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发表于 2005-5-25 22:14
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Steep Rise in Prices for Homes Adds to Worry About a Bubble
Home prices rose more quickly over the last year than at any point since 1980, a national group of Realtors reported yesterday, raising new questions about whether some local housing markets may be turning into bubbles destined to burst.
With mortgage rates still low and job growth accelerating, the real estate market is defying yet another round of predictions that it was on the verge of cooling. The number of homes sold also jumped in April, after having been flat for almost a year.
Nationwide, the median price for sales of existing homes, which does not factor in newly built ones, rose to $206,000 last month, up 15.1 percent over the last year and breaking the $200,000 level for the first time, the National Association of Realtors said. Adjusted for inflation, the median price - the point at which half cost more and half cost less - has increased more than a third since 2000.
"We've had robust markets before," said Maurice J. Veissi, the president of a real estate agency in Miami, who has been a broker for 30 years. "But this one is so much broader and deeper."
Even before this surge, housing prices had risen more steeply over the last 10 years than during any such period since World War II. A growing number of economists worry that real estate is to this decade what technology stocks were to the 1990's, with many people assuming that home values will rise forever.
Over all, home prices have never fallen by a significant amount, and Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said on Friday that a national drop in price remained unlikely. But they have sometimes fallen sharply in certain locations, including New York and Los Angeles, and Mr. Greenspan, in his strongest warning to date, stated that some metropolitan areas were clearly showing signs of "froth."
Having been sanguine about real estate in recent years, Mr. Greenspan began to change his tone in March, when he cited some analysts' concern that the housing market might "implode."
Prices continue to rise most rapidly in the places where they are already highest, including Florida, the Boston-Washington corridor and along the West Coast. In the late 1980's, a typical house in San Diego cost about as much as two typical houses in Syracuse, according to the Realtors' association; today, someone could buy six Syracuse houses for the price of one in San Diego.
Prices have jumped most sharply over the last year in the West - up 21 percent in April from a year earlier, compared with an increase of 14 percent in the calendar year 2004. Price increases also accelerated in the Midwest, to almost 13 percent, while they remained roughly similar in the Northeast at 16 percent, and the South, where they are up about 8 percent compared with a year earlier.
In a separate report, the Census Bureau said Tuesday that the percentage of homes worth at least a million dollars had almost doubled from 2000 to 2003. California had the highest share of million-dollar homes in 2003, with more than 4 percent valued above that amount. It was followed by Connecticut; Washington, D.C.; Massachusetts; and New York, where an estimated 2.1 percent of the homes were valued at more than $1 million. Nationally, 1 percent are worth more than that.
"There's clearly speculative excess going on," said Joshua Shapiro, the chief United States economist at MFR Inc., an economic research group in New York. "A lot of people view real estate as a can't lose."
Until the April surge, the overall housing market had seemed to have reached a plateau. Economists, even some working for real estate lobbying groups, predicted that sales would decline a little in 2005 and prices would rise more modestly.
But even as the Fed has steadily lifted its benchmark short-term interest rate, mortgage rates have remained low. The average interest rate for a 30-year fixed loan is now 5.71 percent, down from 6.30 percent a year ago, according to Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage buyer.
Mortgage rates are closely tied to the market for long-term government bonds, which are benefiting from purchases by foreign governments, particularly in Asia, that continue to buy Treasury bonds, as well as from investors looking for a haven from risky corporate securities.
As the economy has gained strength this year, the still low rates and creative financing arrangements appear to have wooed a new group of homebuyers into the market. Some are trading up to larger houses, while others are buying a vacation homes or putting money into real estate simply as an investment.
"Mortgage rates are doing this," said David A. Lereah, chief economist of the Realtors' association. "They're near historic lows."
The number of existing homes that changed hands in April increased 4.5 percent, the biggest monthly gain since early 2004. Sales of condominiums, particularly popular among real estate speculators, rose faster than sales of free-standing homes. Condo prices rose faster, too.
To economists worried about a bubble, the growing gap between house prices and almost everything else - rents, incomes, population growth - is the surest sign of trouble. A typical apartment, for example, costs less to rent than it did five years ago, taking inflation into account, according to the National Real Estate Index, which is published by Global Real Analytics, a research company based in San Francisco.
The last time that house prices increased more than 15 percent over a 12-month period was in 1980, according to the Realtors' group. But overall inflation was also high at the time, helping to drive home values higher as well. Inflation has been modest in recent years.
Mr. Shapiro of MFR said that even a moderate rise in mortgage rates now had the potential to cause a price decline in some expensive markets. A rate increase would change the calculation for people buying residential real estate as an investment, he said, and could make other buyers realize that the recent price jumps could not continue.
But other economists predict that powerful demographic forces will keep prices increasing in most of the country. Many baby boomers are buying second homes, and their children - like many immigrants who have arrived in the last generation - are destined, in this view, to buy their first, continuing to stoke demand.
Construction companies have also avoided the kind of overbuilding that plagued some regions during the real estate downturn of the early 1990's. Fewer than 2.5 million homes remained on the market in April, equal to only about four months' worth of home sales, and that is near a record low.
"Obviously, there are some local bubbles," said Mr. Lereah, of the Realtors' group, who called last month's price increase unsustainable. "But I tend to think that with most of the bubbles, the air will come out slowly, rather than popping."
[ Last edited by annieingermany on 2005-5-25 at 22:36 ] |
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发表于 2005-5-24 22:42
