加拿大环球邮报
作者：SWATI PANDEY WAYNE COLE
发自路透社悉尼
最近澳洲房地产业低迷，一些经济学家警告经济衰退甚至是金融危机的风险增大了。
房屋照片仍然填满了悉尼房地产经纪人的橱窗，但房屋价值同比下降4.4％。
这是悉尼熙熙攘攘的北部郊区Chatswood的一个冬季周末，一套有大院子的三居室的家庭住宅正在拍卖。要价是188万澳元，但没有买家上钩，房主被迫放弃售房。
同一天，在这个海港环抱的城市的心脏地带，一个有着全景景色的两卧室公寓没有卖出，因为根本无人问津。
房产拍卖是痴迷于房地产的澳大利亚人置业需求的风向标，参与拍卖会几乎是全澳人民都喜爱的消遣活动。因此，在上个月路透社记者访问悉尼的一些拍卖会时，发现只有刚过一半的房产成功售出，而去年这一比例则超过了三分之二。
虽然那一周是自2012年以来最糟糕的一周，但绝不会是最后一次。在过去的九周中，拍卖清盘率平均在50%到56%的范围内。
房地产市场是澳大利亚经济增长27年而没有经济衰退的驱动因素之一，最近的房产市场疲软，一些经济学家警告说，经济衰退甚至是金融危机的风险都在增大。
预期到房市疲软，一些对冲基金正在做空澳大利亚的金融资产，一些重要投资者大幅降低了对澳大利亚的投资，投资比重与区域基准相比非常低。
房市不振，部分原因是当局策划实现的。对外国人贷款的限制，外国买家税和北京限制资本流动已经严重损害了中国投资者的需求，中国投资者是近年来澳洲房地产繁荣的重要贡献者。
中国在温哥华的投资有类似的下降迹象 - 近年来温哥华房产市场也是炙手可热，当局也通过提高对外国买家的税收进行干预。但温哥华的销售额下降尚未转化为价格下跌。
在澳大利亚，对银行进行的政府调查已经发现了如此之多的不当行为，以至于该行业已经限制了一些贷款。住房信贷的年度增长已经达到四年低点，而建筑许可已经见顶，全国房价在六年内首次开始下跌。
根据房地产咨询公司CoreLogic的数据，最大城市悉尼的房屋价格较去年同期下降4.4％，是自2008年以来的最大跌幅，远远低于2017年初的19％的增长。
投资者也注意到，墨尔本和布里斯班的年度价格涨幅已从去年的两位数增长下降至1％左右。
对冲基金Totus Capital派驻悉尼的投资组合经理Ben McGarry表示，“我们已将一大部分的资产转移到海外，因为澳洲住房市场的放缓可能会增加澳元的下行压力。”
他表示，该基金“选择做空澳大利亚零售，建筑材料和银行股，这些股票受益于澳大利亚房屋的长期牛市”，但拒绝透露具体公司名称。
英国基金管理集团Aviva Investors发言人周一告诉路透社，该公司的已经在信贷和货币市场下注做空澳大利亚资产，因为住房相关的经济衰退的可能性有所增加。他也拒绝说明做空细节。
自今年年初以来，澳元兑美元汇率下跌超过5％。
对做空建筑产品制造商CSR和抵押贷款保险公司Genworth等公司的兴趣日益增加。一些迫于政策，限制持有空头头寸的基金已然减少了对澳大利亚的风险敞口。
总部位于伦敦的Liontrust亚洲收入基金得到基金经理马克·威廉姆斯表示，该基金在澳大利亚配置份额为7.5％，低于摩根士丹利资本国际亚太指数中的超过了17％的澳洲基准比重。
他说：“我们的投资中，银行的权重非常低，如果有大量的抛售，那么一定会通过银行。”
总部位于加利福尼亚的太平洋投资管理公司（PIMCO）是全球最大的活跃管理债券基金之一，其集团首席投资官Dan Ivascyn表示，对澳大利亚房屋相关投资持谨慎态度。
房市需要并且欢迎适度的冷静。
澳大利亚储备银行（RBA）一直担心房地产市场的投机性泡沫可能会像在美国一样破灭，对银行和经济造成巨大冲击。
房屋抵押贷款高达1.8万亿澳元，超过了澳大利亚年度经济产出（GDP）的100％。相比之下，英国约为91％，美国为80％。
澳大利亚银行监管机构在2017年进行的压力测试表明，如果房价下跌35％，失业率翻倍至11％，GDP下降4个百分点，仅在抵押贷款一项，澳大利亚的银行就将损失400亿澳元。
