China, Tsinghua University, together with the World Economic Research Center and Xinhua News Agency's Economic Information Daily, held the "Breaking the Puzzle: Focusing on China's Macro Policy-Tsinghua University, China and the World Economic Forum" last weekend. In this forum, economists and real estate developers reached a rare consensus: the rapid rise in housing prices in China in recent years is unsustainable. Some scholars believe that an inflection point is likely to appear in the future 1 year and a half.
As a macroeconomic seminar, most of the participants' initial discussions focused on the overall trend of China's economy. But the meeting lasted only about half an hour, and the topic turned to real estate for no other reason-high housing prices are one of the biggest problems facing China's economy at present.
Lei Dingming, a professor of economics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said that China's money supply was close to 30% last year, but so far, prices have not risen too fast. The reason is that due to overcapacity, the profit rate of funds entering the real economy is low, and most of the funds choose to enter the capital market and then enter the property market, so the house price is rapidly raised.
However, in Lei Dingming's view, the current trend of housing prices in the Mainland is likely to be similar to that at the beginning of Hong Kong 1997. With the government's regulation, the housing prices in Hong Kong began to decline gradually at the end of 1997. According to him, if the house price index at the end of 1997 was 100, then the house price index in Hong Kong was only about 37 when it bottomed out in 2003, but it has just rebounded to about 78.
Li Daokui, director of Tsinghua University China and World Economic Research Center, also believes that more effective macro-control measures for housing prices will be introduced in the next 18 months. He said that the fundamentals of China's economic operation this year and even next year are very good, so there is no need to worry too much about economic growth and price trends. The main problem lies in the rapid rise of real estate prices. In such a big environment, there are two "never appeared". First, young people in society, especially those born in 1980s and 1990s, have never expressed their dissatisfaction with the current high housing prices and high growth. Second, the state's regulation of real estate prices has never been so clear. "The combination of' these two have never appeared' will definitely lead to a series of changes in policies, so that house prices will be adjusted in the near future." Li Daokui said.
Pan Shiyi, chairman of SOHO China Co., Ltd., also gave his own reasons. He said that the fundamental solution to housing prices lies in increasing the supply of residential development land. Only in this way can the housing supply in the market increase, thus reducing the house price. According to his understanding, in Beijing, it takes about 16 months from the developer to the pre-sale certificate. At present, the national land supply is increasing, and it can be expected that house prices will go down in the future.
He also said that Hong Kong has a formula to subtract the effective cost of funds from the rental rate of return in the market, and then subtract the property tax. If this figure falls below -3%, the market will start to fall. This has appeared twice in the history of Hong Kong, once at 1992 and once at 1997. Compared with Hong Kong, the current situation in Beijing is that the bank loan interest rate of the second home loan is 1. 1 times the benchmark interest rate, that is, 6.5%; According to statistics of Zhongyuan Real Estate, the rental return rate of second-hand houses in Beijing is 2.9%, while that in Shanghai is 2.3%, which is about -4%. If the property tax of 1.2% is deducted, the reduction value is even lower, far exceeding the critical point of -3% in Hong Kong. "In this case, there is no property tax and the house price is very dangerous." He said.
However, there were also different views at the meeting. Yuan Gangming, a researcher at the Macroeconomic Research Institute of China Academy of Social Sciences, believes that there is already a very strong expectation of rising house prices in China, and it is not enough for one or two policies to produce results. He said that the current property market in China is very similar to that before Japan 1985. During the period from 1970 to 1985 and 15, Japanese house prices rose by 16 times, and people's expectations remained high. Although the Japanese government has issued a series of policies, it has not received good results. Finally, due to the introduction of property tax (similar to the property tax currently discussed in China), house prices have been falling for 20 years. China government is likely to learn from Japanese experience and be very cautious about levying property tax.
"When the property tax comes out, house prices will definitely fall. Therefore, there must be a timetable for the introduction of property tax, and it is necessary to establish the expectation that house prices will fall steadily. " Yuan Gang said.
Real estate regulation is related to the economic trend of China.
On 24th, China and Tsinghua University, together with the Center for World Economic Research and Xinhua News Agency's Economic Information Daily, held "Breaking the Puzzle: Focusing on China's Macro-policies-Tsinghua University, China and the World Economic Forum", and the forum held a heated discussion around many difficulties and future trends of China's economy. Finally, almost all the participants turned to the real estate problem, thinking that the future trend of China economy is closely related to the real estate trend, and the unresolved real estate problem will seriously affect the healthy development of China economy in the future.
At present, the popular view is that due to the shortage of land resources in China, under the condition of market economy, the demand exceeds the supply, and the rise of house prices is inevitable. No! This is a wrong direction of public opinion!
Recently, when interviewed by the media, Chongqing Mayor Huang made a detailed interpretation of the new housing reform policy focusing on the construction of public rental housing. A close reading of the "New Deal" makes people seem to see the hope of a new round of housing reform in China. As Mayor Huang said: As long as local governments are willing to use their brains, house prices can be controlled.
In recent years, in order to control high housing prices, the government often "treats the headache and the foot hurts", and every regulation will usher in a new round of retaliatory rise. As a matter of fact, house prices are rising wildly, and the "roots" are in local governments at all levels. Under China's current tax policy and land system, local governments unconsciously play the role of benefit sharing, and even become the biggest beneficiaries in real estate development. Therefore, to fundamentally curb the rise in housing prices, the attitude and actions of local governments are crucial.
The basic mode of housing reform in Chongqing is "dual track system", namely public rental housing and commercial housing. Public rental housing unifies affordable housing and low-rent housing for low-income groups. Commercial housing is for middle-and high-income people. The most difficult people rent low-rent housing, and low-income people live in public rental housing. It is understood that Chongqing plans to build 20 million square meters of public rental housing in two to three years to solve the housing problem of more than 6,543,800 people.
Chongqing's new policy of regulating housing prices may become a national sample. Because this measure fully respects the current situation of low-income people, middle class and high-income people in cities, it adopts different policies, treats them differently and advances steadily. And through the policy of "no tax at the low end, preferential tax at the middle end and tax increase at the high end", the house price will be fundamentally stabilized. In a big country with a large number of low-income people, housing reform should be "dual-track", and we can't fully market and privatize affordable housing. At the same time, the advantage of the "dual-track system" is that on the one hand, it solves the housing problem of ordinary people through government building, on the other hand, the collection of "special property tax" is reasonable and possible, which not only embodies fairness and justice, but also really plays a role in curbing housing prices.
The new policy of housing reform in Chongqing has become a national sample because the Chongqing municipal government has used its brains and sincerely tried to solve the housing difficulties of ordinary people. Moreover, referring to foreign advanced experience, they boldly promoted the real estate reform in accordance with international common practices, and fully considered the interests of all sectors of society, making this housing reform realistic, reasonable, long-term and operable, which has extensive reference significance for regulating housing prices and promoting the healthy development of real estate.
In a word, the difficulty of housing price control in China lies in local governments, and the "breakthrough" also lies in local governments. It remains to be seen whether the "New Deal" of housing reform in Chongqing can tear a hole in the solid wall of housing reform and fight our way out.