Tema: PPCC-Pisitófilos Creditófagos-Invierno 2022

[el malo]

Hoy he preguntado cómo se hacen "alquilables" pisos que, en principio, no lo son. Básicamente se instala un cocina básica (3 fuegos), un termo calentador de agua y se le da una mano de pintura. En Cataluña es lo mínimo necesario para obtener la cédula de habitabilidad que tiene un coste de unos 100€ y es condición indispensable para alquilar pisos. Se entregan sin suministros de alta, sólo con los boletines. Se concede una carencia de un par de meses para hacer los trámites de alta de los suministros.

Pues eso multiplicado por X pisos...

En Knightsbridge, cerca de una de las calles más caras del mundo, un día un colega me dijo "ven, que te voy a enseñar algo que te va a causar impresión".

Uno de sus proveedores tiene un almacén en el sótano de una de esas casas reconvertidas en apartamentos. Llegamos a la puerta y bajamos un piso hasta llegar al almacén. Estaban de obras. Estaban reformando EL HUECO DE LA ESCALERA para hacer un estudio. Mejor dicho, estaban reformando "el estudio" y dándole un lavado de cara.

Estaba abierto así que pude ver aquel estercolero. No debía tener ni 10 metros cuadrados. Un ventanuco infame que daba a ras de suelo de un patio interior. Una ducha/váter todo en uno. Paredes raspadas para quitarles el moho.
El infierno debe ser algo parecido a eso. Una cárcel europea con una celda como esa se cerraría por vulnerar los derechos humanos.

Salí en shock. Le dije a mi colega que es imposible que alguien viva ahí y me dijo que lo reforma porque el inquilino se había ido, pero que alguien ya vivía ahí antes.

Qué ganas de romperle los dientes de un puñetazo al casero. Si pudiera le haría vivir un año ahí dentro. A los perros los tratan mejor.

[siempretarde]

Estuve hace un par de años por ahi. La verdad es que me sorprende lo que dice. Yo estuve dentro, tienen unas cuantas tiendas que venden cosas que ellos hacen. Viven, pero que bastante bien, hay un par de bloques de 2-3 plantas que no tienen nada que envidiar del resto de la ciudad.

Nos echamos unas buenas charradas con la gente de alli, yo mi cervezita y ellos su te (alguno de ellos "especial")

Los "peques" son imposibles, de alguna forma se les ha educado con los deseos e ideales de los que viven alli, o quiza sus sueños, y sus conceptos morales y eticos funcionan de otra forma, no se si seran angeles o diablos, pero su forma de pensar es realmente diferente.

Y si, he visto pagar a gente de alli con la bolsita (de plantitas) el autobus, eso si, la cara del conductor no estaba muy de acuerdo con el tema... pero por lo visto hay un acuerdo municipal para ello.

Un poco mas abajo hay un puerto pequeñito, y una nave con bares y tal dentro, muy agradable.

De los carriles bici ni hablamos ....

PD: He encontrado la ñ

La comuna hippie de Christiania, amenazada, entre otras cosas, por la presión inmobiliaria:

¿FIN DE LA UTOPÍA?
Cómo el crimen organizado (y el mundo moderno) amenaza la revolución anarquista danesa
La ciudad libre de Christiania empezó en 1971 como una utopía para quienes aborrecían el sistema. Hoy se ve acorralada por el menudeo de drogas y la sigilosa amenaza inmobiliaria
https://www.elconfidencial.com/mundo/europa/2023-02-26/crimen-organizado-amenaza-revolucion-anarquista-danesa_3571624/

Por cierto, yo que he vivido en Dinamarca conozco eso de primera mano, y desde luego puedo asegurar que los ciudadanos y autoridades de Copenhague no están para nada felices con el chiringuito que tienen ahí desde hace 50 años. Es un sitio cutre hasta decir basta (yo sólo he podido llegar hasta la valla, porque más allá ellos mismos desalientan a que pase nadie, pero es que tampoco habría ganas en cualquier caso).

[Derby]

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/more-tightening-will-be-required-if-fiscal-cooperation-is-absent-christine-lagarde-president-ecb/articleshow/98256149.cms

More tightening will be required if fiscal cooperation is absent: Christine Lagarde, President, ECB

The European Central Bank (ECB) will do whatever is needed to return inflation to 2%, its president, Christine Lagarde, told ET in an interview. India is on the path of progress and the WTO is alive and kicking. The rule based global order is essential and the designs of Russian President Vladimir Putin have failed, she said. Edited excerpts:

A generation of central bankers did not bother about inflation at all. For a year now that seems to be the only issue. What went wrong?

My predecessors and many central bankers around the world had to fight deflation, and they had to adjust policy as a result of that. More recently, we saw prices rise. And that was largely as a result of higher energy prices and supply bottlenecks. Many of us assumed that it would be transitory as is often the case with supply-driven shocks. But then came the war in Ukraine, and the rarification of supply of oil and gas and the price increases that we witnessed.

