Интересное чтиво про цены домов в Америке
kilativ — 03.09.2023
How can American house prices still be
rising?
MORTGAGE PAYMENTS ARE AT THEIR HIGHEST
SINCE THE MID-1980S
Homeownership regularly nears the top of surveys
about what Americans most want in life. Alas, this part of the
American dream has rarely been harder to attain. Those looking to
enter the property market face a triple whammy of high prices,
costly mortgages and limited choice. Together these factors have
conspired to make housing deeply unaffordable, with little sign of
relief on the horizon.
Yet in a roundabout way, the property crunch also
helps explain one of the most pressing economic conundrums of the
day: why American growth has remained robust, defying predictions
of a recession.
Although housing is usually among the sectors most sensitive
to interest rates, things have not been quite so straightforward in
America. As the Federal Reserve turned hawkish over the past two
years, mortgage rates soared, ascending from less than 3% to more
than 7%. For the median family buying the median home, mortgage
payments doubled from roughly 14% of monthly household income in
2020 to nearly 29% in June, the highest since 1985, according to
the National Association of Realtors
Surprisingly, the jump in mortgage rates has not led to a
decline in house prices. They fell briefly as rates began to rise
but have since rebounded to the record highs hit early last year
after covid-era stimulus washed across the economy. Figures
released on August 29th showed that this rebound may be gaining
strength: house prices in the second quarter of the year rose at an
annualised pace of 15%, according to the s&p Case-Shiller
index, a benchmark for American property prices.
What explains this impressive resilience? For
something the size of America’s property market—where annual sales
are worth about $2trn, scattered across a continent-sized economy,
in which some regions are flourishing and others contracting—there
is inevitably a nuanced answer. However, a good summary came in
late August from Douglas Yearley, chief executive of Toll Brothers,
one of America’s biggest homebuilders, during an earnings call.
“There are still buyers out there. They have very few options,” he
explained.
Although demand for homes has fallen as rates have
risen, the supply of properties has fallen almost in lockstep.
Homebuyers typically obtain fixed-rate mortgages for 30
years—unheard of in most countries but viewed almost as a
constitutional right in America, owing to the role of Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac, two giant government-backed firms, which buy up
mortgages from lenders and securitise them. In enabling lenders to
offer long-term fixed rates, their objective is to make it easier
for people to buy homes. But now long-term rates are serving as an
impediment, since homeowners who got low-interest mortgages before
the Fed raised rates have no desire to give them up, and so are
unwilling to sell their homes. Redfin, a property platform,
calculates that 82% of homeowners have mortgage rates below 5%.
Charlie Dougherty of Wells Fargo, a bank, calls the result “a state
of suspended animation” for the housing market.
The decline in transactions, all else being equal,
ought to hurt the economy, dampening housing-related activity, with
less money spent on remodelling, new construction, furniture and so
on. This is not how things have played out, however. Unable to
trade up to nicer digs, locked-in homeowners have invested more in
fixing up their current homes. The rise of remote working has
reinforced this trend, with people adding extra office space to
their houses. Remodelling expenditures in 2022 reached nearly
$570bn, or about 2% of gdp, up by 40% in nominal terms from 2019,
according to the Joint Centre for Housing Studies at Harvard
University.
Many of those braving the market in order to
purchase homes have opted for new-builds, rather than existing
stock. One advantage of newly built homes is that they are actually
available. This means that they account for about one-third of
active listings this year, up from an average of 13% over the two
decades before the covid-19 pandemic, according to the National
Association of Home Builders. As Daryl Fairweather of Redfin puts
it: “Builders are benefiting because they don’t have competition
from existing homeowners.”
Homebuilders have also been bold in offering
incentives to buyers. Most strikingly, they have been “buying down”
as much as 1.5 percentage points on mortgage rates, by paying a
one-time fee upfront that reduces future interest payments. This
has allowed their in-house mortgage companies to offer rates of
roughly 5%. For homebuilders, these buy-downs are equivalent to
knocking off about 6% from their selling price, which they can
easily afford given the strength of their balance-sheets. For
buyers, the lower mortgage rates are welcome relief in the current
environment, which has translated into a pick-up in both purchases
and construction. New starts on single-family homes bottomed out
late last year. In July starts were up by nearly 10% compared with
a year earlier.
