Why rising interest rates have not yet triggered property pandemonium
house prices have risen for the past three months. In America a widely watched index of housing values has risen by 1.6% from its low in January, and housebuilders’ share prices have done twice as well as the overall stockmarket. In the euro area the property market looks steady. “[M]ost of the drag from housing onorgan Chase, a bank, in a recent report about America.
During a typical global housing slump some countries have a torrid time. After the financial crisis Irish house prices fell by half. American house prices dropped by 20%. This time the underperformers are doing better. In San Francisco house prices are a tenth off their peak, as tech types have decamped to Florida and Texas. Yet they have stopped falling—and the average house will still set you back over $1.1m.
Nor do property woes appear to be throttling the wider economy. Weaker housing investment is dragging on economic growth, but the effect is small. In previous housing busts the number of builders declined sharply long before the rest of the labour market weakened. Yet today there is still red-hot demand for them. In South Korea construction employment has dropped slightly from its pandemic highs but now seems to be growing again. In America it is rising by 2.
The pandemic itself has played a role. In 2020-21 many households drastically cut back on consumption, leading to the accumulation of large “excess savings” worth many trillions of dollars. These savings have also cushioned families from higher rates. Analysis by Goldman Sachs suggests a positive correlation across countries between the stock of excess savings and resilience in house prices.
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