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1、 From The Economist Home ownership Shelter, or burden?The social benefits of home ownership look more modest than they did and the economic costs much higherIn a scene from the film “Its a Wonderful Life”, a happy couple is about to enter their new home. Jimmy Stewart, whose firm has sold them the m

2、ortgage, reflects that there is “a fundamental urgefor a man to have his own roof, walls and fireplace.” He offers them bread, salt and wine so “joy and prosperity may reign for ever”. That embodies the Anglo-Saxon worlds attitude to home ownership. Owning your own roof, walls and fireplace, it is t

3、hought, is good for householders because it helps them accumulate wealth. It is good for the economy because it encourages people to save. And it is good for society because homeowners invest more in their neighbourhoods, engage more in civic activities and encourage their children to do better at s

4、chool than do renters. Home ownership, in short, benefits everyonenot just the homeownerand the more there is of it, the better. Which is why it is usually encouraged by the government. In America, Ireland and Spain, homeowners can deduct mortgage-interest payments from taxable income.Yet the worldw

5、ide crash was bound up in this supposed miracle of social policy. The disaster began with defaults on American subprime mortgages, a financial instrument designed to spread home ownership among the poor. It gathered pace after the failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored ente

6、rprises that provide cheap home loans. As a result, the home-ownership rate in America has fallen for four years, the first time that has happened in a quarter of a century. In 2008, 2.3m families lost their homes or faced foreclosuredouble the average before the crisisreducing the home-ownership ra

7、te from 69% in 2004 to 67.5% at the end of 2008. The number of owner-occupied dwellings also slipped in Britain in 2007-08 for the first time since the 1950s.Subsidised castles So attempts to expand home ownership have contributed to the wider economic crisis without succeeding in their own terms. H

8、ow does that affect the arguments for supporting home ownership? Should it still be deemed a public good?No, say several economists and commentators. “Given the way US policy favours owning over renting,” writes Paul Krugman, 2008s Nobel laureate in economics, “you can make a good case that America

9、already has too many homeowners.” Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard University, talks about “the madness of encouraging Americans to bet everything on housing”.So far, policymakers are unmoved. In mid-February Barack Obama proposed a $275 billion plan to support Americas housing market. Outsid

10、e the Anglo-Saxon world Nicolas Sarkozy, who campaigned for the presidency to turn France into a property-owning democracy, has expanded zero-interest housing loans for the poor. The main economic argument for home ownership is that, in the words of Thomas Shapiro of Brandeis University, “it is by f

11、ar the single most important way families accumulate wealth”. This argument now looks as weak as house prices.In Britain prices have fallen 21% since their peak in October 2007. Prices in America have fallen more slowly but further, down 30% since their peak in mid-2006 (see chart 1). This has reduc

12、ed the total value of the countrys housing stock from over $22 trillion in 2007 to $19 trillion at the end of 2008. In the past few weeks, housing markets on both sides of the Atlantic have seen signs of life, but there is every chance that prices have further to fall before they finally reach their

13、 low.The collapse in house prices matters most directly to two overlapping groups: those who bought property at the peak of the market and now face “negative equity”; and those (in America) who took out subprime mortgages. Roughly 10m Americans are in negative equityie, the cost of their mortgage ex

14、ceeds the value of their home. In Britain about 3% of households are in negative equity. For homeowners, negative equity makes houses more like a trap than a piggy bank. Those who cannot meet their payments lose their house, their savings and (in America, usually) their credit rating for seven years

15、.The other area of concentrated distress is subprime mortgages, which increased their share of the American mortgage market from 7% in 2001 to over 20% in 2006. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the delinquency rate was 22% in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared with only 5% for prime

16、loans. Many people have concluded that, in Mr Krugmans words, “home ownership isnt for everyone.” However, a study by the Centre for Community Capital, part of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, casts some doubt on that conclusion. It compared a group of people who took out subprime loan

17、s with a group of borrowers from the Community Advantage Programme (CAP), a government-backed scheme that lends to the sort of people who might have had a subprime mortgage. The default rate for CAP borrowers was only a quarter what it was for subprime mortgage holders, even though the incomes and b

18、ackgrounds of borrowers were similar. Since the real problem lay partly in the mortgages, rather than the borrowers, this suggests the subprime crisis was a financial-market mess, as well as a housing one.Does that also imply that home ownership has the economic benefits that its proponents claim? T

