Investors Are The First To Exit
The Calgary Herald reports from Canada. “According to the Calgary Real Estate Board, MLS sales in the Calgary apartment category this month, to Thursday, have fallen 38.1 per cent compared to the same period a year ago, with 245 transactions. The average sale price has dipped nearly 11 per cent, to $296,304. ‘If you own property in Calgary and are worried about your home’s value, it’s probably just best to wait this energy recession out and apply prudent debt management practices to your personal finances – reduce or consolidate high interest debt, make your payments on time and in full, and try to build up some emergency savings in the event that unemployment comes knocking.’ Lesley-Anne Scorgie, founder of MeVest and a bestselling author on personal finances.”
“Corinne Lyall, CREB’s president, said typically the condo market is going to be affected quicker than the detached market. ‘I think it’s because there’s more inventory available in the condo market,’ she said. ‘And there’s more choice for buyers looking in that housing segment and plus there’s not only resale inventory but as well new product available and being built currently.’”
The Cape Breton Post in Canada. “Janey Forrest has been trying to sell her three-bedroom Westmount home overlooking Sydney harbour for the past 18 months. Forres moved to Cape Breton from Mission, B.C., in December 2007, after visiting a friend in the area. She said she fell in love with the island and its low housing prices compared to the B.C. lower mainland. ‘I didn’t come here to buy a house. I just came here to visit for five days, and on the fifth day I bought this house,’ Forrest said. ‘I looked around (Sydney) and I saw what the costs were, and at that time in 2007 there was not one house for sale here. Every house I looked at had several offers on it, so I ended up buying this one.’”
“Sydney realtor Mary Ann MacCormick said it has become a classic buyers’ market, and that means sellers must remain patient as people looking to buy weigh their options. ‘For example, I may show (a client) 15 houses instead of five because there’s so much variety out there that they can choose from,’ said MacCormick. ‘And people with houses for sale have to be patient and do everything they can to make their houses appealing.’”
The Strait Times in Singapore. “Prices of completed private apartments were unchanged in June and last month although this could represent a temporary lull before they drop further. These properties are still about 3 per cent lower than a year ago and 9.8 per cent below their peak in July 2013, according to flash estimates for the NUS Singapore Residential Price Index (SRPI). Prices of small units are down 2.9 per cent year on year and have fallen about 9.5 per cent from an August 2013 peak. ‘Shoebox apartment rents and prices will be on the general downward trend, as the number of such completed properties grows, especially in suburban areas,’ said R’ST Research director Ong Kah Seng.”
From DNA India. “Here’s the big proof that real-estate prices in Mumbai are falling. A 13,000 sq ft sea-facing duplex apartment in Palm Beach Road in Navi Mumbai has been sold for Rs 12,500 per sq ft against the Rs 20,000-Rs 25,000 per sq ft quoted a few months earlier. ‘At Palm Beach, most apartments fall in the luxury segment. If rates are plummeting in this segment, it means property rates are likely to slide further. Because high-segment houses always face the first hit,’ said Pankaj Kapoor, MD, Liasea and Foras, a property research firm.”
“Kapoor said that the holding capacity of developers cannot stretch beyond a certain period. They have to pay high interests to banks, he said. ‘Investors are the first set of people to exit during a downfall. Currently, most investors are exiting because there is no significant growth or appreciation in the property market.’”
The Wall Street Journal on Brazil. “Not long ago, Brazil stood as the leading example of how a developing nation could rise toward global prominence on the force of a China-driven commodity boom. Now Brazil is looking like a symbol of something else: resource-rich nations’ habit of ending their booms with spectacular busts. ‘We went from Brazil mania to Brazil nausea,’ said Marcos Troyjo, a former Brazilian diplomat who leads a Columbia University center studying emerging markets. ‘We are looking at a lost decade, where growth stagnates, inflation is high, and, most sadly, a decade where you’ve learned nothing.’”
