From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Housing bubble)
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the general phenomenon of housing bubbles. For housing bubbles in various countries, see below.
A real estate bubble or property bubble (or housing bubble for residential markets) is a type of economic bubble that occurs periodically in local or global real estate markets. It is characterized by rapid increases in valuations of real property such as housing until they reach unsustainable levels relative to incomes and other economic elements, followed by a reduction in price levels.
Whether real estate bubbles can or should be identified or prevented, and whether they have broader macroeconomic importance or not are debated within and between different schools of economic thought, as detailed below. The financial crisis of 2007–2010 was related to the collapse of real estate bubbles, notably in the United States.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Identification and prevention
* 2 Macroeconomic significance
* 3 Recent real estate bubbles
* 4 Housing market indicators
o 4.1 Housing affordability measures
o 4.2 Housing debt measures
o 4.3 Housing ownership and rent measures
o 4.4 Housing price indices
* 5 Real estate bubbles in the 2000s
* 6 See also
* 7 References
* 8 External links
[edit] Identification and prevention
Some argue that a house price index such as the Case-Shiller index allows the identification of real estate bubbles.
As with all types of economic bubbles, whether real estate bubbles can be identified or prevented is contentious. Bubbles are generally not contentious in hindsight, after a peak and crash.
Within mainstream economics, some argue that real estate bubbles cannot be identified as they occur and cannot or should not be prevented, with government and central bank policy rather cleaning up after the bubble bursts.
Others within mainstream economics and in heterodox economics, such as American economist Robert Shiller and British magazine The Economist, argue that housing market indicators can be used to identify real estate bubbles. Some argue further that governments and central banks can and should take action to prevent bubbles from forming, or to deflate existing bubbles.
[edit] Macroeconomic significance
Within mainstream economics, economic bubbles, and in particular real estate bubbles, are not considered major concerns. Within some schools of heterodox economics, by contrast, real estate bubbles are considered of critical importance and a fundamental cause of financial crises and ensuing economic crises.
The mainstream economic view is that economic bubbles primarily effect first a temporary boost in wealth, and secondly a redistribution of wealth. When prices go up, there is a positive wealth effect – property owners feel richer, and hence spend more, and when prices go down, there is a negative wealth effect – property owners feel poorer, and hence spend less. It is argued that these effects can be smoothed by counter-cyclical monetary and fiscal policy. Secondly, the ultimate effect on owners who bought before the bubble formed and did not sell is zero – throughout, they owned the property. Conversely, those who bought when low and sold high profited, while those who bought high and sold low or held until the price had fallen lost money, though this ultimately is simply redistribution of wealth and, it is argued, of little economic significance.
In some schools of heterodox economics, notably Austrian economics and Post-Keynesian economics, real estate bubbles are seen as an example of credit bubbles (pejoratively, speculative bubbles), because property owners generally use borrowed money to purchase property, in the form of mortgages. These are then argued to cause financial and hence economic crises. This is first argued empirically – numerous real estate bubbles have been followed by economic slumps, and it is argued that there is a cause-effect relationship between these.
Austrian business cycle theory takes a supply-side view, arguing that real estate bubbles cause misallocation of resources – too many houses and offices are built, and too many resources (materials and labor) are wasted in building unneeded buildings. Further, this distorts the industrial base, yielding an excess of homebuilders who must then retrain and retool when the bubble bursts, this transition between non-productive and productive uses of resources (and the malinvestment during the lead-up) being a proximate cause of the resulting economic slump.
Fred Foldvary, economist at Santa Clara University, has synthesized the Austrian-school theory of the cycle with the land-based theory of Henry George. His proposition is that this geo-Austrian theory fits the 18-year real estate cycle as discovered by real estate economist Homer Hoyt.
The Post-Keynesian theory of debt deflation takes a demand-side view, arguing that property owners not only feel richer, but borrow against the increased value of their property (as via a home equity line of credit), or borrow money to speculate in property, buying property with borrowed money in the expectation that it will rise in value – this last view is associated with Hyman Minsky and his Financial Instability Hypothesis. When the bubble bursts, the value of the property decreases but, crucially, the level of debt does not. The burden of repaying or defaulting on this debt is argued to depress aggregate demand and be the proximate cause of the ensuing economic slump.
