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 [转帖]Patrick Chovanec (程致宇) : China Real Estate Unravels |
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[转帖]Patrick Chovanec (程致宇) : China Real Estate Unravels -- 高树 - (5172 Byte) 2012-5-18 周五, 04:54 (2375 reads) |
高树
头衔: 海归准将
声望: 学员
性别: 
加入时间: 2007/03/13
文章: 489
来自: 美国加州旧金山湾区
海归分: 121480
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作者：高树 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
China’s developers are playing out a kind of prisoner’s dilemma: rush to complete, in hopes of cashing out. But while supply keeps going up, demand is going down. In late March, a central bank (PBOC) survey reported that only 14.1% of Chinese consumers were looking to buy a house in Q2, the lowest level since 1999. Only 17.7% expected home prices to rise in Q2, and 62.9% said they still consider prices to be too high. So all those rushed completions only add to the glut already on the market, driving prices down further and giving buyers — investors and aspiring residents alike — all the more reason to hold off for a better deal. Perhaps this is why Qin Hong, deputy head of research for the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD), told the Oriental Morning Post in late March that she doesn’t expect housing prices to rebound significantly for the rest of the year. A strong rebound is impossible, she said, due to the continued property tightening policy and high housing inventory (my italics).
The second implication of the dynamic I’ve just described is that the “resilient” growth in real estate investment that seemed to promise a “soft landing” is not very resilient at all. It’s more like the last gasp of a market that’s running out of steam. Once the surge in completions plays out, the declining number of new starts will become the pipeline, and growth in property investment will flatten or go negative. Property investment accounts for roughly a quarter of gross Fixed Asset Investment (FAI), and net FAI accounts for over half of China’s GDP growth. As I noted in January, in a back-of-the-envelope thought exercise, if property investment plateaus (growth falls to zero), it could shave as much as 2.6 percentage points off of real GDP growth. If it fell 10% (in real, not nominal terms) it could bring GDP growth down to 5.3%.
At the time I first saw this dynamic in the data, when the Q1 numbers came out, I figured it would take several months to begin playing out. But the April numbers suggest it is already happening. In April, overall completions rose only 2.8% year-on-year (down from 39.3% in Q1), and housing completions flatlined at 0.8% (down from 40.0% in Q1). As completions petered out, growth in real estate investment decelerated markedly, to just 9.2%, with residential investment growing just 4.0%. Investment actually fell month-on-month, in absolute terms, by -10.7% overall and -9.5% in housing. It only grew year-on-year at all because of a low base set last April. If you plugged this year’s April versus last year’s May, you’d get a year-on-year drop of -9.1% for property investment overall, and -11.0% for housing. (In this context, it’s worth noting that, according to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics, overall property investment growth in the capital already went negative in January-February, for the first time in three years, dropping -4.6%).
If there’s one bright side to the plateau in completions, it was that unsold inventories advanced less rapidly over the year before. Floor space “for sale” did rise in April, in absolute terms, but not by much. It’s important to remember, though, all the unsold inventory that remains held back and hidden in the pipeline, as noted before.
Meanwhile, the contraction in sales, new starts, and land sales deepened even further in April. Although the decline in sales appeared to moderate slightly for the sector as a whole (-4.5%) and for housing (-2.9%), this was again largely due to a lower base effect from last April, when sales contracted month-on-month by nearly RMB 100 billion. This year’s April sales also registered a significant month-on-month decline, by -17.2% for all property and -15.5% for housing. The more striking news, perhaps, is that commercial property sales, which have been much more resilient until now, also plunged, with office sales falling -23.4% year-on-year and -34.4% compared to March, and retail property sales falling -9.5% year-on-year and -22.7% month-on-month. April was the first month in which all three categories were in year-on-year decline.
New starts in April fell -14.6% year-on-year and -27.0% month-on-month, for property as a whole. Housing starts fell -14.4% year-on-year and -23.4% month-on-month. Office and retail starts, which had remained quite strong through Q1, also plunged. Office starts fell -21.0% year-on-year in April, and -45.1% compared to March. Retail property starts fell -18.7% year-on-year, and -36.8% compared to March. (The year-on-year April comparisons for office and retail rely on a reverse calculation to isolate April 2011 figures, which NBS did not provide in its earlier releases). In short, the trendline in starts has dipped into negative double digits across all categories.
Land sales, meanwhile, fell off a cliff. Land sale revenues in April (RMB 27 billion) were down -54.7% compared to April last year (RMB 60 billion), and -47.0% compared to March (RMB 51 billion). Total area sold was down -52.5% compared to last April, and -43.4% compared to March (the year-on-year comparison here relies on a similar reverse calculation as before).
It should be no surprise, then, that foreign investors are pulling back from China’s property sector. Foreign funding for property development was down -91.4% in March and -80.8% in April, compared to the same months last year.
I think most readers will agree, this is pretty powerful stuff. At least one major sector of the Chinese economy (10-13% of GDP), which had been a leading growth driver, is undoubtedly in contraction. More importantly, the dynamics behind these numbers suggest that the market has not bottomed out, but is still in the process of unraveling. That is why I told CNN, in late April:
“No one has hit the panic button yet,” Chovanec said. “Everyone is holding out hope that at some point it turns around somehow. But I also think that’s a triumph of hope over reason.”
作者：高树 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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