“China has caused turmoil in many places, but none more so than in this prime supplier of commodities to a country whose once-voracious appetite for them has dimmed. At the height of Brazil’s boom, movies and taxis in downtown São Paulo were more expensive in dollar terms than in New York. Many of Brazil’s problems were homegrown, though, said Alexandre Schwartsman, a former Brazilian central-bank official: ‘We managed to produce this recession ourselves.’”
The New Zealand Herald. “China, until this year, had been by far New Zealand’s biggest export destination, but a staggering 77 per cent decline in the value of whole milk powder exports put Australia back in the top slot in the year to March. JBWere investment strategist Bernard Doyle said the effect of Chinese capital flows could prove pivotal for property prices here and in Australia, where Chinese investment has played a part in the strength of both markets. ‘There is no doubt in my mind that if Chinese capital flows were to get crunched, it would have implications for our housing market,’ he said.”
The New York Times on China. ” In recent days, an advice column has circulated widely on China’s most popular social media phone app. It is aimed at young Chinese urban professionals. Its nuggets of wisdom include: ‘Work hard at your job so you are the last to be laid off’ and ‘In an economic crisis, liquidity is the number one priority.’ Many young middle-class Chinese who grew up during the nation’s glittering boom years, when double-digit growth was the norm, are suddenly confronting the shadow of an economic slowdown and even hints of austerity.”
“They are talking of canceling vacations and delaying weddings and even selling recently purchased apartments to have cash on hand. Those who have lost money in the ongoing stock market crash are especially anxious. One Chinese woman who posted Lin’s column on her WeChat account said it ‘echoed the zeitgeist.’ She had tried to sell an apartment but said, ‘Now I think I might hold off until the market recovers a bit.’”
“Gao Yike, 25, who works at a real estate company in the northeastern provincial capital of Harbin, said in a telephone interview that the project management department laid off employees in April. He said a growing number of midlevel and senior executives were leaving the real estate industry for technology companies and housing sales at his company were notably worse than last year. Gao had also lost half of his initial investments in the stock market. ‘The golden age of the real estate market has come to an end,’ he said.”
‘I didn’t come here to buy a house. I just came here to visit for five days, and on the fifth day I bought this house.’
Don’t you hate it when this happens? It’s like when you go to Las Vegas and you wake up with a Donald Trump tattoo.
‘We went from Brazil mania to Brazil nausea’…‘We are looking at a lost decade’
Hey, isn’t there another disappearing poster who was full of crap and now won’t eat his crow?
‘Brazilian stocks led world declines and the real slumped after data showed Latin America’s largest economy entered a recession, adding to concern corporate earnings will falter.’
‘The currency traded near a 12-year low, showing the widest swings among major tenders, and the Ibovespa was set for the worst month this year as the national statistics agency reported a back-to-back quarterly contraction in gross domestic product.’
“It’s the perfect storm,” Pablo Spyer, a director at Mirae Asset Wealth Management, said from Sao Paulo. His firm oversees 4.5 billion reais ($1.3 billion). “Everybody knew that Brazil’s economy was contracting, but today’s numbers show the scenario is even worse — we may not have reached the bottom yet. Companies are already suffering, and we don’t see improvement any time soon.”
It’s like the Calgary media, “We’re fine we’re fine…We’re F-d!”
‘If you own property in Calgary and are worried about your home’s value, it’s probably just best to wait this energy recession out and apply prudent debt management practices to your personal finances – reduce or consolidate high interest debt, make your payments on time and in full, and try to build up some emergency savings in the event that unemployment comes knocking’
Rio, where are you?
Hiding under the porch with Adan.
Blacked out in an alley with his pants around his ankles.
I know, it’s amazing. Buying a home is a major life decision yet these days people are doing it as easily as ordering Kung Pao Chicken for lunch. I continue to blame the bankers for this, since it’s solely due to the enabling power of their credit lines.
‘The Ibovespa led global losses and the real sank to a 12-year low on speculation that Latin America’s largest economy is struggling to put its finances in order and avoid a credit-rating cut to junk. Brazil’s bond risk traded near the highest level since 2009.’