So the war changed everything...

We went from Covid lockdown with reduced activity to the reopening of the economy. You suddenly wanted to go to the restaurant or to the bar with friends. There was a surge in demand which was met by restrained supply.

Interest rates need to rise to fight inflation, but the magnitude of the increases was a surprise. How long will this have to go on for?

We had to take prompt and significant measures. In December 2021, we announced that we were going to stop our pandemic-related net asset purchases. Since July, we have hiked interest rates at a pace and size that is unprecedented. Interest rates are the most efficient tool in the present circumstances. There is every reason to believe that we will do another 50 basis points in March. After that, we will see. We are data dependent.

So the pace of increases could slow?

We will do more hikes if necessary to return inflation to our target of 2% in a timely manner. It will take what it will take. What I know is that we will return inflation to 2%. And we want to not only return it to 2%, but to keep it there sustainably.

There is always a trade-off between inflation and growth. The market is factoring in a recession and a possible easing by central banks easing sooner rather than later. What is your reading?

I don't have a timeline. I have an objective, which is our target. We need to raise interest rates to a level that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2%, and to keep rates there for as long as necessary to be confident that inflation returns to 2% in a timely manner. That's the mantra. Hiking rates inevitably dampens demand. And what we're trying to do is to adjust demand. That's the mechanical impact that we expect from what we are doing. But as I said, it's going to be data dependent. We will assess at every meeting, and we will decide meeting by meeting what we do.

Rate increases have an impact on financial markets. In a 2015 speech as IMF managing director you warned about the consequences of the lift-off of interest rates. What impact is this tightening going to have? It affected bank earnings last quarter.

In order to fight inflation, we want that our interest hikes are passed through to the financial sector, including to banks. My hope is, because we want monetary transmission to be channelled through the economy, that banks will also reflect those interest rate hikes in their remuneration of deposits. Because that really should take place.

This is coupled with the draining of liquidity. What impact would falling liquidity have, and how well prepared is the world if another crisis emerges?

First of all, the banking system is a lot stronger - the capital ratios, the liquidity ratios, the leverage - all of that has significantly improved. We are going to only partially reinvest the redemptions from our asset purchase programme (APP) as of March, which will effectively reduce the footprint of the ECB in financial markets. But we're doing that at a measured pace. Our reinvestments will decline by 15 billion euros per month on average until the end of June 2023. It's measured, it's predictable, it's transparent. Markets know what to expect.(...)

[Derby]

Incertidumbre...

https://www.businessinsider.com/rent-decline-fall-apartment-housing-market-landlords-tenant-lease-construction-2023-3

Why your rent is about to fall

Tenants are finally gaining power in the housing market

It's been a painful couple of years for renters.

Discounts from early in the pandemic, for those lucky enough to nab them, eventually gave way to hefty rent hikes. Lines for apartment viewings stretched for city blocks, and bidding wars erupted. Across the country, the rallying cry remained the same: The rent is too damn high.

Look closely, though, and you'll see that 2023 is shaping up to be the year that tenants claw back bargaining power from landlords. It may not feel that way just yet, but double-digit rent increases and eye-watering lease demands are now a thing of the past. RealPage, a real-estate-software company, declared in a report last month that the market was "rapidly shifting in favor of renters." A rise in the number of empty apartments, a decline in the number of people looking for a place of their own, and a coming influx of apartment supply will force landlords to compete more fiercely for tenants. And when landlords compete, tenants win — with concessions like months of free rent, free parking, and gift cards.

There's even a chance some Americans will see their rent go down this year. According to housing economists, if apartment demand doesn't pick up, or if the US economy slides into a recession, the rent that landlords ask for new leases could fall nationwide on an annual basis for the first time since the global financial crisis. And renters in some overheated markets with a lot of new supply popping up could see rents drop significantly, even if the economy steers clear of a significant downturn. "If you're looking for a place to live, it should be a lot easier this year to find inventory," Chris Salviati, a housing economist for Apartment List, told me.

After a couple of years in which landlords reigned supreme, the tide is turning. Welcome to the year of the renter.

The case for falling rent

Something strange is happening in the apartment market. The US job market remains healthy, and the unemployment rate hit a 50-year low in January despite a wave of layoffs in high-profile industries. Wage growth is strong, and people have plenty of savings. Yet property managers are having a harder time getting new renters through the front door. The national vacancy rate for apartments jumped to 5% in December, up from a record seasonal low of 2.5% the year prior, according to RealPage Market Analytics.

Most housing economists blame the pullback in rental demand on worries about the future. Despite the strong financial situation in which many Americans find themselves, months of recession warnings and stubborn inflation, as well as the soaring rent prices of the past few years, are persuading would-be apartment hunters to hold off on their searches. A recent college grad or a high earner who's ready to ditch their roommates and get a place of their own, for example, might be surveying the landscape and deciding it's more prudent to stay put or move in with family instead, Jay Parsons, the head of economics for RealPage, told me.