19、wo pieces of evidence seem to support such a view. The first is that housing has fared better in the crisis than other assets. Share prices are around 50% below their peaks in many countries, so compared with shareowners, homeowners have not done badly. However, home ownership in a downturn has one

20、big disadvantage: most people buy shares outright but homes on margin (ie, they put down a small stake, if anything). If share prices fall by 10%, you lose 10%; if house prices fall by 10%, you may lose your entire savings. The value of American homeowners equity in their own houses has slumped from

21、 a peak of $12.5 trillion in 2005 to just $8.5 trillion at the end of 2008. This undermines one claim that homeowning is economically beneficial. The other piece of evidence for home ownerships benefits is that the house-price fall has so far spared most existing homeowners from absolute losses. In

22、America, for example, house prices have fallen back only to where they were in 2004. There were roughly 29m house sales in the United States between 2004 and 2007, compared with 115m households, and anyone who bought before then is probably sitting on a nominal profit. However, as Harvard University

23、s Martin Feldstein points out, if house prices rise, people feel richer and borrow and spend more. If they feel poorer, they may cut back even if the price of their house has not fallen below what they paid for it.Subsidies to home ownership have thus increased economic volatility. They boosted cons

24、umption, as homeowners used their houses as collateral to finance consumption or investment. In America mortgage-equity withdrawals reached $9 trillion between 1997 and 2006equal to more than 90% of disposable income in 2006. This gave homeowners more to spend in the good times but less in bad ones.

25、 In Britain home-equity withdrawals added the equivalent of 3% of post-tax income to households in the fourth quarter of 2007 but subtracted 3% a year later. So changes to house prices aggravate the economic cycle. Recent research by the IMF finds that a quarter of the 100-odd recessions since 1960

26、have been associated with house-price busts and that these contractions “are deeper and last longer than other recessions do”.Subsidies to home ownership have also weakened financial services. They encouraged more people to buy houses (which was the point), but, logically enough, also encouraged len

27、ders to take greater risks with housing. This was fine while house prices were rising, but the fall exposed how vulnerable banks balance sheets had become.Moreover, if public policy aims to create wealth, there are other ways of doing it. People could invest their savings in the stockmarket and rent

28、 their homes, for example. Had they done so in the past two years, they would have done worse than homeowners. But for three decades before that, equity prices easily outstripped property prices (see chart 2), so in the long run equities have been a better bet than houses. (Admittedly, this strips o

29、ut the effects of share dividends and imputed rents, which favour property.) Housing suffers from two further weaknesses as an investment. It sucks up disproportionately large amounts of money, falling foul of the idea that investors should diversify: in America the equity tied up in houses accounts

30、 for 45% of the net worth of the average householder. And it is illiquid. If you need to raise money, you cannot sell a room or two, whereas you can always sell a few shares. It is hard to argue houses are the best asset for building wealth. “Perhaps the most compelling argument for housing as a mea

31、ns of wealth accumulation”, argues Richard Green of the University of Southern California, “is that it gives households a default mechanism for savings.” Because people have to pay off a mortgage, they increase their home equity and save more than they otherwise would. This is indeed a strong argume

32、nt: social-science research finds that people save more if they do so automatically rather than having to choose to set something aside every month. Yet there are other ways to create “default savings”, such as companies offering automatic deductions to retirement plans. In any case, some of the fin

33、ancial snake oil peddled at the height of the housing bubble was bad for saving. Subprime, interest-only and other kinds of mortgage instruments allowed people to buy their homes without a down-payment and without building up equity. “Negative amortisation” (neg-am) mortgages even let people pay onl

34、y part of their interest each month and to add the rest to the principal, increasing their debt, not their savings. Home-equity loans had the same effect.Where the heart isThe main arguments for home ownership, though, are not primarily economic, but social. Home ownership, argue those who want to e

35、xpand it, benefits society because it encourages stable, more law-abiding communities; it makes people more likely to vote in local elections and join clubs; and it benefits future generations because, it turns out, the children of homeowners do better at school and have fewer behavioural problems t

36、han children of renters.On the face of it, the evidence for these claims is strong. In America homeowners are less likely to move than renters, so areas with a lot of homeowners are more stable. According to the 2007 American Housing Survey, homeowners stay where they are for about nine years wherea

37、s renters move every two. More stable neighbourhoods are more law-abiding. According to a study of New York City, the home-ownership rate was second only to income as an explanation for different crime rates. The link between ownership and political participation is stronger still. In America in the