“Brazil’s current story is a reality check,” said Martial Godet, the head of Europe and emerging-market equities and derivatives strategy at BNP Paribas SA in Paris. “The nation is facing more bad news almost every day.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-31/junk-rating-dread-sends-brazil-stocks-to-biggest-slump-in-world
‘The origins of this week’s global financial chaos – and the economic storm clouds now darkening over Australia – are best illuminated by a strange sequence of events that may or may not have taken place three months ago. “It’s good to trade shares,” China’s President Xi Jinping reportedly told a journalist, during an inspection tour in Hangzhou. The Shanghai Index “will soon hit 10,000 points!”
‘Xi was reportedly bantering with a reporter who had jokingly confessed that she had joined the national pre-occupation of “stir frying” shares. At first, when the exchange was circulated by another journalist on her Wechat microblog, with Xi using the same metaphor for flipping over-heated shares, China’s army of investors ignored it or dismissed it as fake.’
‘China’s bull market (or “mad cow” market to use literal Chinese) had already worked itself into a frenzy, with the Shanghai Composite Index sitting just shy of 5000 points after doubling in just six months. Why would China’s strongman leader bet his reputation by predicting that this mad cow market would quickly double again?’
‘But two days later when the market hit an air-pocket, on May 28, China’s hyperactive censors allowed the exchange to go viral across the Chinese cyber sphere and also to be reported by mainstream online news portals.’
‘The implicit endorsement of propaganda officials was understood to be some kind of official financial guarantee. And so investors gave the index one last great push until it reached a peak of 5166 points, on June 12.’
‘Beijing’s mega-stimulus in 2008 set off the greatest construction boom the world has ever seen. By 2011, China’s decade of hyper-industrialisation had boosted Australia’ national income by 13 per cent, according to a Reserve Bank analysis. We all received far higher incomes, bought more things, and watched our house prices soar without having to exert more effort.’
‘But delivering the world’s largest ever fiscal and monetary stimulus also did China a lot of damage…Perhaps the greatest damage that flowed from the GFC mega-stimulus is what it did to China’s political establishment. The sudden surge in China’s relative fortunes encouraged many Chinese leaders to take their Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist ideology more seriously. Some of them, particularly many in the “princeling” cohort, began to talk and act as if they had proven the superiority of their system and perhaps also of themselves. Some of them, it seems, believed they could suspend the laws of economics.’
‘When Xi’s Ten Thousand Points Theory was allowed to exist online, trading on this apparent political guarantee made rational sense as China’s leaders had policy credibility. Now, after bizarre state-backed efforts to fuel a stock market bubble and stop it from bursting, the policy credibility has been squandered and the bill is falling due.’
“The sheer volume of the capital involved and the consequences that may follow over a long period demand that we seriously reflect on what was done and what should have been learned,” said a commentary in Caixin Magazine.’
‘It’s the end of an extraordinary era for Australia, too. The Chinese tailwind that inflated our living standards for a decade is now blowing the other way.’
Yellen and Bernanke believe they have suspended the laws of economics too.
‘After the abrupt devaluation on Aug. 11, Beijing appears to have been so surprised by the global reaction that it tends to keep the yuan on a tight leash to head off a currency war that could spark a broader financial crisis, policy insiders say.’
‘Premier Li Keqiang reiterated at the weekend earlier remarks that there’s no basis for continued depreciation of the yuan following its devaluation.’
‘The yuan “will stay basically stable as a reasonable and balanced level,” he said. Most market watchers, however, believe there is political pressure for it to weaken further to support exports and reflecting expectations of further policy easing.’
‘The offshore yuan was trading 1.03 percent weaker than the onshore spot at 6.4469 per dollar by midday. Offshore one-year non-deliverable forwards contracts, considered the best available proxy for forward-looking market expectations of the yuan’s value, traded at 6.6075, or 3.30 percent weaker than Monday’s midpoint.’
“mad cow”
So the Chinese stock market has mad cow disease?
Who knew?
You can’t make this stuff up - you really can’t!
Isn’t the Chinese stock market still higher than it was on January 1, 2015 ?
How is the Dow?
“Yellen and Bernanke believe they have suspended the laws of economics too.”