With more apartments sitting open and fewer people looking to move into them, landlords could be forced to hold rents steady, or even cut prices, to entice prospective tenants to pick their units. Asking rents, which measure the rents paid by people moving into a new apartment, rose just 2.4% year over year in January, the smallest annual increase since May 2021 and about one-sixth of the rent increase from a year earlier, according to Redfin. And as every month passes, the deals are getting better — the median US asking rent fell 1.9% between December and January, from $1,979 to $1,942, Redfin reported. Zillow's measures differed slightly, but the takeaway was the same: The last few months of 2022 marked "the biggest monthly declines in rent for any time of year that we had seen in our data going back to 2015," Jeff Tucker, a senior economist at Zillow, told me. "It's a pretty major pullback by renters."

A dramatic uptick in new supply over the next couple of years is poised to exacerbate the headaches for landlords and open up more opportunities for renters. More than 971,000 apartment units were under construction across the US at the end of 2022, the second-largest number on record. About 575,000 multifamily units are scheduled to be completed this year, RealPage reported. An additional 39,000 single-family rental homes are also under development, according to Yardi Matrix, a provider of data for commercial real estate.

"This timing is striking, to see so many units in the pipeline that will try and lease up right as the market has already softened substantially," Tucker said. "That could contribute to rent growth staying softer longer and maybe even seeing some rent declines."

In the Nashville, Tennessee, metro area, for example, the 26,757 units that are either under construction or in the lease-up stage will expand the apartment supply there by more than 15% in the next couple of years, RealPage said. Austin, Texas, will see similar growth, with roughly 42,000 units under construction. In Phoenix, the nearly 47,000 units at the same stage of development will expand the supply by 12%.

Parsons expects to see more markets where rents fall year over year, he told me, especially high-rent downtown areas where a lot of supply will be coming online. "We've already heard anecdotally that some renters are seeing even rent reductions on renewals," Parsons told me. "I don't think that's going to happen across the board for everybody. But you're going to see pockets where you're seeing more of that."

Six markets, including Phoenix and Las Vegas, have seen year-over-year drops in asking rents, according to RealPage. Parsons said he expected more markets to follow suit, including Sacramento, California, and Pensacola, Florida. Apartment List's Salviati agreed that many Sun Belt markets in the South and West, where rents have exploded in recent years, would see "pretty strong cooldowns." Tech hubs like San Francisco, Denver, and Seattle may also face softer rental markets as the industry struggles and the supply of apartments in those areas — especially in the latter two cities — increases.

The summer months will offer a more-telling picture of the rental market, since that's when demand for apartments is typically highest, Sheharyar Bokhari, a senior economist at Redfin, told me. Even if more demand does come back, new deliveries of apartments over the next year should leave slack in the market, which will put more pressure on rents to come down, he said.

"I think, year over year, it is possible that soon we'll see rents fall nationally," Bokhari said.

But a fall is not guaranteed

While local markets face their own ups and downs, it takes a lot for rents to fall nationwide on an annual basis. Unlike for-sale housing, the rental market has been remarkably immune to significant price declines in the past, even during rocky periods for the economy. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, for example, the consumer price index for rent flatlined only for a brief period before continuing its march upward. People may cut back on other expenses, but they still need a place to live. For that reason, most housing economists are ultimately projecting modest rent increases this year, rather than a nationwide decline. RealPage forecasts that rents will rise about 3% nationwide this year, in line with a typical year prior to the pandemic. But given the factors already weighing on rents, a continued downturn in the economy or a recession would change that calculus, according to some experts.

"If we were to enter a recession this year, and unemployment were to rise, I wouldn't be surprised to see rents continue sliding this year," Salviati said. "But assuming that we avoid a recession, then I think there's probably not a strong likelihood that rents are going to keep falling."

Even in the event of a sustained downturn in rents, there's no getting around that there's little chance of rents reverting all the way back to pre-pandemic levels — the typical renter is still paying 20% more for a new lease than they were before the pandemic. In December 2020, the median rent nationwide was $1,649. That figure has risen more than $300 since then.

"A lot of people talk about, 'Well, rents have hit a ceiling. There's only so much people are willing to pay,'" said Jon Leckie, a researcher for Rent, a platform that helps landlords market their properties. "The way I look at it is we've set a new floor."

There's also reason to believe that apartment demand will come back this year if inflation continues to ease and people get a better idea of where the economy is headed. In that scenario, a recent college grad with a stable job might decide they can afford to get that first apartment of their own after all. If this happens at a large scale, it should keep rents from falling drastically, Parsons told me. "Logic would tell us that, given that job growth is still strong, there's got to be pent-up demand right now," he said.

In markets where rents are more likely to fall, the benefits for renters won't be distributed equally. Because the vast majority of new-apartment construction falls within the middle and upper rent tiers, tenants at those price points can expect to have the most options — and the most negotiating power.

