The demand, however, isn't just coming from the growing middle class but also the very rich. With tighter lending rules placed on Chinese buyers at home, many investors have gone abroad. Rein points to the formation of property bubbles in other parts of the world, as Chinese investors buy up homes in places such as Canada and California.
Even if home prices fall by 20% in China, it's unlikely that would spell disaster given that prices had surged so rapidly, says Bhaskar Chakravorti, executive director of Tufts University's Institute for Business in the Global Context. Lower prices would offer an opening to those who couldn't afford to buy a year or a few months ago (think about the 300 million middle class Chinese).
"Fundamentally, it's a deep market," says Chakravorti, after speaking recently on a panel about China's property market at the Bloomberg Link China conference in New York City.
The government won't let prices crash
China's central government has been known to tweak its economy as it goes. When officials saw property prices rising too rapidly for its tastes, it tightened lending rules. So the declines we have seen are welcome and are part of the government's plans to cool down its hot real estate market, making it more affordable for more Chinese to buy property.
The tricky part is in knowing how long officials adjust housing policies as the real estate market slows, according to JP Morgan. The bank adds that over the next year and a half, prices could fall 5% to 10% at the national level. At the regional level, where prices have risen much more rapidly ((it notes prices surged an average of 82% between 2007 to 2010 in 35 major Chinese cities), prices are expected to fall by 20%.
"This will likely slow the pace of economic growth but not lead to a hard landing," say JP Morgan's analysts.
To put China's property bubble in context, it's important to note that prices in major cities have risen much faster than the rest of the country, according to JP Morgan's November report. And major cities make up a relatively small portion of the national housing market. For instance, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong's markets combined account for 16% of total real estate investment, 20% of the buildings sold (in value), and 10% of the floor space sold for the majority of 2011.
So before home prices at the regional level trigger a national market crash, the Chinese government should have enough time to change its game.