38、 early 1990s, 69% of homeowners voted, compared with only 44% of renters. Homeowners are more likely to know who their representatives are; more likely to support local causes or parent-teacher associations and (this being America) more likely to go to church.Perhaps the most surprising link is betw

39、een ownership and children. One study in America found that, in 2000, the mathematics scores of the children of homeowners were 9% higher than those of renters children; reading levels were 7% higher. This had nothing to do with income: the research controlled for that. In another study homeowners c

40、hildren were 25% more likely to graduate from high school and more than twice as likely to go to university. Their teenage daughters were also less likely to become pregnant.These studies, though, are not the last word. They find a link between childrens education and homeowning. But is this because

41、, as some suggest, home ownership requires parents to possess managerial or financial skills that they pass on to their children? Or is it because the people with those skills help their children at school and also buy houses? No one knows.Nor is it certain that owners always take better care of the

42、ir neighbourhoods than renters do. Some studies claim that the effect in fact depends on a few public-spirited people willing to set an example. Renters can be public-spirited too. In America areas with lots of renters tend to be transient because the typical rental period is short. In Germany, thou

43、gh, people rent for years. Stable neighbourhoods and widespread home ownership can go together but do not need to. As Bill Rohe of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill puts it, “evidence regarding the societal benefits of home ownership is highly conjectural.”Still, on balance, home ownersh

44、ip gives people a stake in the state of their surroundings. Thriving streets increase the value of properties, giving owners incentives to improve them further. Renters get no such benefit; they may even have to pay more if the neighbourhood improves. Whether stability is such a good thing in a down

45、turn, though, is a different matter. A decade ago Andrew Oswald of Warwick University argued that owning your own home makes you more reluctant to move, so labour markets tend to become more rigid as home ownership increases. He claimed that increases in the level of home ownership (though not neces

46、sarily the level itself) are associated with rises in unemployment. Ireland, Greece and Spain all saw large increases in home ownership in the 1980s and 1990s, and had relatively high unemployment. America and Switzerland had stable ownership rates, and escaped the long-term rise in joblessness.His

47、argument remains controversial. Critics point out that many things other than home ownership might prevent people from moving (childrens schools, friends and so on). Anyway, liquid housing markets should make it possible for people to move, if they want to. It is also possible that, even if people w

48、ere trapped in distressed areas, jobs should move there to take advantage of the willingness of homeowners to accept lower wages.All that said, Mr Oswalds arguments seem especially powerful at the moment. The recession in America is bearing down most heavily on two groups of states: Florida, Califor

49、nia and Nevada, which had the largest house-building booms in the 1990s; and Michigan, New Hampshire, Delaware, West Virginia and Mississippi, which have the highest home-ownership rates. People are not, in fact, moving as frequently as they used to: the share of those moving house in 2007-0811.9% o

50、f the populationwas the lowest since records began. So labour markets look less flexible than they were. Negative equity exacerbates immobility because people are reluctant to move if it means selling at a loss. Researchers at the Wharton School reckon that people in negative equity are only half as

51、 likely to move as those who are not. In all these ways, high home ownership may prolong and deepen a recession.The problem remains of how to weigh the economic costs against the social benefits of home ownership. There can be no easy judgment about this but the recent rise and fall of house prices

52、suggests both that the costs are greater and the benefits smaller than once thought.If owning were such a boon, you would expect neighbourhoods with lots of owners to have done better than those with lots of renters during the boom years. That does not seem to have happenedWhat has happened, though,

53、 is that above a certain level, foreclosures have done a lot of damage during the bad years. Recent studies of New York and Cleveland find that, if lenders foreclose on 3-4% of properties in an area, local prices fall even faster and further than average. Rows of For Sale signs almost certainly have

54、 the same effect in Britain. In other words, ownership can sometimes be worse for a neighbourhood than renting.A shelterfor your money Lastly, and perversely, the decade of obsession with expanding home ownership may actually have reduced neighbourhood stability. Nicolas Retsinas, the director of th

55、e Joint Centre for Housing Studies at Harvard University, suggests that, until the crash in 2008, Americans were coming to see their homes as financial investments rather than as places to live. That is true in other countries. Neg-am mortgages in America and buy-to-rent arrangements in Britain were

56、 based on the assumption that houses were primarily investments. As a result, people seem to have started to buy and sell homes more frequently. Between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, the number of new houses sold almost doubled in America, from just over 600,000 to over 1.2m in 2006.Perhaps that made