There's the added risk that apartment developers ditch plans for future projects as they confront higher interest rates and weaker demand for their units, which would worsen the supply shortage in the years ahead. We're already seeing signs that developers are growing more skittish. Developers started construction on only 33,600 multifamily units nationwide in December, the lowest figure in nearly two years, according to US Census Bureau figures.

For now, though, the wave of supply that's already underway should keep rents in check over the next couple of years. The slowdown will be particularly pronounced in downtown areas where cranes dot the horizon and high-rent-building owners are bracing for thousands of new units to hit the market. The competition among landlords will mean better deals for renters — this year, especially, it could pay to shop around when your lease runs out.

Even if landlords manage to keep their rent growth positive, tougher competition may entice them to hand out incentives that aren't reflected in asking rents, like a month or two of free rent or a discount on parking.

A return to normal rent growth would still be good news for renters who have watched their housing costs skyrocket since the start of 2021. Now, as landlords shift their focus from jacking up rents to filling up units, renters can once again look ahead to better days.

[Derby]

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-64790193

Northern Ireland Brexit deal: At-a-glance

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen have announced they have reached a new deal, aimed at fixing post-Brexit problems in Northern Ireland.

The full details of their agreement have just been published, and we're working to get you a fuller picture of what's been decided.

Here is we know about the agreement, named the Windsor Framework, so far:

Green lane/red lane

Goods from Britain destined for Northern Ireland will travel through a new "green lane", with a separate "red lane" for goods at risk of moving onto the EU

Products coming into Northern Ireland through the green lane would see checks and paperwork scrapped

Red lane goods destined for the EU still be subject to normal checks

Mr Sunak said this would mean food available on the supermarket shelves in Great Britain will be available on supermarket shelves in Northern Ireland.

New data-sharing arrangements would be used to oversee the new system

Where smuggling is suspected, some custom checks may still be carried out on green lane goods

Business moving goods from Northern Ireland to Great Britain would not be required to complete export declarations

Bans on certain products - like chilled sausages - entering Northern Ireland from Britain would be scrapped

Pets, parcels and medicines

"Onerous requirements" on moving pets will be removed

Medicines approved for use by the UK regulator available in Northern Ireland pharmacies and hospitals

Mr Sunak said that people sending parcels to friends or family or doing online shopping in Northern Ireland will not have to complete customs paperwork

VAT and alcohol duty

Under the Northern Ireland Protocol, EU VAT rules could be applied in Northern Ireland

Under the new deal, Mr Sunak says the UK can make "critical VAT" changes which include Northern Ireland

For example if the government raises or cuts alcohol duty this will apply to pubs in Northern Ireland as well as the rest of the UK, he said

Stormont brake

Under the protocol, some EU law applies in Northern Ireland, but politicians had no formal way to influence the rules

New agreement introduces a "Stormont brake" which allows the Northern Ireland Assembly to raise an objection to a new rule

The process would be triggered if 30 MLAs (representatives in the Stormont Assembly) from two or more parties sign a petition

14 day consultation period would follow, after which, if 30 MLAs still support it, there would be a vote in the assembly

To pass, it would need support from both unionists and nationalist representatives

The brake cannot be used for "trivial reasons" but reserved for "significantly different" rules

Once the UK tells the EU the brake has been triggered, the rule cannot be implemented
It can only be applied if the UK and EU agree.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-windsor-framework

[Derby]

Es salvaje...

https://calculatedrisk.substack.com/p/measures-of-shelter-in-the-cpi-and

Measures of Shelter in the CPI and PCE price indexes Still Increasing

While asking rents are falling, the measures of shelter in the CPI and PCE price indexes keep rising. This is because these measures include renewals, whereas the various private measures of monthly rents are for new leases.

Here is a graph of the year-over-year change in shelter from the CPI report and housing from the PCE report (both through January 2023):



Shelter was up 7.9% year-over-year in January, and housing (PCE) was up 8.0% YoY in January.(...)

[Benzino Napaloni]

Incertidumbre...

https://www.businessinsider.com/rent-decline-fall-apartment-housing-market-landlords-tenant-lease-construction-2023-3

Why your rent is about to fall

Tenants are finally gaining power in the housing market

t's been a painful couple of years for renters.

[...]

Apuesto -sin mérito- a que pasará lo mismo de siempre. Las crisis suelen llegar a España con retraso. Pero multiplicadas. La poca exposición a las tecnológicas fue lo que evitó que la crisis de las puntocom nos afectase en conjunto, aunque quien tenía acciones de Terra o similares las pasó canutas.

En ese sentido, una mención rápida a Centurión, el mismo que hizo de PcFútbol un juego en el que unos cuantos echamos muchísimas horas de nuestros años mozos, y que luego destrozó la empresa al querer subirse a la ola de las puntocom. Y fracasó estrepitosamente en el intento.

Volviendo al rentismo del alquiler, en año electoral ninguno de los grandes partidos dirá ni pío al respecto. Después de las elecciones... que más de uno se abroche el cinturón. No es una discusión de si pasará, es de darle tiempo a los peces gordos a acabar de salir.

