Lex专栏：中国楼市开始降温（双语）

　　No matter how hot they get, property markets tend to cool in the same ways. Attention starts to shift from year-on-year price changes to month-on-month comparisons. Transactions dry up. The shares of listed developers suffer, as they offer incentives to shift inventory. Analysts start to talk about “froth” being “skimmed.” All this is happening now in China, where prices in more than half of the 70 biggest cities were flat, or fell, between July and August.

　　不管一个地方的房地产市场曾有多热，他们最终都倾向于以相同方式降温。市场注意力开始从年度价格变化，转移至月度价格变化。交易量趋向枯竭。上市房地产开发商通过促销来出售库存，牵连其股价遭受打击。分析人士开始谈论市场的“去泡沫”化。所有这一切目前正在中国发生，全国70个最大的城市中，有半数以上城市在今年7月至8月期间房产价格下降或持平。

　　There are few reasons to suspect a crash is imminent. Households are generally not buying properties they cannot afford with money they do not have – the proximate cause of the collapse in the US and elsewhere. There are still very powerful incentives for buyers to load up on property: low interest rates on both deposits and loans, and a very shortlist of alternative outlets for savings. Local governments, which depended on land sales for about a third of their revenues last year, also have a strong interest in keeping prices high. Only two cities responded to the government’s July call for added restrictions on housing purchases, for example.

　　没有什么理由推测中国楼市即将崩盘。中国的家庭一般不会用自己还没有的钱，去购买自己无法承担的物业——而这是美国和其他国家出现房地产危机的直接原因。市场仍为购房者置业提供着强大动力：贷款和存款的利率都比较低，储蓄投资的其它渠道也相当有限。地方政府也有强大利益保持房价高企，去年其财政收入的大约三分之一都依赖土地交易。例如，7月份只有两个城市响应了政府要求收紧购房限制的呼吁。

　　Still, some sense of a cycle would be welcome. In the 17 years since the State Council abolished the allocation system of housing, allowing apartments to become privately-traded commodities, the market has never experienced anything close to a slump. That has led investors to believe that prices can only go one way. Demonstrating otherwise is fraught with risk, given that the property sector accounts for more than a quarter of final domestic demand in China, according to UBS estimates. Yet policymakers should take their cue from the 76 per cent of respondents to a central bank survey last week who complained that prices were too high – the highest level since real estate data were first included in the quarterly poll in 2009. If social stability is policymakers’ overarching aim – and it is – a slowdown is more than just desirable.

　　但话说回来，有一点周期的感觉将是可喜的。自中国国务院取消住房分配制度、允许公寓房成为私人交易商品的17年以来，中国楼市从来没有经历过任何大幅下滑。这让投资者相信房价只会朝着一个方向走。展示其它情形是充满风险的，据瑞银(UBS)估计，中国房地产行业占国内最终需求逾四分之一。尽管如此，政策制定者仍应从央行上周一份调查结果得到一些启发，76%的受访者抱怨房价过高——这是该民意调查2009年首次将房地产数据纳入问卷以来，人数比例最高的一次。如果说维持社会稳定是政策制定者的首要目标——事实也正是如此——那么楼市减速就不仅仅只是可取而已。