无法相互比较的。首先是根本性的需求增长，中国的一些地区的发展现状已经超过了自身的需求。比如，那么多的工业城市是否都需要一个崭新的中央商务区？如果房屋价格下降，用做投资的空置房屋必然会被整体抛售。但是中国的城市化进程与收入水平的提升都非常迅速，很明显地不同于迪拜的“有了梧桐树不愁金凤凰”的模式。
中东地区有更值得与中国比较的国家。房地产开发公司GulfRelated的Emile Habib说，迪拜是一个极端的例子，向好的一面是像沙特阿拉伯这种内部需求庞大的国家。
第二个区别是金融体制的强度。国际货币基金组织估算，中国在2009年，房地产开发商的贷款和房屋抵押贷款占所有未偿还贷款总量的不到20％，香港是52％，美国是57％。所有人都不要盲目欣慰于这个数字。在一个依靠现金驱动的市场中，资金可以自有往来于不同的领域。抵押贷款的债务在一个极低的水平基础上，上升到这个标准，房地产市场的繁荣会让这些资金流入银行难以管控的领域。但是，就像西方政策制定者们现在勉强承认的那样，如果房地产市场的走向发生变化，债务越少，金融体系崩溃的风险就越小。
原文：
THE property market illustrates the growing divergence between rich-world and emerging economies. In most developed countries (with a few exceptions, such as Australia and Canada) governments are trying to breathe life into property. In developing ones they are trying to cool things down. In the West the question is when prices will stop falling. In the East it is whether they will stop rising.
For many institutional investors, emerging markets, however buoyant, are not worth taking big bets on. Thanks to the bust, the rich world offers high-quality properties in liquid markets at lowish prices. The developing countries are a riskier development prospect, with new homes, offices and malls being built at speed to cope with fast-rising demand.
That demand is undoubtedly enormous. Brazil is thought to be short of some 8m homes; the whole of India has fewer hotel rooms than Las Vegas; in Saudi Arabia a long-awaited mortgage law is expected to kickstart a residential boom. Yet the pitfalls are also cavernous. Legal issues are one source of uncertainty. Investors complain that China’s system is capricious, for instance. “China will be one of the biggest property markets in the world in five years’ time,” says one big fund manager. “But if you put millions into a building in China and sell it, it is not clear that you will be able to take your money out.” Retail lenders express similar misgivings about the process for repossessing homes in developing markets.
The biggest worry of all is the rush of new supply. The pace of development is often frantic, nowhere more so than in China. According to Barclays Capital, more than 40% of the skyscrapers due for completion in the next six years will be in China, increasing the number of tall buildings in Chinese cities by more than half. Landscapes are changing in a matter of days. One of the more hypnotic items on YouTube is a time-lapse video of a 15-storey prefabricated hotel in Changsha being put up in just six days. “The range of outcomes in London and New York is pretty limited,” says one investor. “In Shenzhen you can be building a block of apartments with four others going up alongside.”
One way to manage the risk of oversupply is to take capital out of emerging markets as quickly as possible. ING’s real-estate asset-management arm (soon to be part of CBRE) works with local firms to build flats and homes for sale in markets such as China, enabling it to realise profits in two or three years. Another is to go for the less crowded parts of the market. Mr White of CBRE thinks that the logistics sector is one of the more promising avenues for foreign investors, in part because the market is dominated by a handful of global firms based in America. Shopping centres are another area where foreigners still have an edge over locals.
But many investors who have raised funds for deployment in emerging markets will have trouble finding a home for their money. One reason is that these markets are thin: there is very little buying and selling of existing properties. Another is competition from locals. Mainland Chinese developers are wildly optimistic because they have seen values rise, says David Ellis of Mayer Brown JSM, a law firm. “They are using a different spreadsheet.”
All this helps explain why many people are nervous about the state of the Chinese property market in general, and the residential part of it in particular. High-profile hedge-fund managers such as Jim Chanos give warning (self-servingly) of a property crash even worse than Dubai’s. In January three of the ten biggest short positions in Hong Kong-listed mainland companies were held in property firms. Nationally, incomes in China have largely kept pace with rising prices (see chart 7), but an IMF report in December said that in some big cities prices “appear to be increasingly disconnected from fundamentals”.
