The Housing Bubble

A report from the Globe and Mail in Canada. “A leading indicator of future construction activity is the level of activity at sales centres where developers presell new house and condo projects that are not built yet. According to data published by BILD – an industry association for the building sector in the GTA – a total of 11,942 new homes were sold by developers in the first half of 2018, a drop of almost 60 per cent from 28,942 sales in the first half of 2017. That decline came on the heels of a 36-per-cent drop in sales in the second half of 2017 as the GTA housing market was cooling.”

“Chris Slightham, president of Toronto-based Royal LePage Signature Realty, said reduced commissions will cause broader impacts as agents spend less on business marketing and promotion, while also reducing personal spending as their incomes drop. ‘The 20-plus-per-cent decline by unit volume in the GTA – just in the trading volume – means one-fifth of last year’s business doesn’t exist this year,’ he said. The drop came on top of a decline in sales in 2017, he said, which means agents have faced more than a year of declining incomes.”

From Better Dwelling in Canada. “Vancouver real estate had the worst July in 18 years, and the detached market was a big contributor. Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver numbers show detached sales had a big decline in July. The decline, combined with a surge in inventory, printed a new record for the region though. Greater Vancouver detached prices had the first broad market decline in nearly 5 years.”

From Hurriyet Daily News in Turkey. “Ali Ağaoğlu, the billionaire chairman of the Ağaoğlu Group construction corporation in Turkey, has denied rumors that his company has gone bankrupt. The businessman admitted that the depreciation of the lira has brought an additional ‘20-25 percent burden’ on the construction sector, but claimed that Turkey ‘would come out of this process stronger.’ ‘I don’t believe that there is a housing bubble in Turkey. The C segment continues needing housing. We need to produce houses for this segment,’ he said.”

From Neoskomos. “Greece, being a popular destination for Chinese tourists and investors for years, established strong relations with the Red Dragon with consecutive Prime Ministers offering special business deals in hope of rescuing the crisis-stricken country from debt. According to data from Chinese online news agency Sina Weibo, Greece is the sixth most popular destination in the world for Chinese real estate investors.”

“Even though the Golden Visa program is seen as a positive boost to the economy by the government, Greek citizens are alarmed as the influx of Chinese buyers is pushing real-estate prices to new unaffordable heights for the median-income earner.”

From East Asia Forum. “In January 2018, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited Cambodia and oversaw the signing of 19 new development deals. The deals were announced just a few weeks after Chinese firms pledged to invest an additional US$7 billion in Cambodia. The cityscapes of Cambodia’s urban centres, most notably Phnom Penh, Battambang and Sihanoukville, are beginning to show tangible signs of Chinese foreign investment. In Phnom Penh, 3488 high-end residential units such as luxury apartments and condominiums were added to the housing market in 2017. The construction of another 15,688 luxury units is forecast to be complete in 2018.”

“Chinese investment is welcomed by Cambodian authorities to help to alleviate the country’s growing urbanisation and housing concerns. But questions are being raised about the long-term sustainability and economic effectiveness of Chinese real estate projects in Phnom Penh, which are criticised for mostly benefitting the nation’s affluent.”

“The ‘privatisation of urbanisation’ in Phnom Penh, supported by Chinese foreign direct investment, is almost exclusively aimed at the Cambodian upper class and at Chinese tourists and businessmen. While few of the large real estate projects in Phnom Penh provide exact figures on the nationality of their tenants, it is estimated that about 90 per cent of units are sold to Chinese citizens. This drives the city’s housing prices up to the point where the units are unaffordable for most Cambodians.”

“Another concern is the true intentions behind Chinese real estate investments in Cambodia. Observers note that more than half of the luxury apartments and condominiums in Phnom Penh bought by Chinese nationals are paid for in cash. This could suggest that the acquisition of such properties is a front for money laundering by wealthy Chinese citizens who are worried about their home country’s mounting debts and unpredictable authorities.”

From ABC News. “China is also dealing with a “mountain of debt” racked up at a massive pace over the past decade, as it raced to catch up with the ‘rich world.’ ‘Since 2008 China has been on this massive debt-fuelled binge,’ says Dinny McMahon, who spent a decade covering China for the Wall Street Journal.”

“A lot of the money China borrowed from state banks was invested in infrastructure. Some of the construction was useful, but the non-stop building boom also created ‘ghost cities’. They were essentially built from scratch to accommodate people moving from the countryside into the cities in the future — but that was ‘nothing more than a fig leaf at the end of the day.’ Hardly anyone actually turned up to live in them. ‘They do have people living in them but it’s almost a skeleton population relative to what they were built for,’ McMahon says.”

The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. “It’s striking how quickly widely held assumptions about the housing market can be turned on their heads, thanks to changes in sentiment and market conditions. This is clearest in Sydney and Melbourne, where it wasn’t that long ago that FOMO or the ‘fear of missing out’ appeared to be driving prices ever higher. Now, some say that if things were to worsen a lot more, we may have to get our heads around a new acronym: FONGO, or ‘fear of not getting out,’ as more people try to sell before prices fall further.”

“To be sure, we’re not at that point yet. But the fact it’s being talked about is a stark illustration of how much things have changed. It wasn’t too long ago that it was commonly said both of these two cities had a severe housing shortage - thanks to strong demand for properties, and insufficient supply. This mismatch bid up prices. Why are rents falling if we’ve got a housing shortage?”

“Well, after all the frantic buying by property investors in recent years, there’s now a lot more rental stock on the market.”

From Domain News in Australia. “Australia’s prestige property market has continued to slide down international growth rankings as domestic and international pressures take hold. The top 5 per cent of the property market in Australia’s major cities has lost steam over the past year, according to Knight Frank’s Prime Global Cities Index,which recorded a fall of as much as three percentage points in some state capitals over the past quarter.”

“LJ Hooker Double Bay director Bill Malouf said it was no surprise the rate of growth had slowed in the bustling eastern cities. ‘Has there been a softening, yes there has – across the board,’ he said. ‘There’s the regulations, the resistance from the banks.’”

“Head of NGU Real Estate Emil Juresic said Brisbane was more consistent than the volatile southern capitals. ‘One thing is the market right now is solid. We aren’t seeing the growth we’ve been seeing in the past five years,’ he said. ‘It’s not going down, but it’s not going up either.’ Mr Juresic said high net-worth individuals and foreign investors were leaving the apartment rental game due to an oversupply, and concentrating their wealth in prestige property.

“‘We’re not in another boom, we’re in controlled market which is the best market to be in,’ he said.”