Melbourne House Prices and Wages 1965 to 2010
Melbourne House Prices and Wages 1965 to 2010
[edit] Recent real estate bubbles
The crash of the Japanese asset price bubble from 1990 on has been very damaging to the Japanese economy and the lives of many Japanese who have lived through it [1], as is also true of the crash in 2005 of the real estate bubble in China's largest city, Shanghai.[2] Unlike a stock market crash following a bubble, a real-estate "crash" is usually a slower process, because the real estate market is less liquid than the stock market. Other sectors such as office, hotel and retail generally move along with the residential market, being affected by many of same variables (incomes, interest rates, etc.) and also sharing the "wealth effect" of booms. Therefore this article focuses on housing bubbles and mentions other sectors only when their situation differs from housing.
As of 2007[update], real estate bubbles had existed in the recent past or were widely believed to still exist in many parts of the world,[3] especially in the United States, Argentina[4], Britain, Netherlands, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain, Lebanon, France, Poland[5], South Africa, Israel, Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia[6], Canada, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Baltic states, India, Romania, Russia, Ukraine and China[7]. Then U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in mid-2005 that "at a minimum, there's a little 'froth' (in the U.S. housing market) … it's hard not to see that there are a lot of local bubbles."[8] The Economist magazine, writing at the same time, went further, saying "the worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history".[9] Real estate bubbles are invariably followed by severe price decreases (also known as a house price crash) that can result in many owners holding negative equity (a mortgage debt higher than the current value of the property).[citation needed]
[edit] Housing market indicators
UK house prices between 1975 and 2006.
Robert Shiller's plot of U.S. home prices, population, building costs, and bond yields, from Irrational Exuberance, 2d ed. Shiller shows that inflation adjusted U.S. home prices increased 0.4% per year from 1890–2004, and 0.7% per year from 1940–2004, whereas U.S. census data from 1940–2004 shows that the self-assessed value increased 2% per year.
In attempting to identify bubbles before they burst, economists have developed a number of financial ratios and economic indicators that can be used to evaluate whether homes in a given area are fairly valued. By comparing current levels to previous levels that have proven unsustainable in the past (i.e. led to or at least accompanied crashes), one can make an educated guess as to whether a given real estate market is experiencing a bubble. Indicators describe two interwoven aspects of housing bubble: a valuation component and a debt (or leverage) component. The valuation component measures how expensive houses are relative to what most people can afford, and the debt component measures how indebted households become in buying them for home or profit (and also how much exposure the banks accumulate by lending for them). A basic summary of the progress of housing indicators for U.S. cities is provided by Business Week.[10] See also: real estate economics and real estate trends.
[edit] Housing affordability measures
* The price to income ratio is the basic affordability measure for housing in a given area. It is generally the ratio of median house prices to median familial disposable incomes, expressed as a percentage or as years of income. It is sometimes compiled separately for first time buyers and termed attainability. This ratio, applied to individuals, is a basic component of mortgage lending decisions. According to a back-of-the-envelope calculation by Goldman Sachs, a comparison of median home prices to median household income suggests that U.S. housing in 2005 is overvalued by 10%. "However, this estimate is based on an average mortgage rate of about 6%, and we expect rates to rise," the firm's economics team wrote in a recent report[11]. According to Goldman's figures, a one-percentage-point rise in mortgage rates would reduce the fair value of home prices by 8%.
