The Music Keeps Playing, Everyone Keeps Dancing
Readers suggested a topic on housing and globalization. “How house prices may be affected in the long run due to downward pressure on wages caused by offshoring. There are many who worry that inflation may cause the price of everything (including houses) to rise. But is that possible when wages don’t inflate?”
A reply, “All depends on how easy/hard credit becomes…”
Another said, “The answer to America’s woes is so obvious it amazes me nobody is talking about it. Just enforce a 20% VAT on all value addition (strong arm states into capping sales tax at say 5%). Apply a flat 20% countervailing duty to all imports. With the huge amounts of money generated, plough back say 30% to local companies manufacturing stuff here - give them incentives, free power, free training, low low cost loans.”
“If you’re looking for ideas to fix the economy, just look at how China does business. (Don’t pick up all the habits, just the good ones.)”
The Economic Times. “Buying a new home will become more expensive with banks set to hike lending rates by a quarter to half a percentage point after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) raised key policy and savings rates on Tuesday. For existing home loan borrowers, too, rates will go up by the same extent. ‘Although there is no asset bubble as such, asset price concerns remain as housing prices remain firm,’ said RBI governor D Subbarao.”
The Times of India. “The spectre of empty blocks stares in the face of property developers as buyers suddenly turn turtle to cheaper pastures. The state government announced the decision to increase property registration fee from one to three per cent on Saturday. The hike started showing an adverse effect on real estate business within a few hours of the announcement. Builders have started feeling the pinch of the fee hike, as most of the prospective investors, especially those from other states are now reconsidering their plan to buy here.”
“‘I have lost two customers since the hike was announced. Both, from National Capital Region (NCR), were planning to book flats in Bariatu, but have now changed their decision,’ said Singh Constructions proprietor VK Singh.”
The Sydney Morning Herald. “As we’re constantly reminded, China’s thirst for our resources now drives an enormous share of Australia’s growth. This pays off handsomely when China’s economy is expanding by nearly 10 per cent a year, as it has been recently, and markets seem convinced this stellar growth can continue for a while yet. But what happens to us if China’s economy gets the wobbles?”
“The World Bank unveiled a less rosy view on China in its latest Quarterly Update. While it said the growth outlook was positive, it also urged the government to raise interest rates to dampen inflation and a potential house price bubble. A sustained build-up in house prices was a ‘particular source of risk’ that could have ripple effects across construction - the industry buying such vast quantities of steel for which Australia supplies the raw materials.”
From Fin 24. “Hong Kong’s property bubble is partly a spillovereffect from the property bubble in some of China’s urban high-end markets. In fact, investors are vulnerable to several factors within the Chinese system that could affect global asset prices.There’s a massive amount of liquidity sloshing around China, with broad money supply expanding to 182% of GDP – a massive pool for speculation. Negative real interest rates encourage savers to seek alternatives to bank deposits.”
“The Communist Party’s dominance over the press, even independent sources, results in low trust of official information, counteracting their ability to dispel unfounded speculative manias. At the same time, heavy reliance on social networks results in an abnormal amount of inside information sharing, and thus speculative opportunities. Positive feedback loops proliferate as investors pile into the same opportunities and bid prices up.”
“The government’s interference in price setting distorts markets, creating potentially huge divergences from equilibrium. ‘New era’ thinking is endemic in China, and this euphoria often spills over into asset price valuations as speculators discount historical benchmarks.”
“The property bubble is still going strong, with investors often buying cash instead of borrowing. This has led Hong Kong based Hugo Restall to write in the Wall Street Journal that the impression could exist that leverage isn’t playing a role in the bubble.”
“But Restall writes the ‘credit machine that drives China’s investment-led economy’ creates the wealth behind the property boom. ‘Pushing loans out of the door throws off large amounts of cash to the managers and cadres involved, which they then use to buy apartments. For instance, local governments depend on the revenue from land redevelopment, and the officials then … buy property. As long as the music keeps playing, everyone keeps dancing.’”
The New York Times. “When I lived in China in the 1980s and ’90s, there was always an awkward economic imbalance between me and my Chinese friends. I had a car, and they had bicycles. I paid for our meals together because I was so much better off. Now there’s a new imbalance: Some of those same people ride around in chauffeured limousines while I get around in taxis. They take me to fancy restaurants whose prices give me headaches.”
“One Chinese friend took me to a home with private indoor basketball court and personal movie theater. It was a tribute to the stunning improvement in the country’s standard of living. But it also speaks to growing income gaps at a time when, by official figures, 320 million rural Chinese do not even have access to safe water.”
“Moreover, some of the economic boom appears attributable to a bubble, particularly in real estate. And some of the grand fortunes are linked to corruption by government officials. One friend, the son of a Politburo member, once told me that he was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by a Chinese company just to be on its board. That way, the company could persuade local governments to give it land at reduced prices.’
