Den amerikanske bloggeren Matthew Yglesias er på rundreise i Kina om dagen for å lære mer om den kinesiske økonomien. Han poster daglige oppdateringer om det han ser og lærer, så alle med interesse for Kina og økonomi burde lese bloggen hans. #
I Kina, som i andre land, har det vært en stor økning i boligprisene. I dagens post tar Yglesias for seg det fenomenet (mine uthevinger). #
One element in China’s housing bubble is that there’s no property tax in China, so there’s no cost to buying an apartment and then just holding on to it, thus using the house as a store of value. Accord to Patrick Chovanec this “store of value” mode of acquisition—rather than speculative purchases with an eye toward “flipping”—is the main thing driving Chinese to accumulate multiple homes. The country’s innovation-averse bank regulators have created a situation in which there aren’t a ton of attractive investment opportunities, and a home is viewed as a safe place to park one’s money. #Høres kjent ut? Vel bortsett fra det med at myndighetene faktisk prøver å gjøre noe med problemet da. #This in turn is based on the analytic error of believing that economic growth means that home prices will only go up. One could attribute that error to the fact that Chinese people have very little historical experience with real estate transactions, but Americans made it too in the 1996-2006 period. #
But now the Chinese authorities seem to think they can turn the situation around by leaking to the press plans to implement a property tax. That should make it costly to just sit on empty properties, prompting people to sell their excess homes and driving prices down. #
(Foto: Matthew Yglesias med CC-lisens)
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