[Derby]

http://bonddad.blogspot.com/2023/02/durable-goods-orders-more-deceleration.html

Durable goods orders: more deceleration, still no recession

I normally don’t pay too much attention to durable goods orders. That’s because they are very noisy. They don’t always turn down in advance of a recession (see 2007-08), although they may at least stall, and there are a number of false positives as well (see 2016) as shown in the graph below showing up until the pandemic:



But in 2022 they were one of the last short leading indicators to be positive. As late as November of last year I still rated them as a “positive.”

That has changed somewhat in the past several months. With the exception of December, durable goods orders have made no progress at all since last June, and while “core” durable goods orders excluding aircraft (Boeing) and defense increased in January, it remains below the level of last August, and has generally been flat since then as well:



A YoY view shows that both measures of durable goods are decelerating, but neither are have deteriorated as much as before the last 3 recessions:



But if they continue at their current rate of deceleration, core capital goods will be negative YoY by about mid year.

This has been a dominant theme in the data - especially some short leading and coincident indicators - for the past number of months: continuing deceleration, but not turning negative yet.

[Derby]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-27/spacs-shift-to-more-obscure-exchanges-to-keep-deal-dreams-going

SPACs Shift to More Obscure Exchanges to Keep Deal Dreams Going

*Seven blank check companies have moved to smaller exchanges
*Less stringent rules on investors, traded shares are an appeal

Struggling SPACs that are facing a broad investor desertion are moving their listings to smaller exchanges in an attempt to keep alive their hopes for eventually cutting a deal.

At least seven special-purpose acquisition companies have down-shifted to stock exchanges with more lax requirements this year after the vast majority of investors pulled out their money. That means blank-check firms with less than a minimum number of publicly held shares or a smaller investor base can survive.

The shift delays the possibility that SPAC sponsors will lose millions if they are forced to throw in the towel, while leaving in place the potential for big profits if a deal can be arranged in the future. High redemption rates and a choppy macroeconomic environment have forced 146 SPACs to liquidate in the past five months alone. That has made the search for a new strategy all the more intense, says Matthew Tuttle, chief executive officer at Tuttle Capital Management.

“While a down-list strategy may be viewed as a junior varsity move by some, we take the side that it’s a smart transitional step in the going public process,” Tuttle said by email. “Eventually the sensible business combinations will attract outside capital.”

Rocky Ride

Blank check companies like Williams Rowland Acquisition Corp. and Adit EdTech Acquisition Corp. have moved to the NYSE American exchange, which has its roots in the old American Stock Exchange, after more than 80% of investors swapped their shares for cash. Meanwhile, Deep Medicine Acquisition Corp. moved its listing to the Nasdaq Capital Market, which is for smaller and more speculative companies, because it didn’t have enough publicly-held shares.

Amid the shift, there are still about 335 blank-check companies holding a combined $72 billion in pursuit of deals, according to data from SPAC Research. And with the IPO market still in the doldrums, businesses looking to go public are opting for SPAC tie-ups, with 31 announcing mergers in 2023.

For the companies that have pushed SPAC tie-ups across the finish line this year, it’s been a rocky ride. The median 2023 de-SPAC is down more than 40% from its debut.

As a result, just six SPAC IPOs have priced this year, raising a total of $523 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s on top of the five ventures lined up to raise $440 million in the coming months, also well below recent trends.

“If you look at these deals that folks jammed through and end up with 3% or 5% float that raises a lot of questions over whether you were doing the right thing,” Taylor Sherman, a director at CohnReznick Advisory, said in an interview last month. “That’s because the sponsors have put a few million dollars up front to form the SPAC,” which will be lost if they have to shut down without a deal.

[Derby]

Parece que se ha llegado al límite de renta que los ingresos de los inquilinos pueden asumir...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/apartment-rents-fall-as-crush-of-new-supply-hits-market-2403c6ea

Apartment Rents Fall as Crush of New Supply Hits Market

Declines signal tenants may be maxed out on how much income they can devote to rent

(...) Now, recent declines are a sign that many tenants have maxed out on how much of their income they can devote to rent, while the specter of layoffs has created new concerns for some. Other would-be renters, living with family or friends, remain sidelined by prices that are still far too high for their budgets.

[Derby]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-may-think-housing-183315941.html

Warren Buffett May Think The Housing Market Has Bottomed: Berkshire's Bet On A Strong Recovery

Warren Buffett, the legendary investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, may have his sights set on a strong housing market recovery.

What Happened: With existing-home sales falling for the 12th consecutive month in January, Buffet’s recent purchase of 1.25 million shares of Louisiana-Pacific Corp (NYSE: LPX) suggests he believes the housing market has finally bottomed out.

While housing inventory remains low, it has started to climb, indicating that buyers and builders are regaining confidence in the market.(...)