* The deposit to income ratio is the minimum required downpayment for a typical mortgage[specify], expressed in months or years of income. It is especially important for first-time buyers without existing home equity; if the downpayment becomes too high then those buyers may find themselves "priced out" of the market. For example, as of 2004[update] this ratio was equal to one year of income in the UK.[12]
Another variant is what the National Association of Realtors calls the "housing affordability index" in its publications.[13] (The NAR's methodology was criticized by some analysts as it does not account for inflation.[14] Other analysts, however, consider the measure appropriate, because both the income and housing cost data is expressed in terms that include inflation and, all things being equal, the index implicitly includes inflation[citation needed]). In either case, the usefulness of this ratio in identifying a bubble is debatable; while downpayments normally increase with house valuations, bank lending becomes increasingly lax during a bubble and mortgages are offered to borrowers who would not normally qualify for them (see Housing debt measures, below).
* The Affordability Index measures the ratio of the actual monthly cost of the mortgage to take-home income. It is used more in the United Kingdom where nearly all mortgages are variable and pegged to bank lending rates. It offers a much more realistic measure of the ability of households to afford housing than the crude price to income ratio. However it is more difficult to calculate, and hence the price to income ratio is still more commonly used by pundits. In recent years, lending practices have relaxed, allowing greater multiples of income to be borrowed. Some speculate that this practice in the longterm cannot be sustained and may ultimately lead to unaffordable mortgage payments, and repossession for many.
* The Median Multiple measures the ratio of the median house price to the median annual household income. This measure has historically hovered around a value of 3.0 or less, but in recent years has risen dramatically, especially in markets with severe public policy constraints on land and development. The Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey uses the Median Multiple in its 6-nation report.
Inflation-adjusted home prices in Japan (1980–2005) compared to home price appreciation in the United States, Britain, and Australia (1995–2005).
[edit] Housing debt measures
* The housing debt to income ratio or debt-service ratio is the ratio of mortgage payments to disposable income. When the ratio gets too high, households become increasingly dependent on rising property values to service their debt. A variant of this indicator measures total home ownership costs, including mortgage payments, utilities and property taxes, as a percentage of a typical household's monthly pre-tax income; for example see RBC Economics' reports for the Canadian markets.[15]
* The housing debt to equity ratio (not to be confused with the corporate debt to equity ratio), also called loan to value, is the ratio of the mortgage debt to the value of the underlying property; it measures financial leverage. This ratio increases when homeowners refinance and tap into their home equity through a second mortgage or home equity loan. A ratio of 1 means 100% leverage; higher than 1 means negative equity.
[edit] Housing ownership and rent measures
* The ownership ratio is the proportion of households who own their homes as opposed to renting. It tends to rise steadily with incomes. Also, governments often enact measures such as tax cuts or subsidized financing to encourage and facilitate home ownership. If a rise in ownership is not supported by a rise in incomes, it can mean either that buyers are taking advantage of low interest rates (which must eventually rise again as the economy heats up) or that home loans are awarded more liberally, to borrowers with poor credit. Therefore a high ownership ratio combined with an increased rate of subprime lending may signal higher debt levels associated with bubbles.
* The price-to-earnings ratio or P/E ratio is the common metric used to assess the relative valuation of equities. To compute the P/E ratio for the case of a rented house, divide the price of the house by its potential earnings or net income, which is the market annual rent of the house minus expenses, which include maintenance and property taxes. This formula is:
\mbox{House P/E ratio} = \frac{\mbox{House price}}{\mbox{Rent} - \mbox{Expenses}}
The house price-to-earnings ratio provides a direct comparison to P/E ratios used to analyze other uses of the money tied up in a home. Compare this ratio to the simpler but less accurate price-rent ratio below.
* The price-rent ratio is the average cost of ownership divided by the received rent income (if buying to let) or the estimated rent that would be paid if renting (if buying to reside):
\mbox{House Price-Rent ratio} = \frac{\mbox{House price}}{\mbox{Monthly Rent x 12}}
The latter is often measured using the "owner's equivalent rent" numbers published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It can be viewed as the real estate equivalent of stocks' price-earnings ratio; in other terms it measures how much the buyer is paying for each dollar of received rent income (or dollar saved from rent spending). Rents, just like corporate and personal incomes, are generally tied very closely to supply and demand fundamentals; one rarely sees an unsustainable "rent bubble" (or "income bubble" for that matter). Therefore a rapid increase of home prices combined with a flat renting market can signal the onset of a bubble. The U.S. price-rent ratio was 18% higher than its long-run average as of October 2004.[16]
* The gross rental yield, a measure used in the United Kingdom, is the total yearly gross rent divided by the house price and expressed as a percentage:
\mbox{Gross Rental Yield} = \frac{\mbox{Monthly Rent x 12}}{\mbox{House Price}} \mbox{ x } 100%
This is the reciprocal of the house price-rent ratio. The net rental yield deducts the landlord's expenses (and sometimes estimated rental voids) from the gross rent before doing the above calculation; this is the reciprocal of the house P/E ratio.