但测试显示，监管机构已迫使银行补充大量资本，以至于澳洲银行现在仍有偿债能力。政策制定者在过去几年中也一直在收紧银行的按揭贷款，包括严格限制购买投资房产。
这促使许多投机买家退出市场，这对潜在买家来说是个好消息。
“我一直在等待房价下滑的开始，”悉尼一位37岁的生物医学工程师Arif Hossain说，他正在物色一套四居室的独立房。
“我正在看的房产在几个月前卖出了大约一百万。现在价格已经跌破900,000 澳元，但仍没有售出，“他补充道。
他希望价格在上涨前降至750,000-850,000澳元。
但这种下降可能会非常痛苦。
政府估计澳大利亚的1000万套房屋价值6.9万亿澳元，接近法国和意大利的年度GDP总和。
在过去五年中，住房存量增加了2.3万亿澳元，在工资停滞不前的情况下，这对消费者而言，是一笔飞来横财。
随着房价的下降，财富效应可能很容易会逆转。今年第一季度，澳大利亚家庭在土地和住房方面，遭受了六年来最大的损失。
西太平洋银行高级经济学家Matthew Hassan表示，“消费者已经成为澳大利亚经济增长的薄弱环节。” “住房调整对前景构成了额外的下行风险。”
在经济繁荣时期，澳大利亚避开了经济低迷的威胁。由于中国的刺激经济支出推动了对澳大利亚资源的需求。在全球金融危机期间, 中国政府为澳大利亚纾困。
然而，大手笔刺激经济留下了后遗症，在中美贸易战可能会限制中国出口的时候，使得中国可能陷入债务困境。从某种意义上讲，澳大利亚同时暴露在澳洲房价泡沫和中国的房价泡沫之下。
但澳大利亚政策制定者的选择有限。
央行已将利率降至1.5％的历史最低水平，政府刚刚承诺实施七年减税计划。然而，减税在2019年中期之前不会对经济提供一分一厘的刺激，其中大部分减税在2024年至2025年之前不会实现。
“在家庭债务达到历史新高，房价已经下降的情况下，随着信贷条件收紧，经济衰退和金融危机的风险已经上升，”Capital Economics首席经济学家保罗·戴尔斯警告说。
他认为，在没有金融危机的情况下经济衰退的可能性为20％，还有10％的可能性金融危机和经济衰退同时发生。
他警告说：“换而言之，有三分之一的可能，澳洲家庭债务过去几年的激增，会有可怕的结局。”
https://www.pressreader.com/cana ... 728/282119227342966
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The Globe and Mail (Alberta Edition)SWATI PANDEY WAYNE COLE SYDNEYREUTERS
Australia’s housing boom loses traction
The recent downturn in real estate has some economists warning of heightened risks of a recession and even a financial crisis
LISA MAREE WILLIAMS/BLOOMBERG.
House photos still fill real estate agents’ windows in Sydney but home values are down 4.4 per cent year-over-year.
It’s a winter weekend in Sydney’s bustling northern suburb of Chatswood and a threebedroom family house sporting an endless garden is up for auction. It’s priced to sell at 1.88-million Australian dollars ($1.82-million) but no buyers bite and the sale is abandoned.
