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Hong Kong Housing Bubble Suffers Spectacular Collapse: Sales Plunge Most On Record, Prices Crash
Hong Kong Housing Bubble Suffers Spectacular Collapse: Sales Plunge Most On Record, Prices Crash
Little did we know just how bad it would get just two months later.
As we said in our last check on the HK housing market, the weakness was sharp and widespread, with sales of new homes declining to a three-month low. In the primary residential market, the number of home sales also declined 26.4 per cent month on month to 1,023 last month, according to Centaline. The total value reached HK$8.97 billion, down 15.4 per cent from October’s HK$10.6 billion.
Latly we presented some comments from local analysts, who perhaps unwilling to accept the reality, remained optimistic:
“The fall in transaction volume and value for new home sales due to an absence of big project launches early last month,” said Derek Chan, head of research at Ricacorp Properties. He expects to see an obvious increase in sales of new homes this month given more major projects are due to be offered for pre-sale. Most of new projects launches will focus in the western New Territories ,” he said.
We concluded in early December that while “optimism is good… if and when this global housing luxury weakness mostly due to the withdrawal of the Chinese marginal “hot money” buyer crosses back into the Chinese border, all bets about the so-called tepid Chinese economic will be off, and since it will be just the moment when China resumes cutting rates, devaluaing its currency and maybe even officially (as opposed to the ongoing unofficial iterations) launching QE, that will be when one should buy commodities, as China does everything in its power to keep the house of $30 trillion in cards from toppling and sending a deflationary tsunami around the entire world.”
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The Big Short is a Great Movie, But…
The Big Short is a Great Movie, But…
Paris — Michael Lewis is the chronicler of Wall Street. He takes the complexity behind which the inhabitants of the financial world hide and weaves a tale that is both understandable and compelling. Starting with the classic “Liars Poker” (1989), Lewis has produced a number of books about the financial markets including “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt” (2014) and “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” (2010). Working with director Adam McKay and some great actors and screen writers, Lewis has managed to produce what is perhaps the most accessible and relevant treatment of the mortgage boom and financial bust of the 2000s, and the subsequent 2008 financial crisis.
The beauty of “The Big Short,” both as a movie and a book, is that it provides sufficient detail to inform the general audience about events and issues that are not part of everyday life. Wall Street is a secretive place, but “The Big Short” manages to convey enough of the details to make the story credible as a journalistic effort, yet also enormously entertaining. Lewis does this with two essential ingredients of any film: a simple story and compelling characters.
Images of greed and stupidity are presented like Italian frescos in “The Big Short,” pictures that are memorable and thought provoking. Indeed, what many people know and remember years from now about the 2008 financial crisis will be shaped by creative efforts such as “The Big Short” for the simple reason that Lewis has simplified the description into a manageable portion. Unlike hedge fund manager Michael Burry (played by Christian Bale), most people lack the patience and expertise to sift through and understand reams of financial data.
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