波动啥意思 香港楼市与港民的心相呼应的起伏波动

香港楼市与港民的心相呼应的起伏波动  

It is a rite of passage to gripe – and occasionally gloat – about Hong Kong property prices. Companies setting up in the territory have to accept they will pay some of the highest prices in the world for office space and possibly dole out equally large housing allowances.
Likewise for retailers. Burberry
the British luxury brand
pays about $1m a month in rent for its store in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay shopping district. Ralph Lauren is heading to Hollywood Road
traditionally home to purveyors of antiques
memorabilia and general tat rather than expensive US clothing.
But it is not a uniform picture of sky-high rents
as those who took space during the bleak days of Sars
the infectious disease that swept through the territory in 2003
or the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98
can testify.
但香港的租金并非一直高得离谱。2003年传染病非典(Sars)席卷香港期间，1997-98年亚洲金融危机期间，房地产价格都曾一落千丈，在那时买入房产的人可以证明这一点。
“Hong Kong doesn’t do stable
” says Craig Shute
a senior managing director at CBRE
the real estate services adviser. “It is rare that prices remain in a 10 per cent band on either side.”
That is testament to the volatility attendant upon a spit of land that effectively has its interest rates set by the US – courtesy of the Hong Kong dollar currency peg – and its demand dictated to a large extent from across the border in mainland China.
Land is in pitifully short supply and government policy on land sales has mostly kept it that way. During times of high inflation
property was seen as a classic hedge.
Car parking spaces have gone for $1.3m
enough to buy a street of houses in parts of England or the US. H&M
the Swedish clothing retailer
shuttered its flagship store leaving its Central District location to Zara
its Spanish rival
to take up the keys and pay double the rent.
And there has been a veritable exodus of banks and businesses across the water to Kowloon
once viewed as a hinterland by many expat bankers.
Recently
however
clouds have been appearing on the horizon. In February
the government took steps to cool the market
doubling stamp duty on properties worth more than HK$2m ($258
000) and introducing a lower duty on cheaper homes.
At the same time
the Hong Kong Moary Authority
the territory’s de facto central bank
cut the maximum loan-to-value ratio to 40 per cent for mercial and industrial spaces and introduced a similar ratio for parking spaces
the latest subject of speculative investment.
More recently
developers of big projects have been offering rebates and discounts which
in some cases
have served to lop 20 per cent off the price – although this “teaser” strategy has helped them to sell subsequent batches at higher prices. “Hong Kong seems to be at a crossroads
” says Mr Shute. “There are a lot of opinions on what will happen to pricing over the next 12 months or so.”
In one corner are the pessimists – or optimists
depending which side of the desk you are sitting on. Barclays
UBS and Merrill Lynch Bank of America foresee a downturn
with prices falling 30 per cent or more by the end of 2015 on the back of supply increases and stalling ine growth.
“The magnitude of the fall is underestimated
” wrote Barclays’ analysts. “The property market is about to enter its first real downturn since 1998.” That was when Hong Kong was caught up in the sell-off triggered by the Asian financial crisis and homes lost o-thirds of their value over a six-year period.
Several factors support their caution. The latest run-up in prices has been strong: the property market has more than doubled since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008.
Buyers from the mainland
accounting for as much as a quarter of home sales at the peak in the fourth quarter of 2011
dropped to only 8 per cent in the first quarter of this year
according to Centaline
a property agency.
CY Leung
Hong Kong’s chief executive
is on a mission to make housing more affordable for the territory’s 7m inhabitants
or at least to stem the upward spiral.
This means increasing supply – a similar policy launched by one of his predecessors Tung Chee-hwa after he came to power in 1997 quickly damped exuberance.