Property types now wonder whether the price
resilience will continue. The market faces a test as mortgage rates
climb even higher. For much of the past year rates had seemed to
stabilise at around 6.5%, but since the start of August investors
have concluded that the Fed will keep policy tight for longer,
which has pushed mortgages towards 7.5%. “The higher rates go, the
more demand falls. This is going to catch up with the homebuilders
pretty quickly,” reckons John Burns, a property consultant. To
counter a slowdown, some lenders may offer riskier deals. Zillow, a
property platform, has started promoting downpayments of just 1% on
homes in Arizona, a once-hot market. If prices fall, owners with
little equity in their homes may be among the first to
default.
Should the property market remain resilient,
however, it is the Fed’s policymakers who will face a test. Strong
housing-market activity contributes to an overheating economy. A
sustained rebound in prices would also complicate the inflation
outlook. The relationship is not entirely straightforward, since
property shows up in inflation indices in terms of rents, rather
than purchase prices. Moreover, the main inflation gauges tend to
lag behind high-frequency measures of rents by at least six months.
These measures have fallen for much of the past year, and the
decline is just now filtering into official inflation indices—a
process that will probably continue into early 2024.
What happens after that is much less certain. On the
one hand, a record number of apartment units are currently under
construction, and this supply ought to keep a lid on rents. On the
other hand, the unaffordability of housing is forcing more would-be
buyers into the rental market, which could push up rents and add to
inflation. One big thing is clear: until interest rates come back
down, millions of Americans will have little choice but to defer
their dream of homeownership
С одной стороны, рост процентных ставок должен привести с
сокращению покупки домов и, как результат, к падению цен, с другой
стороны в реальности цены выросли еще на 15% за год. И причина - те
самые высокие процентные ставки! Если у вас всё ещё ипотека, вам
просто невыгодно продавать свой дом и покупать новый, поскольку вы
будете платить новый займ для погашения оставшейся задолженности по
более высоким ставкам. Из за этого резко упало предложение. Дома
продают только те, кому не нужно покупать новый дом с получением
займа в банке. 82% владельцев домов платят ипотеку по 5% годовых и
ниже. А сейчас ипотечный процент 7.5 или около того. Кстати, низкий
процент - это тот самый ненавистный социализм, его гарантирует
государство через скупку (за счет бюджета) долговых долгосрочных
обязательств (Фредди Мак и Фанне Мае). Просто имейте в виду.
Обычно снижение активности в торговле домами приводит к падению той
части экономики, которая занята ремонтом. Ты покупаешь новый дом,
начинаешь ремонтировать, покупаешь мебель итд, а если дома не
продаются, всего этого нет и БАМ! рецессия. 2% ВВП США - это
ремонт. Без шуток! Но фишка в том, что тое, кто хотели бы продать
дома, а теперь им это делать невыгодно, начали вкладывать деньги в
улучшение текущего местажительства и ничего того, что предсказывали
экономисты, не происходит. Более того, сейчас полно абсолютно
нового жилья - 30% от продающегося (вместо обычных 13%)
Одна проблема. Аренда. С ростом стоимости жилья на покупку, растет
и стоимость аренды. Она в конечном итоге скажектся на инфляции - в
Америке треть населения арендует жильё и тратит на аренду от
четверти чистого дохода до двух третей. И вот инфляции не хочет
никто. Неспособность купить свое жилье выкидывает на рынок аренды
все больше людей (население у нас растет), за ростом количества
арендаторов не поспевает количество новых домов/квартир, что ведет
к росту цен. Только сегодня видел в нашем районе предложение аренды
в кооперативном доме 2-х комнатной квартиры (русские две комнты) по
цене моей собственной трешки (в сумме ЖКХ и ипотека).