57、 labour markets more mobile, but it was certainly not what policymakers were aiming for when they set out to increase home ownership. Their efforts in the past few years seem to have weakened, though not destroyed, the best arguments for treating home ownership as something to be encouraged: that it

58、 increases peoples savings and creates better neighbourhoods for everyone. But perhaps you should not be surprised by that. As Adam Smith wrote in “The Wealth of Nations” two centuries ago, “a dwelling-house, as such, contributes nothing to the revenue of its inhabitants.”自有住房-是避難營還是重?fù)?dān)？自有住房帶來的社會利益中看

59、不中用，而且經(jīng)濟(jì)成本高昂。電影美妙生活中有一個這樣的場景：一對幸福的夫婦即將搬進(jìn)新家。吉米斯圖爾特所在的公司已向他們出售了抵押借款，他表示“對一個要擁有自己房產(chǎn)的男人而言.，這是基本的需要?！奔诪樗麄兲峁┝嘶旧钏枨?，因此“快樂、繁榮或會永存”。這體現(xiàn)了盎格魯撒克遜時期對自有住宅的看法。認(rèn)為，擁有了自己的房子對房主有利，因其有助于財富積累；對經(jīng)濟(jì)有利，因其鼓勵人們儲蓄；對社會有利，因相較于租房者，屋主會更多地投資于所在地區(qū)，更多地參與公民活動，鼓勵子女在校表現(xiàn)良好。簡而言之，自有住房使每個人受益不僅僅是房主而且越多的人擁有住宅，益處越大。這就是其常常受政府鼓勵的原因。在美國、愛爾蘭和西班

60、牙，房主可將所支付的抵押借款利息從其須納稅的收入中扣除。然而全世界范圍內(nèi)的經(jīng)濟(jì)下行都熱衷于這一社會政策所帶來的假像奇觀。災(zāi)難始于美國次級抵押借款違約，這是為擴(kuò)大窮人擁有自有住宅而設(shè)計的金融工具。在提供低利率房貸的美國兩大國有企業(yè)房利美和房地美破產(chǎn)后，違約加速。結(jié)果，美國自有住宅率連續(xù)四年下跌，為25年來首次。2008年，有230萬家庭失去住宅或面臨止贖權(quán)是危機(jī)前均值的兩倍自有住宅率由2004年的69%降至2008年底的67.5%。英國2007至2008年間自有住房數(shù)量亦下滑，為上世紀(jì)50年代來首次。補(bǔ)貼城堡此番擴(kuò)大自有住宅的努力卻助推了經(jīng)濟(jì)危機(jī)進(jìn)一步加深，而未實現(xiàn)其初衷。這如何影響支持自有住宅

61、的論點？還應(yīng)認(rèn)為它對公眾有利？幾名經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家和評論家對此持否定態(tài)度。2008年諾貝爾經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)獎得主保羅克魯格曼寫道“鑒于美國政策相較租賃更傾向于支持自有住宅，你可以看到這樣的事實：美國自有住房者泛濫?！惫鸫髮W(xué)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家愛德華格萊澤認(rèn)為“鼓勵美國人將一切身家都下注在住房上是瘋狂的?！逼駷橹?，決策者還無動于衷。貝拉克奧巴馬二月中旬提出一個2.75億美元支持美國住房市場的計劃。盎格魯-撒克遜世界外的尼古拉薩科奇在競選總統(tǒng)時就要把法國轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)樨敭a(chǎn)所有民主制國家，他已對窮人展開了零利率住房貸款。對自有住宅的主要經(jīng)濟(jì)論點，用布蘭德斯大學(xué)托馬斯夏皮羅的話說就是“目前為止唯一最重要的家庭財富積累方式”?，F(xiàn)在看來這

62、個論點跟房價一樣脆弱不堪。 英國房價自其2007年10月峰值已下挫21%。美國房價跌速雖緩但跌幅更甚，自其2006年年中峰值下挫了30%。這致使美國住宅總值由2007年的22萬億美元縮水至2008年末的19萬億。過去幾周來，大西洋兩岸的房地產(chǎn)市場已現(xiàn)曙光，但房價在最終觸底前隨時有進(jìn)一步走跌的可能。房價暴跌最直接關(guān)系到的是兩個重疊群組：那些在市場高點購入房產(chǎn)，目前面臨“負(fù)資產(chǎn)”的人；還有那些辦理了次級抵押借款的人（在美國）。大約有1000萬美國人處于“負(fù)資產(chǎn)”狀態(tài)，即其抵押借款成本超過了房屋價值。英國約有3%的家庭處于這種狀態(tài)。對處于“負(fù)資產(chǎn)”狀態(tài)的房主來說，住房相較儲錢罐更似羅網(wǎng)。那些支付不出