The Christian Science Monitor. “Even though China’s $268 billion trade surplus with the US directly accounted for an already astounding 6% of China’s GDP in 2008, it had an even larger impact through its indirect effects on personal consumption expenditure, gross fixed capital formation and credit expansion. It would not be unreasonable to estimate that as much as 40% of China’s economy must be attributed to its dependence on exporting to the United States.”
“Seen in this light, it should be clear why the breakdown of the American economic model of debt-fueled consumption has thrown China into a terrible crisis of its own. Whereas the United States’ problem is that it cannot make as much as it consumes, China’s problem is even worse. China can’t consume as much as it makes. Chinese factory workers do not earn enough to buy the products they make. If China can’t export those products, there is no domestic market for them. Then production must stop, and the workers lose their jobs.”
“Since the economic crisis in the United States began, China has averted disaster through an explosion of domestic credit creation. Over the last 24 months alone, China’s state-owned banks have expanded outstanding loans by 60%.”
The Star. “Selling real estate isn’t exactly brain surgery. But for Toronto broker Tony Ma, who’s done both jobs, appeasing homebuyers has at times proven to be more challenging. Ma, principal of HomeLife Landmark Realty, was a neurosurgeon in China before moving to Canada in the late ’90s to find he’d have to go through a lengthy and tedious process to practice medicine here. So he decided to become a real estate agent instead.”
“In 2010 the brokerage did roughly 3,000 deals, with a total sales volume of $1.15 billion, undergirded by strong ties to the Mainland China market. Indeed, approximately 65 per cent of Ma’s agents are Chinese and the majority of Landmark’s business comes from Chinese clients. Most are newcomers to Canada, but about 30 per cent are overseas investors.”
“‘There are 1.4 billion people in China and in the past 30 years, due to economic reforms and a policy to open to the outside world, we have achieved a lot of economic growth,’ he explains. ‘So you have many rich people there who want to grow their fortunes and they’re looking for places to invest. That’s why we see delegations from China coming to Canada to visit and buy real estate.’”
“‘The number of Chinese buyers is increasing every month,’ Ma says, noting popular developments such as One Bloor, the Hullmark Centre, East Liberty and Concord mega-projects Park Place and CityPlace. Condos in stable Toronto are a bargain for his overseas clients. ‘Our price per square foot here is at most $900,’ he says. ‘In Beijing, it’s $2,000 per square foot and in Hong Kong it’s double that.’”
The Gazette. “Canadians have a piggy bank with a lot of money in it, making the fire sale going on in the United States housing market a great temptation. Last year, the average price of a home sold in Canada in 2010 was $339,030. Back in 1995, it was just $150,720. Price appreciation has led to major increases in equity in Canadian homes, says the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals.”
“CAAMP says based on October 2010 numbers, there was $820-billion of debt on $2.9-trillion of residential property — that’s an impressive 72.8% of equity in our homes. Using the 2010 average home price, that’s about $246,000 of equity. Some of that money is going to buy U.S. property.”
“The Washington D.C.-based National Association of Realtors says Canadians are the number one foreign buyer of U.S. real estate. Canadians were responsible for 23% of all purchases by foreigners in the U.S. last year. No other country’s consumers were even close.”
“Vince Gaetano, a principal broker at Monster Mortgage, says he’s had a dozen clients in the last year take equity of out their home to buy an American property. ‘What they are doing is refinancing their existing home to access capital. They buy their U.S. home with cash. The majority try to avoid any mortgages down there,’ says Mr. Gaetano, referring to the difficulty of securing financing.”
“The cash goes a long way. Let’s say you were to refinance that average home with $246,000 in equity. You’re probably going to keep your equity at 20% because once you fall below that level you have to start paying mortgage default insurance. But even at 20% equity, and once you consider your original debt, the average Canadian homeowner could withdraw about $180,000 from their home for an investment.”
“The equity release is a scary prospect,” says the Irish-born Philip McKernan, author of South of 49 and Fire Sale: How To Buy U.S. Foreclosures. (He) now lives in Vancouver but witnessed a similar phenomenon in his homeland. ‘They called it the Celtic tiger. People released vast amount of equity from their home, including myself. I believed I had an ATM in the back of my house.’”
“He leverage the equity in a home on the west coast of Ireland to buy two properties in Finland and the next thing he knew the value of his principal residence had shrunk dramatically and his overseas properties were just holding their own. ‘My purchases were driven by greed and ego,’ says Mr. McKernan, adding it’s the same for many Canadians this time. ‘Prices came off [in Ireland] and we were left with a piece of real estate that had negative equity and we had to keep paying it off.’”