Because rents are received throughout the year rather than at its end, both the gross and net rental yields calculated by the above are somewhat less than the true rental yields obtained when taking into account the monthly nature of rental payments.
* The occupancy rate (opposite: vacancy rate) is essentially the number of occupied units divided by the total number of units in a given region (in commercial real estate, it is usually expressed in terms of area such as square meters for different grades of buildings). A low occupancy rate means that the market is in a state of oversupply brought about by speculative construction and purchase. In this context, supply-and-demand numbers can be misleading: sales demand exceeds supply, but rent demand does not.
[edit] Housing price indices
Main article: House price index
The Case–Shiller index (national, quarterly) 1987–2008, showing a housing bubble peaking in 2006.
Measures of house price are also used in identifying housing bubbles; these are known as house price indices (HPIs).
A noted series of HPIs for the United States are the Case–Shiller indices, devised by American economists Karl Case, Robert Shiller, and Allan Weiss. As measured by the Case–Shiller index, the US experienced a housing bubble peaking in the second quarter of 2006 (2006 Q2).
[edit] Real estate bubbles in the 2000s
By 2006, several areas of the world were thought to be in a bubble state, although this contention was not without controversy. This hypothesis was based on observation of similar patterns in real estate markets of a wide variety of countries.[17] This includes similar patterns of overvaluation and excessive borrowing based on those overvaluations.
The subprime mortgage crisis, with its accompanying impacts and effects on economies in various nations, has given some credence to the idea that these trends might have some common characteristics.[3]
For individual countries, see:
* Australian property bubble
* British property bubble
* Bulgarian property bubble
* Chinese property bubble
* Danish property bubble
* Indian property bubble
* Irish property bubble
* Japanese asset price bubble
* Lebanese property bubble
* Polish property bubble
* Romanian property bubble
* South Korean property bubble
* Spanish property bubble
* United States housing bubble
[edit] See also
* Real estate pricing
* Real estate appraisal
* Real estate economics
* Deed in lieu of foreclosure
* Economic bubble
* Foreclosure consultant
* Category:Real estate bubbles of 2000s
[edit] References
1. ^ Fackler, Martin (December 25, 2005). "Take It From Japan: Bubbles Hurt". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/business/yourmoney/25japan.html?pagewanted=all. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
2. ^ Lee, Don (January 8, 2006). "A Home Boom Busts". Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jan/08/business/fi-chinabubble8. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
3. ^ a b Putland, Gavin R. (June 1, 2009). "From the subprime to the terrigenous: Recession begins at home". Land Values Research Group. http://lvrg.org.au/blog/2009/06/from-subprime-to-terrigenous-recession.html. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
4. ^ "The good times are here again". Global Property Guide. Feb 28, 2008. http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Latin-America/Argentina/Price-History. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
5. ^ "The end of Poland’s house price boom". Global Property Guide. Aug 25, 2008. http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Europe/Poland/Price-History. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
6. ^ "Real estate prices in Adriatic Coast up, Zagreb down". Global Property Guide. Aug 19, 2008. http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Europe/Croatia/Price-History. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
7. ^ "Looming housing slump in China". Global Property Guide. Sep 01, 2008. http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Asia/China/Price-History. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
8. ^ Leonhardt, David (December 25, 2005). "2005: In a Word: Frothy". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/weekinreview/25track.ready.html?pagewanted=all. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
9. ^ "The global housing boom". The Economist. Jun 16th 2005. http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4079027.