On the same day, in the heart of the harbour-hugging city, a two-bedroom apartment with panoramic views fails to sell as no bidders turn up.
Auctions are a bellwether of demand in property-obsessed Australia, where attending sales is almost a national pastime. It is therefore telling that only just more than half were successful the weekend last month when a Reuters reporter visited some of Sydney’s auctions, compared with more than two-thirds for all of last year.
And while that week was the worst since 2012, it wasn’t a oneoff. Auction clearance rates have averaged in the mid-to-low 50per-cent range for each of the past nine weeks.
The recent weakness in the Australian housing market, which has been one of the drivers of an economy that has now grown for 27 years without a downturn, has some economists warning of heightened risks of a recession and even a financial crisis.
In anticipation, some hedge funds are shorting the country’s financial assets and some significant investors are heavily underweight on Australia compared with regional benchmarks.
The slack has been partly engineered by the authorities. Curbs on lending to foreigners, foreign buyer taxes and a clampdown on capital flows by Beijing have hurt bubbling demand from Chinese investors, who have been important contributors to the housing boom of recent years.
There are signs of a similar fall in Chinese investment in Vancouver – which has also been a red-hot market in recent years and where the authorities have also intervened by raising taxes on foreign buyers. But a decline in Vancouver’s sales is yet to translate into price declines.
In Australia, a governmentmandated inquiry into the country’s banks has turned up so many misdeeds that the industry has restrained some lending. Annual growth in housing credit has braked to four-year lows while building approvals have come off a peak and nationwide home prices have started to fall for the first time in six years.
Home values in Sydney, the country’s largest city, are down 4.4 per cent compared with June last year, the sharpest fall since 2008 and far away from the 19per-cent growth enjoyed early in 2017, according to property consultant CoreLogic.
The annual price increases in Melbourne and Brisbane have braked to around 1 per cent, down from double-digit growth last year. Investors are taking note.
“We have shifted a greater proportion of our assets offshore as an intensifying slowdown in housing is likely to increase downward pressure on the Australian dollar,” said Ben McGarry, Sydney-based portfolio manager of hedge fund Totus Capital.
He said the fund is “short a selection of Australian retail, construction materials and banking stocks which have benefited from the long bull market in Australian housing,” but declined to identify specific companies.
And a unit of British fundmanagement group Aviva Investors has taken short bets against Australian assets in the credit and currency markets as the odds of a housing-related downturn have increased, a spokesman for the firm told Reuters on Monday. He also wouldn’t detail the bets.
The Australian dollar has fallen more than 5 per cent against the U.S. dollar since the beginning of the year.
And there is growing short interest in companies such as building-products maker CSR and mortgage insurer Genworth. Some funds whose policy is to refrain from taking short positions have still reduced their exposure to Australia.
London-based Liontrust Asia Income Fund has 7.5 per cent in Australia, against a benchmark of more than 17 per cent based on the MSCI Asia-Pacific Ex-Japan index, according to fund manager Mark Williams.
“We have a very low weighting in the banks, where if we have any real sell-off that’s where it would feed through,” he said.
And California-based Pacific Investment Management Co. (PIMCO), one of the largest actively managed bond funds in the world, says it “is cautious on housing-related investments” in Australia, according to Dan Ivascyn, its group chief investment officer.
A modest cool-down would be welcome.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has long worried that the speculative bubble in the property market could burst like it did in the United States, hammering banks and the economy.
Mortgages amount to 1.8-trillion Australian dollars, or just more than 100 per cent of the country’s annual economic output (GDP). That compares with around 91 per cent in Britain and 80 per cent in the U.S.
A stress test by Australia’s banking watchdog conducted in 2017 showed that if home prices fell 35 per cent, unemployment doubled to 11 per cent and GDP fell four percentage points, Australian banks would lose 40-billion Australian dollars on mortgages alone.
But regulators have forced them to squirrel away so much capital that the banks would still be solvent, the test showed. Policy makers have also clamped down on banks’ mortgage lending over the past couple of years, including stiff curbs on buying properties for rent.