It’s really far worse than that. After decades walled off inside the Ivory Tower, Dr. Bernanke unleashed a massive range of untested command and control monetary policy measures on the global financial economy at an unprecedented scale.
The highly uncertain results of the experiment will play out over the course of decades to come.
The result will be cascading defaults and deflation. The Fed is there to whitewash the bank ledgers, but they are not going to pay back everyone’s loans.
“Serious reflection.” Come on now, anyone engaging in that kind of thinking would come to the prohibited conclusion that China is hosed. This is a country that blocks the internet and restricts square dancers to state-approved routines. Serious reflection, unless it endorses the status quo and pays the requisite obeisance to leadership, is a one-way ticket to a prison camp.
“Come on now, anyone engaging in that kind of thinking would come to the prohibited conclusion that China is hosed.”
Can the thought police arrest Chinese citizens who don’t believe the economy is growing at 7 percent?
I predict that the official stats will show that China grew at an annualized rate of 7% in the third quarter.
The Shanghai is on its way to 2600.
‘With the festive season round the corner, property developers are signalling a reduction in prices. Both bankers and realty developers agree that there is scope for bringing down prices in Mumbai and Delhi NCR if realtors sense that you are a genuine buyer, because of the huge inventory of unsold stocks.’
‘Total unsold housing stock, including a small number of completed projects, add up more than one lakh in Noida, 40,000 in Gurgaon, 84,000 in Bangalore and 80,000 in Mumbai. In Mumbai, around 3-4 per cent of the unsold houses are in completed projects.’
‘Rajeev Talwar, executive director at DLF, the country’s biggest real estate developer, said, “Already real estate prices have corrected by around 30 per cent if we compare it with the boom time before 2008. Prices are set to decline further as inventory of residential properties continue to remain high across the country. All developers are willing to negotiate and it is obvious that they are offering sale and discounts to customers. Banks should allow teaser loans so that new customers enter the sector for demand to improve. All developers need money and it would be foolish of them not to offer a sale to improve cash flow, which all other sectors such as retail and auto do.”
‘A senior official at State Bank of India agreed that there was scope for a fall in property prices in certain cities such as Mumbai. “These rates are preventing the middle class from buying. Flats are priced above Rs 2 crore even on the outskirts of Thane.”
‘Residential property prices in Dubai are down by 11 percent in the second quarter of this year compared to the year-earlier period, according to a new report. The Residential VPI (ValuStrat Price Index), which is a 100 point index that started tracking residential values since January 2014 and tracks 26 key locations in Dubai, has shown a steady decline in property values compared to the second quarter of 2014.’
‘When compared to the first quarter, apartments in Business Bay and International City witnessed an average value decline of 6 percent and 4 percent respectively, while villas in Arabian Ranches, Jumeirah Park and Al Furjan, saw a 3 percent decline, the report added.’
‘ValuStrat said that, on average, apartment asking rents dipped by 2 percent in comparison to the same period last year, and villa rents were down by 3 percent.’
‘ValuStrat said Dubai’s residential market anticipates a total supply of 26,100 apartments and 2,400 villas in 2015, bringing the total number to around half a million housing units. Eighteen off plan projects have also been launched to add 5,000 units to the residential pipeline by 2019.’
‘Haider Tuaima, ValuStrat research manager, said: “5,400 residential units were completed during the first half of 2015, a further 28,500 units are scheduled to complete in 2016. This is taking into account a number of projects with approximately 3,000 units originally scheduled for handover this year, moving their schedule forward for completion during 2016.”
‘Now I think I might hold off until the market recovers a bit.’
Sell now, or ride out your losses forever.
Consider it dollar cost averaging.
‘A failed property developer gave his fiancee a diamond engagement ring while staying at a $1500-a-night Italian hotel only months before his company collapsed owing millions of dollars. ‘
‘Hamish Clarke has ‘disappeared’ since his company Valiant Homes went into liquidation in March, owing around $6m to investors, suppliers, tradies and the tax man. In May last year, when creditors say his business was facing financial difficulty, Clarke and his partner Petra Fuerst celebrated their engagement at the exclusive Hotel Danieli in Venice, where suites cost up to $1574 per night.’