Rationing the air supply
The Chinese government has unveiled a series of measures since April 2010 to mute house-price inflation. They include raising the minimum downpayment for first-time buyers to 30% of a home’s value, up from 20% before, and a stop on mortgages for people buying a third or subsequent home. These measures have had some success. The year-on-year price rise has slowed down: in December it was 6.4%, not that much higher than the overall inflation rate.
Even so, the market continues to look extremely buoyant on many measures. Total property loans outstanding last year rose by 27.5%, which at least was slower than in 2009. Policymakers lean towards further tightening. A property tax was announced in Shanghai and Chongqing at the start of this year, causing a rush to seal deals before it takes effect. Transactions in Shanghai in the first half of January reportedly jumped by more than a third year-on-year, according to local estate agents. Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, has said he wants to see the residential market return to a “reasonable level” before his term of office ends in 2013.
As well as dampening down demand, the Chinese have been trying to increase supply. That may seem counterintuitive in a country with a home-ownership rate of about 80%. But that startlingly high rate was the result of a huge, one-off transfer of government housing to private ownership in the late 1990s. Much of it is dilapidated and most people want to move out and up. “There is pent-up demand that has been building for 50 years,” says Michael Klibaner of JLL in Shanghai.
The problem for the average buyer is that prices have been driven higher not just by other would-be homeowners but by a complex chain of speculative activities that reaches right back to another arm of China’s government, the local authorities. Land sales are a big source of revenue for local governments, and by drafting development plans for the land the government can hike its value several times over.
Until recently, local governments would sell this land to developers for very little upfront. A firm could buy land worth 5 billion yuan with just 500m yuan ($75.9m) in working capital, says Jinsong Du of Credit Suisse. Even better, the developer could then offer that land as collateral for a loan of, say, 2.5 billion yuan from a bank. And instead of ploughing those borrowed billions into developing the site, they could use it to buy more land. Developers were not too worried about generating cash flow, because in a pinch they assumed they could always sell the land at a profit or flog as-yet-unbuilt flats to eager buyers on the back of blueprints alone.
The viability of this model depends on ever-growing demand, which often comes from speculative investors looking for a chance of quick capital gains. Some are wealthy private individuals; many are enterprises that have been diverting money from capital investment, hoping for juicier returns from property.
All of this is a big headache for the central government, which is aiming to keep property affordable for the masses. A huge social-housing programme will eventually bring lots of cheaper housing on stream. In the meantime the government is trying to draw the air out of the speculative part of the market (by restricting mortgages taken out for investment purposes, and by banning many state-owned enterprises from buying land) and to put developers under pressure to build and release properties quickly. Banks now have to put money into an escrow account instead of lending directly to developers. The cash is paid out when construction reaches certain milestones. Downpayments from developers to local governments have shot up, too, and now total 60-70% of the land’s value. That stretches developers’ balance-sheets, encouraging them to drop prices.
Carpeted landing
The slowdown in property-price rises suggests that these policies are having some effect. But the upward pressure is still immense. To get round the new rules, some mainland developers are reportedly borrowing money offshore and dressing it up as equity when it comes onshore. The restrictions are not always properly implemented, particularly in smaller cities. A 2009 law allowed mainland insurers to invest another wall of money in property for the first time. Individual savers keep an enormous amount of cash in low-yielding bank deposits and have relatively few investment options, which increases the appeal of property—as does rising inflation.
Nonetheless, in two critical respects, comparisons between China and places such as Dubai are misplaced. One is underlying growth in demand. Some places in China may well be getting ahead of themselves: for example, it is not clear whether so many industrial cities really need a brand new central business district. If prices were to turn, the amount of vacant property being held as investment would make a wave of forced selling more likely. But China, with urbanisation and income growth on a massive scale, is clearly different from Dubai’s model of “build it and they will come.”
There are better parallels in the Middle East. Emile Habib of GulfRelated, a property-development joint venture in the region, says Dubai is saturated and the best prospects are places with lots of internal demand like Saudi Arabia.
The second difference is the amount of leverage in the system. The IMF reckons that loans to developers and mortgages accounted for under 20% of total outstanding loans in late 2009, compared with 52% in Hong Kong and 57% in America. Again, nobody should draw too much comfort from this. In a cash-driven market, liquidity can flow out of the sector quickly; mortgage debt is rising fast from a low base; and a property bust could spill over into other fields to which banks have lots of exposure. But as Western policymakers would now wearily agree, less debt means less systemic risk for the banks if and when the property cycle turns.
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发表于 2011-3-8 14:11
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