[Derby]

https://www.semafor.com/article/02/27/2023/many-korean-women-dont-want-marriage-or-kids

Many Korean women don’t see getting married or having kids as ‘essential’

THE NEWS

Many South Korean women now feel that marriage and childbirth are not crucial parts of their lives, according to a survey by the Korean Association for Social Welfare Studies.

KNOW MORE

The association conducted a poll in 2022 among 281 men and women between the ages of 20 and 34. And the results, which were released Sunday, said that only 4% of women respondents saw marriage and having children as “mandatory,” compared to the 12.9% of men.

A majority of those who responded positively to their overall well-being and quality of life were more inclined to want marriage and kids, the Korea Herald reported.

STEP BACK

South Korea has faced a demographic crisis ever since the country’s population started shrinking in 2021. In 2022, the fertility rate dropped to 0.78, the lowest since 1970.

South Korean women are pushing back on the country’s traditionally patriarchal society by going on a “so-called birth strike,” author and journalist Hawon Jong recently wrote in a New York Times column.
AD

The Korea Herald reported that attitudes towards who should take care of children at home have changed drastically in the past 15 years, according to a different survey conducted by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs.

In 2007, nearly 65% of the government survey respondents said that mothers should take care of their children. In 2022, only 40% said that should be the case.

THE VIEW FROM CHINA

China is also experiencing a demographic downturn for the first time in six decades, for reasons that are arguably similar to South Korea's.

Many have blamed China’s population decline on the country’s historic one-child policy coupled with mounting societal pressures on women to be mothers.

The country’s #MeToo movement, which has often been censored by the Chinese government, has also triggered a growing aversion to marriage and childbirth.

Last month in Sichuan, the second largest province in China, local government officials announced that women could register newborn babies without needing to be married — part of a series of nationwide incentives to bolster birthrates.

[Cadavre Exquis]

Interesante este artículo en el que se dice abiertamente que la bajada de los precios inmobiliarios debe verse como algo positivo y que ya hay voces en el partido conservador británico que la defienden. Además repite varias veces que no cabe esperar una recuperación de los precios como ha sucedido en el pasado. Lástima que las imágenes pierden las leyendas al copiarlas.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/news/have-entered-property-ice-age-coming-next/

We have entered a property ice age – here’s what’s coming next
Buyers and sellers are in a stand-off, with the former unprepared to commit until prices fall, and the latter unwilling to drop their prices

Ben Wright | 25 February 2023

The many various forecasts about the future direction of the UK house market range from the merely bad to the truly apocalyptic

It was the collective groan that heralded the beginning of the end of Liz Truss’s ephemeral tenure as prime minister.

The pound had fallen and yields on government debt surged after Kwasi Kwarteng announced unfunded tax cuts in September’s mini Budget. When Truss’s chancellor hinted this was merely an amuse bouche, the markets really took fright. Borrowing costs shot up.

A woman in the audience of BBC’s Question Time said she had just been quoted over 10 per cent for the mortgage she needed to buy her first house. The rest of the audience gasped. Some visibly flinched. A few weeks later, Truss was making her valedictory speech.

At times, it feels like this country’s obsession with house prices leads us to dissect each single twist and turn of the market in every region of the country. But those audience members instinctively understood the nub of the issue. Zoom back a little to gain a bit of perspective and there is a single, inviolable truth about the housing market: property prices are inversely correlated to interest rates.

When rates are low, mortgages are cheap and house prices rise. When they go up, debt becomes more expensive, demand collapses and the market is forced to adjust. If that basic fact sometimes gets forgotten it’s because we have been living in the former state – a low interest rate environment – for over a generation and a half.

A working paper published by the Bank of England in 2019 concluded that almost all of the rise in average house prices relative to incomes between 1985 and 2018 was the result of “a sustained, dramatic, and consistently unexpected decline in real interest rates as measured by the yield on medium-term index-linked gilts”.

Well, that era is over. At the end of 2021, the Bank of England base rate was 0.1 per cent. But in an attempt to tackle rampant inflation, policy makers have ratcheted it up 10 times since. The rate currently stands at 4 per cent. There will almost certainly be more rises to come.

While that isn’t very high by historical standards, it is much higher than many are used to. As Andy Haldane, the former Bank of England chief economist, said last year: “We have a whole generation of mortgage holders who have scarcely seen a rise in interest rates. It will be a massive shock to the system.”

Today’s homeowners have such big mortgages that interest rates at 6 per cent would cause as much pain as those of 15 per cent did when the market crashed in 1989.

Mortgage rates, which had been picking up steadily last year, spiked sharply following Kwarteng’s mercifully brief time in charge of the nation’s finances. They’ve eased a little since but still remain high compared with recent memory. This time last year, Halifax was offering the cheapest mortgage ever: fixed at 0.83 per cent for two years. Now the same bank is offering the same mortgage at 4.95 per cent, which would cost an extra £4,916 a year to service.

The average new two-year and five-year fixed mortgage rates (for a loan to value figure of 75 per cent) were 5.4 per cent and 5.1 per cent respectively in December, according to Bank of England data. That’s roughly triple what they were a year ago. Two-year mortgage rates haven’t been this high since October 2008.