‘Fuerst posted pictures on Facebook of herself sporting a large diamond ring, and friends congratulated the beaming couple. The news has angered out-of-pocket subcontractors.’
‘Valiant Homes did mostly in-fill housing developments on Auckland’s North Shore, backed by various different lending groups such as Quadriga. At the time of the liquidation it was working on 14 sites, McCullagh believed.’
‘The lending groups provided what’s known as mezzanine finance - second ranking mortgages, or in some cases loans with no security, McCullagh said. Separate companies were usually set up for each development.’
“These guys think they’re lending on properties they’ve got securities on,” McCullagh said. But the funds could go anywhere in the Valiant group, “paying whoever needed to be paid urgently and not necessarily going into the property you would think it was going into”, he said.’
‘Unsecured creditors of Valiant Homes including dozens of tradespeople are owed $1.4 million, the receiver estimates. Hunia Rangi of building firm Compete Build is owed $65,000. He said Valiant would push all its subcontractors to their financial limits.’
“They’d say, ‘right, if you can get to the next stage then we get paid and you can get paid’.” The pressure even extended to physical threats, he alleged.’
‘Datuk Charon Mokhzani says it is “funny” how when someone wants to invest in the stock market there is heaps of data about what exactly happened in the past and the prediction for the future but the same cannot be said about housing.’
“When you want make a huge investment in a house, you don’t know what new developments are coming up and how many people want houses. There is no data. It’s really quite amazing,” he says.’
‘Charon is the managing director of Khazanah Research Institute (KRI) that came out with the Making Housing Affordable report. There are 7.3 million houses in the country. Of these, three million are “informal” houses, which are houses built without a development order or those built by villagers like kampung homes.’
‘Charon points out that the closest thing Malaysia has to complete data on housing is the fact that over one million people have registered for houses with PR1MA. “That tells you something. At some point in time, we have to provide one million houses for them. We are not sure if one million need houses or if they are renting but they have registered with PR1MA. Until we see the data, we won’t really know. But at least it’s a start and better than not knowing anything.”
‘Charon says the research institute report on affordable housing shows that houses in Kuala Lumpur and Penang are “severely unaffordable” and if nothing is done to address this as the country grows more urbanised, 40% of the lower income and 40% of the middle income groups would need some kind of social housing in the future.’
‘In KL, based on the median household income, affordable houses should cost about RM280,000 and yet in 2014, there were no new property launches in KL below RM250,000 and the bulk of new launches were in the RM500,000 to RM1mil bracket.’
“No wonder people in KL complain about housing! Urbanisation is happening all over the country. We are concerned that if we don’t do something now, KL and Penang will get worse and this might spread to the rest of the country.”
‘Developers argue that houses are expensive in KL because land is expensive. But Charon says it is in fact the other way around. “Why is five acres of land in KL more expensive than five acres of land in a small town? The reason is because you can sell a house in KL for far more than a house in a small town,” he says.’
‘People think “central banks don’t have a handle on inflation any more and that’s not true,” Jon Faust, professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University, said in an interview at the Kansas City Fed’s annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “Inflation will come back, but the specific timing of that is much more difficult in the current environment.”
(Stamp your feet Jon.)
‘At Jackson Hole, academics effectively delivered a beating to central banks’ confidence in their ability to predict and manage their key variable, by pointing out wide gaps in knowledge about how inflation works.’
‘Harvard University’s Gita Gopinath argued that the relationship between prices and exchange rates isn’t well understood. Boston University’s Simon Gilchrist said that strict inflation targeting can worsen economic outcomes.’
‘Worse still, trying to influence inflation while not understanding it is a “recipe for disaster,” according to MIT Sloan School of Management professor Athanasios Orphanides, himself a former ECB Governing Council member.’
‘Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said that while China’s slowdown and stock-market tantrum won’t impact his institution’s policy path, central banks should still show humility. “We have to be clear about when we fail,” he said in a discussion session at the Jackson Lake Lodge. “It is a painful process, but it can bring some credibility.”
It’s like a punch-bowl at an AA meeting.
