【英语国际】短线观点：美国房价反弹是暂时现象

The US housing market matters to almost everyone – even people who do not want a property in the country. Stabilising house prices could help to draw a line under the troubled assets on banks' balance sheets, and hence under the financial crisis.

In the latest welter of housing data, some have seen green shoots. Official data show month-on-month price rises for two months in a row, for the first time since 2006.

New house sales also ticked up slightly, albeit leaving an inventory of unsold homes that would take more than a year to sell at the current rate, while historically low mortgage rates have sparked hopes that buyers will reappear, even if they have yet to do so in any numbers.

These are reasons for hope. Yet perhaps attention should be directed to forced sales through foreclosures because these swamp all other factors.

Fascinating research by David Ranson of Wainwright Economics shows an almost perfect correlation between US foreclosure rates and declines in house prices. Federal figures show a national fall of 8.3 per cent in prices last year. But this varied greatly between states and foreclosure rates explained 90 per cent of the variation. The four states with worst rates – Nevada, Florida, Arizona and California – were the only four to suffer price declines of more than 20 per cent. Excluding the 16 highest foreclosure states, the others had almost flat prices.

What are the implications? The recent partly artificial slowdown in foreclosures, as banks awaited details of the administration's plan to deal with the problem, may explain the “green shoots” that have appeared in the data. That slowdown may be temporary.

Longer term, the more that forced sales can be averted, the less prices will fall. That may depend on unemployment. If more borrowers are forced by joblessness to abandon their homes, prices will fall again.

美国房市与几乎所有人都息息相关——甚至包括那些没打算在这个国家买房的人。稳定房价有助于为银行资产负债表上的不良资产、进而为金融危机设置一条底线。

有些人在最近杂乱无章的房屋数据中看到了复苏的萌芽。官方数据显示，自2006年以来，美国房价首次连续两个月出现环比增长。

新屋销售也略有上升，虽然以目前的速度，未售房屋存量还要一年多才能卖完。而跌至历史低点的抵押贷款率则引发了购房者重现市场的希望，虽然目前还没什么购房者现身。

这些是让人们燃起希望的原因。不过，或许我们应该把注意力转向由于丧失赎回权而被迫出售房屋的现象，因为这盖过了其它所有因素。

Wainwright Economics的戴维•兰森(David Ranson)进行的一项有趣研究显示，美国的房屋止赎率和房价之间存在着完美的正相关。联邦数据显示，去年美国全国房价下跌了8.3%。但各州数据存在显著差异，而房屋止赎率能够解释90%的变动。只有房屋止赎率最高的四个州——内华达、佛罗里达、亚利桑那和加利福尼亚——房价跌幅超过了20%。将16个止赎现象最严重的州排除之后，其它州的房价几乎持平。

这意味着什么呢？最近止赎现象的放缓，一定程度上是人为造成的：银行在等待政府公布应对该问题的计划细节。这种放缓或许能够解释为什么数据中出现了复苏“萌芽”。但这种放缓可能是暂时的。

更长远来看，如果我们能更多地避免抵押房产的被迫出售，房价下跌幅度就会更小。这可能将取决于失业率的高低。如果更多的贷款人受失业所迫，不得不放弃他们的房屋，房价就会再次下跌。

译者/管婧