Keyboard worrier

Thursday, February 14, 2008

A secular bear market in housing?

It's now generally accepted that houses are overpriced. I think valuations will not only go down, but (notwithstanding bear market rallies) stay down for at least a generation.

Here's some reasons, some having a longer-term effect than others:
  • house prices are now a very high multiple of earnings, choking the first-time buyer market.
  • presently, there is increasing economic pessimism, which will further inhibit buyers.
  • the mortgage burden now lies in the amount of capital to be repaid, rather than the interest rate; that's much harder to get out of, and will prolong the coming economic depression, either through the enduring impact on disposable income, or through the destruction of money by mortgage defaults on negative-equity property - and as valuations fall, there will be more and more of the latter.
  • fairly low current interest rates allow little room to drop rates further to support affordability - and at worst, rate drops could sucker even more people into taking on monster mortgage debt. But interest rate reductions are unlikely to benefit borrowers anyway. The banks have survived for centuries on the fact that while valuations are variable, debt is fixed. They got silly with sub-prime, but by George they will remain determined to get all they can of their capital back, and preserve its value. The people who create money literally out of nothing - a mere account-ledger entry - are now tightening lending criteria and will continue to press for high interest rates; for now, they will content themselves with not fully passing on central bank rate cuts, so improving the differential for themselves, as compensation for their risk.
  • food and fuel costs are rising, and given declining resources (including less quality arable land annually), a growing world population and the relative enrichment of developing countries, demand will continue to soar, cutting into what's left of disposable income.
  • our economy is losing manufacturing capacity and steadily turning towards the service sector, where wages are generally lower.
  • the demographics of an ageing population mean that there will be proportionately fewer in employment, and taxation in its broadest sense will increase, even if benefits are marginally reduced.
  • the growing financial burden on workers will further depress the birth rate, which in turn will exacerbate the demographic problem.
In short, there will be less money available to chase house prices; and in my view, less to chase investments, too. It may be very similar in the USA - as Jim from San Marcos says now (repeating himself from last May):

A market goes up when more people want to buy, than those that want to sell. Well, all of these first time home buyers have no spare cash for the Stock Market. The Baby Boomers, sometime in the future are going to want to sell. The question arises, "Sell to Whom?"

Returning to houses, there are still those who think valuations will continue to be supported by the tacit encouragement of economic migration to the UK.

Now, although this helps keep down wage rates at the lower end (where is the Socialist compassion in that?), the government is pledging the future for a benefit which is merely temporary, if it exists at all. Once an incoming worker has a spouse and several children, how much does he/she need to earn to pay for the social benefits consumed now and to come later? State education alone runs at around £6,000 ($12,000) per annum per child.

And then there's the cost of all the benefits for the indiginous worker on low pay, or simply unemployed and becoming steadily less employable as time passes. And his/her children, learning their world-view in a family where there is no apparent connection between money and work. The government makes get-tough noises, but in a recessionary economy, I don't think victimising such people for the benefit of newspaper headlines will be any use. I seem to recall (unless it was an Alan Coren spoof) that in the 70s, Idi Amin made unemployment illegal in Uganda; not a model to follow.

So to me, allowing open-door economic migration to benefit the GDP and hold up house prices doesn't work in theory, let alone in practice.

Besides, I maintain that in the UK, we don't have a housing shortage: we have a housing misallocation. There must be very many elderly rattling around alone in houses too large and expensive for them to maintain properly. This book says that as long ago as 1981, some 600,000 single elderly in owner-occupied UK property had five or more rooms; the ONS says that in 2004, some 7 million people were living alone in Great Britain. Then there's what must be the much larger number of people who live in twos and threes in houses intended for fours and fives. Before we build another million houses on flood-plains, let's re-visit the concept of need.

Maybe we'll see the return of Roger the lodger - if he's had a CRB check, of course.

Would I buy a second home now? No. Would I sell the one I live in? I'd certainly think about it - in fact, have been considering that for some years.

4 comments:

RobW said...

Great post, we're in for a rough time.

especially youngsters like me...

Sackerson said...

No, I think smart youngies will do well - or fairly well - if they:

defer property purchase until prices have fallen;
avoid non-mortgage debt like the plague;
cut out unnecessary expenditure (£1saved is up to £2 earned);
consider doing without a car, which is now not only an expensive form of transport but increasingly liable to trap you into various civil and criminal convictions;
save hard, and invest in pensions to the extent this attracts 40% tax relief;
look after their health (no binge-drinking), and take out long-term income insurance.

At most risk, I think (as does Jim from San Marcos) are those who have recently taken on large mortgage commitments, and those who have been planning to use their residential property equity to subsidise their income in retirement.

The lucky, selfish generation are the Boomers, i.e. those born in the immediate aftermath of WWII. Those who are 5 or 10 years younger than that missed the wave and are surfing in the trough.

Anonymous said...

At least we'll no longer need to worry about Inheritance Tax.

Sackerson said...

Hi DM:

It's almost a test of Buddhist non-attachment. The government operates through anything you're tied to - your job, house and car, plus any consumer addictions such as alcohol and tobacco. They tax these things heavily and also make them the focus of a panoply of civil and criminal prosecutions, presumably to provide employment for themselves, their friends and clients. If there were no financial incentive for the State in maintaining the car culture, or tobacco and alcohol, I think we'd have made a great deal more progress in handling the problems that arise from them.

Now, why exactly was credit eased to create a housing boom that had to end in a bust? Cui bono?