10. ^ "Interactive Table: How Bubbly Is Your Housing Market?". Business Week. April 11, 2005. Archived from the original on Nov 20, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20071130085352/http://bwnt.businessweek.com/housing_boom/index.asp. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
11. ^ [1][dead link]
12. ^ Nottingham Trent University paper[dead link]
13. ^ "Affordable Housing Real Estate Resource: Housing Affordability Index". National Association of Realtors. http://www.realtor.org/research/research/housinginx. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
14. ^ [2][dead link]
15. ^ June 2, 2005 report[dead link]
16. ^ Krainer, John; Wei, Chishen (October 1, 2004). House Prices and Fundamental Value. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2004/el2004-27.html.
17. ^ "House Prices Worldwide". Global Property Guide. http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/real-estate-house-prices/A. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
* Barron's Magazine
* John Calverley (2004), Bubbles and how to survive them, N. Brealey. ISBN 1-85788-348-9
* The Economist, December 8, 2005, "Hear that hissing sound?."
* The Economist, June 16, 2005, "After the fall."
* The Economist, June 16, 2005, "In come the waves."
* The Economist, April 20, 2005, "Will the walls come falling down?"
* The Economist, May 3d, 2005, "Still want to buy?"
* The Economist, May 29, 2003, "House of cards."
* The Economist, May 28, 2002, "Going through the roof."
* Fred Foldvary (1997). "The Business Cycle: A Georgist-Austrian Synthesis." American Journal of Economics and Sociology 56 (4) (October 1997): 521-41.
* Gjerstad, Steven; and Vernon L. Smith (2009-04-06). "From Bubble to Depression? Why the Housing Bubble Crashed the Financial System but the Dot-com Bubble Did Not". Wall Street Journal. p. A15. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123897612802791281.html.
* The New York Times, December 25, 2005, Take It From Japan: Bubbles Hurt.
* Robert Kiyosaki (2005). All Booms Bust, Rich Dad, Poor Dad
* Burton G. Malkiel (2003). The Random Walk Guide to Investing: Ten Rules for Financial Success, New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. ISBN 0-393-05854-9.
* Robert J. Shiller (2005). Irrational Exuberance, 2d ed. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-12335-7.
* John R. Talbott (2003). The Coming Crash in the Housing Market, New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc. ISBN 0-07-142220-X.
* Andrew Tobias (2005). The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need (updated ed.), Harcourt Brace and Company. ISBN 0-15-602963-4.
* Eric Tyson (2003). Personal Finance for Dummies, 4th ed., Foster City, CA: IDG Books. ISBN 0-7645-2590-5.
* Benjamin Wallace-Wells, "There goes the neighborhood", Washington Monthly, 2004 April.
* Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi (2003). The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke, New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-09082-6.
* Dean Baker, Financial Bubbles (Stocks and Housing) and How You Can Protect Yourself Against Them, Center for Economic and Policy Research Economics Seminar Series.
[edit] External links
* Center for Economic and Policy Research
* Is the Housing Bubble Collapsing? 10 Indicators to WatchPDF (153 KiB) Report by Dean Baker, June 2006
* When Bubbles BurstPDF (354 KiB), World Economic Outlook, International Monetary Fund, April 2003.
* The Global House Price BoomPDF (367 KiB), World Economic Outlook, International Monetary Fund, September 2004.
* California’s Real Estate Bubble by Fred E. Foldvary, covers the California, U.S., and global bubble from a libertarian perspective.
* Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey Comparative housing affordability for 100 large markets in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.
* Are housing prices, household debt, and growth sustainable?PDF (342 KiB), Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, January 2006.
* Spanish Property Market Summary (Data Included from 1985 to 2010)PDF (459 KiB) Kyero.com, July 2010
* 35 years of house price in Vancouver BC as a rollercoaster currently the least affordable market in North America.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_estate_bubble"
Categories: Real estate bubbles
Economic problems
Economic bubbles
Posts