This has pushed many speculative buyers out of the market, which is good news for prospective buyers.
“I have been waiting for this slide to start,” said Arif Hossain, a 37-year-old biomedical engineer in Sydney, who is looking for a four-bedroom house.
“The properties that I am looking for were selling around one million just some months back. They have now fallen below 900,000 [Australian dollars] but still there is no sale,” he added.
He wants prices to drop to 750,000-850,000 Australian dollars before jumping in.
But such declines could be very painful.
The government estimates Australia’s 10 million homes are worth 6.9-trillion Australian dollars, close to the annual GDP of France and Italy combined.
The value of the housing stock has swelled by 2.3-trillion Australian dollars in the past five years, a windfall to consumer wealth at a time when wages have stagnated.
With prices now in decline, the wealth effect could easily turn into a headwind. Already, households suffered the largest loss on land and dwellings in six years in the first quarter.
“The consumer was already the weak link in Australia’s growth story,” says Westpac senior economist Matthew Hassan. “The housing correction represents additional downside risk to the outlook.”
Australia has dodged threats of a downturn during the good times. Beijing helped bail Australia out during the global financial crisis as Chinese stimulus spending drove demand for Australian resources.
Yet, that has left China with a debt hangover at a time when a trade war with the U.S. threatens to throttle its exports. In some senses, Australia is as exposed to China’s housing price bubble as it is to its own.
But options for Australia’s policy makers are constrained.
The central bank has slashed interest rates to a record low of 1.5 per cent and the government has just committed to a seven-year plan of tax cuts. The latter, though, won’t deliver a cent of stimulus until mid-2019, with most of it not due until 2024-25.
“With credit conditions set to tighten at a time when household debt is at a record high and house prices are already falling, the risks of recession and financial crisis have risen,” warns Paul Dales, chief economist at Capital Economics.
He sees a 20-per-cent chance of a recession without a financial crisis, and a further 10-per-cent chance of both happening.
“Put another way, there’s almost a one-in-three chance that the surge in household debt ends badly,” he warned.
评论
他山之石，可以攻玉。
看看加拿大媒体如何评论土澳房市的。
连隔着太平洋的加拿大人都知道澳洲房价泡沫顶端的---Chatswood，我震惊了。。。
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7月汽车销售同比跌了近8%，经济已经站在悬崖边上了……
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放心吧。在最糟糕的情况下，政府会放开胆子增加移民，经济分分钟腾飞。
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都危机了，只有难民，哪有移民？
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目前最红火的还是房地产，处处起高楼，占地面积越来越大，已经快要走向崩溃的边缘了
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其实来次经济危机没什么，所谓危机，其实是一种自我修复，至于房价，跌跌更健康，现在没人赔钱，那以后怎么能有人赚钱
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反移民的联盟党快完菜， 工党上台后会提高移民配额， 到那时房价会复苏。
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跌跌健康
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中美贸易战，受伤的不是中美，而是小弟，在打之前，汤包误判，站队大哥，冲锋在前摇旗呐喊怼怂中国，结果被严重误伤，现在要转向缓和澳中关系，但需要时间，等吧，经济是否相好也要等
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不危机哪来的机会
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要相信一点，投行机，基金的终极目的是为自己和客户盈利，而不是为了让民众盈利。
在零和游戏类型的投资中，不要相信会有好心人，这是游戏规则决定的。
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翻译得很好，感谢分享
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澳洲这么点人口，所有东西都是围着人口转，移民几十万印度人，租租租，移民几十万中国人，买买买，移民几十万黑黑穆穆，卖卖卖。
你看街上那种肤色的人口多了，就知道这个区这个地方房价怎么样了。
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加拿大不远万里关心澳州的房价
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山姆在动乱中，逐步实现自己的经济利益最大化。和平演变、 贸易大战和军事干预，无所不用其极。
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