Perhaps the Federal Reserve has something to learn from the central bank of New Zealand about how to manage a mortgage market. Unlike the Fed, which has been sharply criticized for having failed to keep the U.S. housing bubble from expanding, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is sounding the alarm over rising housing prices and imposing limits on mortgages.
Risks associated with excessive increases in house prices, and the potential that the bubble might burst, have become a major threat to the country’s financial system, the Reserve Bankwarns.
The New Zealand housing market is indeed heating up. Over the past year, house prices in Auckland have risen 17 percent, and in Christchurch, they’re up 8 percent. Those two markets account for half of home sales across the country.
Relative to income, New Zealand housing prices are now more than 20 percent above their historical average. International organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development share the Reserve Bank’s concerns that real estate may be overvalued.
So what is the central bank in New Zealand doing about it? In October, it put a limit on high loan-to-value mortgages. Each bank must see that no more than 10 percent of its new mortgages finance more than 80 percent of a house’s value. Before the limit took effect, such mortgages had reached 30 percent of new originations.
Such limits on high loan-to-value mortgages are becoming more common internationally; Canada, Israel, Singapore and Sweden are among the countries using them. And they have been found effective “in containing exuberant mortgage loan growth, speculative real estate transactions, and house price accelerations,” according a June 2013 IMF review of studies. During downswings, the review found, such measures can reduce“fire-sale dynamics” and loan losses.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-18/new-zealand-stops-a-housing-bubble.html
No comments:
Post a Comment