63、錢的人到頭來沒了房子、存款還有（通常發(fā)生在美國）他們七年內(nèi)的信用評級。另一損失慘重的就是次級抵押貸款領(lǐng)域，其占美國抵押信貸市場的份額由2001年的7%升至2006年的20%以上。據(jù)美國抵押貸款銀行協(xié)會數(shù)據(jù)，2008年第四季度過期還款比率為22%，而普通房屋貸款僅為5%。許多人已總結(jié)出，用克魯格曼的話說就是“不是每個人都可有自有住房。”然而北卡羅來納大學(xué)查普希爾分校的社區(qū)資本中心所做的一項研究對該結(jié)論提出了質(zhì)疑。該研究對次級抵押借款人與從社區(qū)優(yōu)先計劃署借款的人加以比較，CAP是由政府支持、將錢借給那些本可辦理次級抵押借款的人。雖然借款人的收入與背景相似，但后者的違約率僅為前者的四分之一。由此可見

64、問題的部分真正原因是在于抵押借款，而非借款人，這意味著次貸危機(jī)是一種金融市場混亂及房地產(chǎn)市場的混亂。那還意味著自有住房還具有其支持者所宣稱的經(jīng)濟(jì)利益么？支持此觀點的論據(jù)有兩個：其一，相較其它資產(chǎn)，房地產(chǎn)在此次危機(jī)中表現(xiàn)良好。在許多國家，股價較其峰值約降50%，相較股票持有人，房主處境不算壞。然而，處于下滑趨勢的自有住房有一個很大的劣勢：絕大多數(shù)人可直接購買股票，而買房則要有保證金（即無論如何都要占用一小筆資金）。如果股票下跌10%，則損失10%；如果房價下滑10%，損失的則是全部存款。美國房主對其所擁有房產(chǎn)的產(chǎn)權(quán)凈值已由2005年峰值的12.5萬億美元暴跌至2008年末的8.5萬億美元。這也削

65、弱了自有住房存在經(jīng)濟(jì)利益的觀點。另一認(rèn)為自有住房有好處的論據(jù)則為：迄今為止房價下滑已使當(dāng)前大多數(shù)房主免遭絕對性損失。例如，美國房價僅跌回2004年水平。在2004至2007年間，房屋銷售量大約為2900萬套，而相比之下，在此之前就購房的1.15億家庭來說，大概可坐享一份名義利潤。然而，正如哈佛大學(xué)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)教授馬丁費爾德斯坦所指出的，當(dāng)房價上漲時，人們感覺比較富有，進(jìn)而會借更多，花更多。而當(dāng)他們感覺較窮時，即使他們的房價沒有跌至其購入價以下，他們也許會削減借貸和支出。對自有住房的補(bǔ)貼就是這樣加大經(jīng)濟(jì)波動度的。它們刺激了消費，因房主可將其房屋用作附屬擔(dān)保品以支持消費和投資。美國在1997至2006年間資產(chǎn)增值抵押借款額達(dá)9萬億美元相當(dāng)于2006年可支配收入的90%以上。這樣在經(jīng)濟(jì)繁榮時房主就有更多的錢可花，而在經(jīng)濟(jì)蕭條時就捉襟見肘。英國2007年第四季度資產(chǎn)增值抵押借款增值相當(dāng)于家庭稅后收入的3%，但一年后卻縮減了3%。因此房價的變動使經(jīng)濟(jì)周期惡化。國際貨幣基金組織的最新調(diào)查發(fā)現(xiàn)，自1960年以來的100多次衰退中有15%與房產(chǎn)泡沫有關(guān)，且縮水程度要比其它衰退嚴(yán)重而長久。對自有住房的補(bǔ)貼還削弱了金融服務(wù)業(yè)。他們鼓勵更多的人購房（這就是重點），而且在邏輯上足以鼓勵貸方為這些住宅承擔(dān)更大的風(fēng)險。房價上漲時此舉還好，但房價下跌時就