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文/Sean Miner（彼得森国际经济研究所研究员）
中国的房价大幅下跌，创10多年以来的最大跌幅。在过去的两个月中，70个主要城市里有69个出现房价下跌现象。3月份的房价同比（与去年3月份相比）下降4.35%，标志着房价已经连续6个月（从去年9月到今年3月）下跌。
然而，2013年3月，全国房价达到峰值11000元每平方米，如今，下降了不到5%。照此来看，相对于欧美房地产的大幅、长期调整来说，中国做得远远不够。有些时候，欧美的房价调整会超过30%。了解一下每平方米的房价，可以验证在比较房价同比增长率时，对房价趋势的测量是否一致。
从数量角度来看，自2009年下半年到2010年末，新建工程大量出现，住房的建筑面积随之大幅增加。之后，建筑面积便出现下滑，这表明住房建设已经明显放缓。从2013年年中到2014年2月，新屋开工率有所上升；在2014年年中住房竣工量也小幅上升。2013年3月到12月，新屋开工率有7个月出现了负增长，2014年年底，住房竣工量也只是以个位数的速度增长。
近来新屋开工率出现负增长，最近更是下跌25%。同时，住房竣工量也增速缓慢，说明很快住房竣工量也会出现负增长。从建筑面积来看，开工和建成面积的的比较更验证了这一趋势。现在，开工面积要比建成面积多出大约58亿平方米，去年的建成面积为15亿平方米。所以，照此推断，假定新屋开工量为0，建成面积要想与开工面积持平，大约需要4年的时间。这个数据说明了两点：没有大量预备金以保证继续建设，也不大可能出现大量废弃的住宅建设项目。
住宅地产和商业地产的投资明显减少验证了房价和房地产活动的疲软。实际上，尽管与去年同期相比办公建筑群的投资高出了15%，但其增速却减缓至5年来的最低水平。尽管仍处于增长阶段，但从去年开始，房地产投资的总增长水平就已经降至一半。除2012年出现短暂异常以外，2009年信贷泛滥之后，房地产投资的总增长率就持续下降。
中国政府非常善于实行有针对性的反周期政策来管控房地产市场。过去的政策，比如提升利率、严控银行贷款、提高第二套住房的首付款比例（有时候要求首付款比例不低于60%）和征收房产税，都是为了抑制借贷投资房地产的投机行为。
然而，在过去的6个月里，央行两次下调基准利率，同时下调了存款准备金率—银行必须保留的存款数量。央行采取的一些新措施鼓励银行支持房屋购买行为，例如提供住房补贴基金，降低购买第二套住房时的首付款比例，取消征收房屋交易税费。
目前，对房地产市场的限制仍旧非常严格，因此要中国政府还有很大的余地来放宽政策。近来，中国政府已经展现出要渐进式放松管控的趋势，以应对信贷扩张。然而，现在住房拥有量维持在很高的水平，人们对未来增长的预期降低，对住房还有多大的需求仍旧是个悬而未决的问题。
附英文全文：
This is part 1 in a series about China’s property market.
In this post we try to give a broad update of China’s property market the past several years. We take a look at housing prices versus quantity of floor space then we’ll wrap up with an overview of the housing policies Beijing implements in order to tame, and stimulate, the property market. One consistent observation is that the property market is in the midst of a correction, of which we have yet to see the bottom.
Real estate prices in China are in their steepest price declines more than 10 years. As we mentioned here, 69 of 70 major cities reported that their housing prices declined in the last two months. As shown in chart 1, year-over-year declines in the monthly report of housing prices fell 4.35 percent in March, marking 6 straight months of declines. However, the blue line shows that the price per square meter is down less than 5 percent from its peak of 11,000 RMB in March of 2013. This is still a long way off the sharp and protracted corrections seen in the US and parts of Europe, which were more than 30 percent in some cases. Looking at the price per square meter helps keep a reasonably consistent measure on the price trends of real estate, while the growth rate is compared to price in the same month of the previous year.
Chart 1: Growth rate of housing prices vs price per square meter of housing
Source: Thompson Datastream
From a quantity perspective, floor space for housing shows that activity has slowed down significantly since the massive amount of new construction from the 2nd half of 2009 through the end of 2010 (chart 2 below). Housing starts picked again from mid-2013 to February of 2014 and we saw a small uptick in completions in mid-2014. For all but 3 months from March 2013 to the end of the year there was negative growth in housing starts, and growth for completions was in the single digits for the end of 2014. With negative growth recently in housing starts, especially the latest drop of 25 percent, and already low growth in housing completions, it is likely that growth in housing completions will drop negative in the near term. This is reinforced by looking at absolute starts and completions of floor space. Currently, there are around 5.8 billion square meters more starts than completions, and the completions last year was 1.5 billion square meters, so all else equal, if there were zero housing starts, it looks like construction would last around 4 years. This data shows two things, that there isn’t a big buffer for continued construction, but also not a big chance there is a large amount of deserted construction projects for housing out there.
Chart 2: Housing starts and completions by floor space (% yoy, 3 month average)
Source: Bloomberg
Corroborating the price and activity weakness, investment in both residential and commercial property has slowed significantly. Indeed investment growth in office buildings was at its lowest in more than 5 years, although it is still growing at 15 percent over the same period the previous year. While this may still appear elevated, the overall rate of investment growth has halved since last year and has declined continuously (with a brief exception in 2012) since the credit deluge of 2009. There’s little reason to think that this trend is going to abate in the near term because of the slowing momentum in China’s economy, and indeed if the reports about stalled construction projects are true, growth rates are sure to slow closer to zero.
Chart 3: Growth of fixed asset investment, residential and office buildings
Source: Thompson Datastream
China’s government has been adept at enacting targeted counter-cyclical policies to control the housing market. In the past, policies were aimed at creating barriers for speculators to borrow money to invest in real estate, like pushing up interest rates, setting limits on bank lending, requiring large down payment (sometimes more than 60 percent) on purchases of second homes, and even introducing real estate taxes. More recent measures included China’s central bank lowering the baseline interest rate twice in the last six months, as well as lowering the reserve requirement ratio — the amount of deposits a bank must hold. Some newwr measures by the PBoC have encouraged banks to increase support for home purchases by tapping into a housing subsidy fund, lowering the down payment on second homes, and a removal of a tax on housing sales.
The constraints on the housing market are still very restrictive, thus the authorities retain substantial latitude to further loosen policy. They have of late demonstrated a propensity to use incremental loosening from the current high levels, as opposed to credit expansion. However, with home ownership at very high levels and expectations for future growth lowering, how much demand for housing remains is an open question.（完）
文章来源：摘编自彼得森国际经济研究所网站报告《Property Series Part 1: Trends in China’s Property Market》（本文仅代表作者观点） 本篇编辑：郦博文
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