‘The meeting of the world’s most important central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, this weekend only confirmed the need for Britain, Japan, the eurozone and the US to keep monetary policy loose. Yet the palliative offered by the Fed is akin to a parent soothing fears with another round of ice-creams despite expanding waistlines and warnings from the dentist and the doctor.’
‘According to some City analysts, the stock markets are pumped with so much cheap credit that a crash is just around the corner.’
‘Since 2008 the Fed has pumped around $4.5 trillion into the financial system. The Bank of England stopped at £375bn. The Bank of Japan is still adding to its post-crash stimulus with around $700bn a year and the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank will have matched its cousin in Tokyo by the end of the year.’
‘But China, which has borrowed heavily to keep its economy moving, is running out of steam. Beijing has said it does not want to encourage another borrowing boom. But to prevent a crash, it is doing just that. In the last two weeks it has cut interest rates and loosened borrowing limits. It has even invested directly in the market, buying the shares of smaller companies.’
‘So we face the shocking prospect of central bankers, in thrall to stock market gyrations, making the world a more unstable place with promises of yet more cheap credit.’
‘And if the government is too embarrassed to admit to voters that it needs to borrow money, then the least central banks can do is sign deals with high street banks to lend, rather than hoping they will take QE funds and do something useful with them. Because the evidence is already there for all to see that investors would prefer to pump the money into the stock market and property, both of them inherently unstable and prone to violent crashes.’
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/30/central-banks-cant-save-markets-crash-shouldnt-try
I wonder how many people in the audience are stoned.
In Wyoming?
‘China’s brokerages tumbled after four Citic Securities Co. executives were detained and people familiar with the matter said the industry was told to contribute another 100 billion yuan ($15.7 billion) to a stock market rescue fund.’
‘Citic executives including managing directors Xu Gang and Liu Wei admitted alleged insider trading, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said. The nation’s largest brokerage fell as much as the maximum 10 percent percent in Shanghai and slid to the lowest since May 2014 in Hong Kong. A Citic press officer declined to comment.’
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-31/china-brokers-tumble-as-citic-staff-detained-rescue-costs-grow?cmpid=yhoo
‘The Titanic’s last lunch menu — saved by a passenger who climbed aboard the so-called “Money Boat” before the ocean liner went down — is going to auction, where it’s estimated it will bring $50,000 to $70,000.’
‘The online New York auctioneer Lion Heart Autographs is offering the menu and two other previously unknown artifacts from Lifeboat 1 on Sept. 30. The auction marks the 30th anniversary of the wreckage’s discovery at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.’
‘Abraham Lincoln Salomon was one of a handful of first-class passengers who boarded the lifeboat — dubbed the “Money Boat” or “Millionaire’s Boat” by the press because of unfounded rumors one of them bribed seven crew members to quickly row the boat away from the sinking ship rather than rescue others.’
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/last-titanic-lunch-menu-saved-survivor-going-auction-042538936–finance.html
Interesting analogies can be drawn with this — I’ve heard at least one alternative commentator suggest that our elites are thinking about their own version of the money boat, in the form of property in remote countries, to which they will escape in Gulfstream jets should financial, social, and political judgment day arrive.
I’d say that a few of them are far past thinking about it. And islands are good for security reasons (think 1970s James Bond movies).
A lot of those movies, like “Moonraker” or “The Spy Who Loved Me,” indeed featured a messianic billionaire type intent on creating his own world.
‘Goldman Sachs slashed its forecasts for China’s growth over the next three years amid broadening pessimism over the health of the world’s second largest economy.’
This just in: Goldman fires hundreds, reads The Housing Bubble Blog instead.
Will Chinese authorities arrest Goldman Sachs staff members for slashing China growth estimates?
Ben, can this blog be accessed in China?
I doubt it. I fight off Chinese language spam though.
“This just in: Goldman fires hundreds, reads The Housing Bubble Blog instead.”
And get the schooling of their narrow lives.
Kirkland, WA Housing Prices Dive 5% YoY As Housing Bubble Pops
http://www.movoto.com/kirkland-wa/market-trends/