So, when will rising interest rates start hurting property prices and how severe will the pain be?

The answer to the first question is that it has already started. Prices are down 3.5 per cent from last summer’s peak if you take an average of the two main measures produced by Nationwide and Halifax. This is the biggest drop over an equivalent period since 2009. Approvals also ended last year at the lowest level since the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis (if you exclude the weirdness that occurred during the pandemic).

This is a global phenomenon. Interest rates are cranking up all over the world. In Sweden, house prices have fallen by 17 per cent from last year’s peak. But in the UK, Brits are nurtured on wall-to-wall property programmes, construction accounts for 6 per cent of all economic output and housing accounts for a full half of all household wealth. A price correction will have severe knock-on implications for consumer confidence and the wider economy.

It’s likely that we are currently living in the lag – a delay between Wile E Coyote running off the cliff and gravity starting to take effect. At the moment, many in the property industry are desperately pawing fresh air trying to convince themselves and everyone else that we haven’t run out of road or that the landing will be soft.

It’s certainly worth taking the blizzard of statistics and data that will be churned out in the next few months with a hefty dose of salt. We’re in the phoney war period. Buyers and sellers are in a stand-off, with the former unprepared to commit until prices fall, and the latter unwilling to drop their price – yet. Reports from the front line during this period will be misleading, because they will be based on just a tiny sample of transactions.

The many various forecasts about the future direction of the UK house market range from the merely bad to the truly apocalyptic. Banks, estate agents and property experts have predicted that rising interest rates and the cost of living crisis will result in prices falling by between 5 per cent and 10 per cent this year.

But there’s definitely scope for further nasty surprises. The average mortgage rate rose from a record low of 1.75 per cent in 2020 to 3.68 per cent at the end of last year. That translates into a 26 per cent increase in monthly payments on the average new mortgage, according to Capital Economics. Andrew Wishart, the senior property economist at Capital Economics, says there are signs that borrowers have already reacted to higher rates by taking out smaller mortgage loans. He has calculated that if the average mortgage rate settles around 4.5 per cent, which is not a particularly outlandish prediction, the average loan-to-income ratio will have to fall from 3.3 to 2.5 to bring mortgage payments back to their historical norm.

“That would imply a drop in mortgage size from £234,000 to £176,000, and assuming no change in the size of deposits, a subsequent fall in house prices of 17 per cent,” says Wishart. “Admittedly, the relationship between the two is not exact and we doubt the drop will be that large. But house prices have further to fall.” Ouch.

S&P Global Ratings, the world’s largest credit rating agency, believes that property in London and the south-east could be overvalued to the tune of 50 per cent and that rising interest rates will result in a “sticky, gradual decline” of house prices over the course of almost three years. Double ouch.

For many, the most accurate picture of the state of the housing market (and the place to find pretty reliable forecasts) is the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ (RICS) monthly residential market survey. This is where estate agents come together, under the cover of anonymity, to tell the truth. 

The picture painted by the most recent surveys is decidedly grim. The net balance of surveyors reporting rising house prices in the prior three months fell to -2 in October from +30 in September, according to the RICS data. That was the largest drop on record since the survey was established in 1978.

The January survey showed new buyer enquiries had slipped to -47 per cent, the ninth successive negative monthly reading and the weakest since April 2009. This all amounts to fairly “clear evidence” that house prices are on the slide, according to Pantheon Macro Economics.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the property bulls might say, but look at the last two times there were big falls in UK property prices: the market bounced back pretty quickly. Prices took a lurch at the start of the pandemic in 2020 but were actually up by the end of the year. Blink and you’d missed it. And, even after the horrible crash following the global financial crisis in 2008, property prices had made back all the lost ground by 2012. The lesson people learned is that it pays to buy in the dip.

All true. But, you have to remember that in both 2008 and 2020, the Bank of England reacted to worsening economic conditions by cutting interest rates. In 2007, the base rate was 5.5 per cent; a year later it was 2 per cent, then slipped to almost zero and remained there until the most recent round of rises started to kick in just over a year ago.

Things are likely to be a little different this time; those scanning the horizon for signs of the cavalry’s imminent arrival are likely to be disappointed.

Central banks all around the world are acutely mindful of the damage that a decade and a half of quantitative easing and record low interest rates have done (not least in artificially pumping up the value of assets like property) and are desperately keen to return to more normal monetary policy.

And, for the time being, the Bank of England is in firefighting mode. Its primary concern for the coming months will be taming inflation. Just this week, Catherine Mann, who sits on the committee that sets interest rates, said more must be done to clamp down on rising prices and dismissed talk of a looming “pivot” to easier monetary policy. As and when Threadneedle Street wonks do decide to cut interest rates it will be because the economy is absolutely tanking – not a particularly conducive environment in which to go shopping for your new abode.

