China Securities Journal: Speculation Still Present in Housing

iFeng: 遏制炒房不可松劲

The data shows that real estate inventory is rapidly declining, and prices in some cities have shown signs of rising, especially in some hotspots. Therefore, "houses for living, no speculation" should not be only a stage of thinking, but should be the long-term guiding principles of the regulation of the property market.

At present, the property market in certain hot cities remains speculative. Under the strict price limit mechanism, many hot-spot cities have experienced the phenomenon of a second-hand house price hanging upside down. According to statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to May this year, the sales area of ​​commercial housing was 564.09 million square meters, an increase of 2.9% year-on-year, and the growth rate was 1.6 percentage points higher than that of the first four months; the sales of commercial housing were 4.8778 trillion yuan, an increase of 11.8%. Increased by 2.8 percentage points. The growth rate of both indicators began to rebound, ending the slowdown in more than a year.

It is worth noting that from January to May, the sales area of ​​commercial housing in the central region was 154.02 million square meters, an increase of 13.3%; sales of 1.039 trillion yuan, an increase of 26.9%. The sales area of ​​commercial housing in the western region was 15,215 million square meters, an increase of 9.9%; the sales amount was 1021.4 billion yuan, an increase of 26.8%. The "heat" of the property market in the central and western regions is significantly higher than other regions.

The monitoring data of the Yiju Research Institute showed that the transaction area of ​​40 typical cities increased by 12% month-on-month in May; the transaction volume of new houses in 4 first-tier cities increased by 29% month-on-month; the area of ​​new houses sold in 18 second-tier cities increased by 11% month-on-month; 18 three-and-four lines The area of ​​new houses in the city increased by 12% from the previous period. At the same time, as of the end of May, the total number of new commercial housing stocks in 100 cities was 427.08 million square meters, a decrease of 1.6% from the previous period and a year-on-year decrease of 8.2%. Baicheng’s residential stocks fell for a consecutive 34 months year-on-year, of which 73 were lower than the same period last year.

How to prevent speculation going forward?

In the long run, to curb the chaos of speculative speculation and insist on the residential properties of housing, it is still necessary to establish and improve the long-term mechanism for real estate regulation to achieve a balance between supply and demand, thus promoting stable housing prices and stable and healthy market development.

The first is to adjust the land supply at the supply end, adjust the residential industrial commercial land structure, establish a linkage mechanism for housing price and land prices, prevent land prices from pushing up house prices, and establish a housing system with multiple channels of guarantee, multi-subject supply, and rent and sale to effectively meet the needs of different people. demand. The second is that the land finance model needs to be broken down to curb speculation and the impulse of real estate speculation at the source. The third is to start property tax legislation research as soon as possible, and gradually promote the collection of property taxes. The fourth is to adjust financial policies flexibly. It is necessary to continue to encourage support for just-neededness and improvement of demand, while resolutely curbing speculative demand. In addition, the regulation of real estate is to prevent risks. It is necessary to explore ways to dissolve the real estate bubble and avoid the risk of risk disposal.

China could solve everything by controlling its financial system and limiting credit growth, but the problem is it needs growing credit to keep the economy growing. It cannot slow credit growth without slowing the economy, unless it makes major economic reforms. Absent those reforms, slowing growth will always bring the economy to stall speed and policy makers reverse course.

The real estate market still generates a large share of GDP growth. Policy makers want credit to flow into other areas of the economy, but they have yet to create the opportunities that will absorb large amounts of capital. China has been doing all sorts of reforms and pulling levers and pushing buttons at all levels of government and at the central bank, and yet the problems they faced in 2008, 2011, 2014 and now 2018 are still the same.