Catherine Mann, member of the monetary policy committee at the Bank of England CREDIT: Akos Stiller/Bloomberg

What about the Government then? The Conservatives brand themselves the party of homeowners and famously haven’t ever met a policy designed to prop up the housing market they didn’t like, including Help to Buy, lifetime ISAs and stamp duty holidays, to name but a few. It’s entirely possible that the Government may come up with, say, a mortgage tax relief or something similar this time round.

But there’s a sense in which the political calculus is shifting. For one thing, the Treasury doesn’t exactly have much money to splash around at the moment.

For another, there’s a growing realisation that past measures didn’t so much help people to buy houses as help people who already owned houses. Lastly, there appears to be a shift in public attitudes. In February 2020, only 38 per cent of Brits thought a drop in house prices was a consummation devoutly to be wished for, according to YouGov. By the end of last year, that proportion had risen to 50 per cent. Indeed, only one in 20 of those surveyed a couple of months ago thought rising house prices were a positive development.

Many homeowners have noticed the distorting effect that spiralling house prices are having on UK society. Lucian Cook of Savills estate agents says even older, Conservative-voting households are starting to realise house price growth is a “double-edged sword”.

On the one hand it increases their wealth (on paper at least); on the other, they worry about how their children or grandchildren will ever be able to get themselves on to the housing ladder. “More older households are coming to the realisation that higher house prices mean their children’s ability to buy a home is increasingly dependent on them and their willingness to live in a smaller home,” says Cook.

The more enlightened Conservative MPs may be worrying about the same thing. Duncan Lamont of asset manager Schroders says the value of British homes relative to earnings has more than doubled since the 1990s: “Affordability has deteriorated dramatically for first-time buyers. This has contributed to home ownership rates falling to levels last seen in the early 1980s.”

A generation risks being left stranded in rented accommodation, delaying marriage or starting families, and making the traditional journey towards the right-hand side of the political spectrum. Some Tories are beginning to wonder whether, whisper it quietly, price falls might not be such a bad thing after all.

There’s no doubt UK property is nosebleed-inducingly expensive. The pandemic ultimately ensured there was a last hurrah to the housing boom as everyone was confined to quarters, forced to stare at the same four walls for months on end, and unsurprisingly started to crave a little more space and a bigger garden.

The average price of a UK home rose by £50,000 in the two years following the start of the pandemic in March 2020 to a shade under £270,000, according to Nationwide. House prices have climbed to more than nine times the average salary, a ratio not seen since 1876, according to recent analysis by Schroders. In London, homes now cost 12 times earnings.

On the flipside though, high prices provide one of the few silver linings amid all the gloom that give reason to hope that an outright crash can be avoided. Even a reasonably large fall in the coming months would only take the value of properties back to where they were quite recently.

Earlier this week, for example, Lloyds bank said it expects house prices to fall by about 7 per cent this year. That would result in the value of an average property returning to levels seen in the third quarter of 2021 in cash terms (although high inflation means the real terms fall will be more substantial). Lloyds said this meant most of its customers would still have “very positive equity”.

As Oxford Economics points out, the amount of equity that British households own in their property is at a record high compared with both overall housing wealth and incomes. What’s more, the vast majority of mortgage debt is owed by wealthy households. The top 50 per cent richest households owe roughly 86 per cent of all outstanding mortgage debt while the poorest 30 per cent owe just 5 per cent, according to Berenberg analysts.

At the moment, household finances, with people having built up savings during the pandemic, are in reasonably good shape (although they will deteriorate over time the longer the cost of living crisis goes, inflation erodes disposable income, the economy slows and unemployment starts to tick up). This should mean that most people have the flexibility to sit tight and ride out the downturn – perhaps by switching to interest-only mortgages for a while.

UK banks are well capitalised and have not been offering crazy mortgages on tiny multiples of income and with very small deposits as they did in the lead up to the financial crisis.

Lenders are still smarting from the reputation damage they suffered back then and will therefore be extremely reluctant to foreclose on borrowers, repossess properties and flood the market with homes. This was the negative spiral that caused prices to really crash in the early 1990s. The Bank of England’s stress tests means we know lenders can weather house prices falling by up to 31 per cent from peak to trough.

Falling prices may also stop empty-nesters from selling their large homes with unused bedrooms and downsizing. This would result in a further squeeze on the already extremely constrained supply of housing stock in the UK. Might this in and of itself help maintain a floor to the coming price falls? Will that in turn keep the spectre of negative equity, mortgage arrears and repossessions at bay?

On such delicate and uneasy equilibriums will the housing market balance in the coming months and years.

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://elpais.com/espana/2023-02-27/la-okupacion-de-viviendas-se-frena-pese-a-los-discursos-alarmistas.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

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¿Podrá ver Madrid una puja de precios de viviendas... a la baja?

https://cincodias.elpais.com/companias/2023-02-27/el-boom-de-vivienda-en-los-nuevos-barrios-de-madrid-desatara-en-2025-una-guerra-por-compradores.html

Saludos.