中国房价飙升的同时美国等各个国家的房价也在快速上涨，房市热潮有地域区别，本质却都是一样的，借鉴诺奖得主对美国房市的过去和未来，思考全球经济与我国房地产经济的未来。
The Housing Boom Is Already Gigantic. How Long Can It Last?
房市繁荣已经无比庞大。它还能持续多久？
By Robert J. Shiller
作者 Rober J. Shiller
Dec.7, 2018
写于2018年12月7日
翻译者：恰恰
We are, once again, experiencing one of the greatest housing booms in United States history.
How long this will last and where it is heading next are impossible to know now.
But it is time to take notice: My data shows that this is the United States’ third biggest housing boom in the modern era.
在美国历史上，我们曾一度经历过无比巨大的房地产经济繁荣。
这种繁荣能持续多久？它会走向何处？都不得而知。
但，是时候注意了：我的数据显示，这是现代美国第三次房地产经济热潮。
Since February 2012, when the price declines associated with the last financial crisis ended, prices for existing homes in the United States have been rising steadily and enormously. According to the S&P/CoreLogic/Case-Shiller National Home Price Index (which I helped to create) as of September, the prices were 53 percent higher than they were at the bottom of the market in 2012.
That means, on average, a house that sold for, say, $200,000 in 2012 would bring over $300,000 in September.
自从2012年2月，由上次金融危机引起的价格下跌结束以后，美国现有房屋的价格就开始稳步且飞快地上涨。根据九月的标普/CoreLogic/Case-Shiller国家房屋价格指数（我帮助制作的），价格已经高出2012年底价的53% 。
这意味着，平均每所2012年售价20万美金的房子在九月份售价超过30万美金。
Even after factoring in Consumer Price Index inflation, real existing home prices were up almost 40 percent during that period. That is a substantial increase in less than seven years.
In fact, based on my data, it amounts to the third strongest national boom in real terms since the Consumer Price Index began in 1913, behind only the explosive run-up in prices that led to the great financial crisis of a decade ago, and one connected with World War II and the great postwar Baby Boom.
即使考虑到消费者价格指数的通货膨胀，在这期间实际现有房屋的价格也上涨了几乎40%。这是不到7年里的大幅上涨。事实上， 基于我的数据，自1913年消费者价格指数开始，这等同于全国第三次实体繁荣，仅次于十年前造成巨大金融危机的价格暴涨，和另一场关系到第二次世界大战及战后婴儿潮的价格上涨。
The No. 1 boom occurred from February 1997 to October 2006, when real prices of existing United States homes rose 74 percent. This was a period of intense speculative enthusiasm — for houses and for financial instruments based on mortgages as investments — and it was also a time of great regulatory complacency. The term “flipping houses” became popular then. People exploited the boom by buying homes and selling them only months later at a huge profit.
排名第一的繁荣发生在1997年2月到2006年10月， 期间美国现房的价格上涨了74%。这是一个投机热情高涨的时期，对于房子和基于抵押贷款做投资的金融工具，这也是严重的监管自满的时期。那时“房屋翻转”这个词变得流行。人们利用这轮繁荣购买房屋并在几个月后以巨额利润出售房屋。
That boom ended disastrously. Soaring valuations collapsed with a 35 percent drop in real prices for existing homes, ushering in the financial crisis that enveloped the world in 2008 and 2009.
The second greatest boom, from 1942 to 1947, had more benign consequences. Over this five-year interval, real prices of existing homes rose 60 percent.
这场繁荣以惨烈收尾。冲天的估值伴随着现房价格下跌35%崩塌， 并迎来笼罩在2008年到2009年的金融危机。1942年到1947年的第二大繁荣带来了更加良性的后果。在这五年间，现有房屋的实际价格上涨了60％。
Booms and busts are rooted in popular narratives with complex social-psychological roots. This boom centered on a war-induced housing shortage, an enormous increase in the number of new babies and families who would need housing after the war, and the 1944 G.I. Bill, which subsidized home-buying by veterans. Home prices did not fall significantly after this boom ended.
繁荣和萧条根植于具有复杂社会心理根源的流行叙事中。这场繁荣集中在战争导致的住房短缺，战后需要住房的新生婴儿和家庭数量大幅增加，以及1944年的G.I.比尔资助退伍军人购买房屋。
Today, signs of weakness in the housing market are being taken by some as a signal that the prices of single-family homes may fall soon, as they did sharply after 2006. The leading indicators, which include building permits and sales of both existing and new homes, have all been declining in recent months.
如今，一些人认为房屋市场疲软的迹象表明单户住宅价格可能很快下跌，因为他们在2006年之后大幅上涨。近几月，主要指标包括建筑许可和现有房屋和新房销售都在下降。
But with few examples of extreme booms, we cannot be sure what such indicators mean for the current market.
Low interest rates — imposed by the Federal Reserve and other central banks in reaction to the financial crisis — are the most popular culprit in the current boom. There is some apparent merit to this view, since these three biggest nationwide housing booms all included very low interest rates.
但由于几乎没有极端繁荣的例子，我们无法确定这些指标对当前市场意味着什么。
美联储和其他央行为应对金融危机降低利率是这场繁荣中最流行的罪魁祸首。这个观点有明显的优势，因为三大房市热潮都包含了非常低的利率。
But the market reaction to interest rates is hardly immediate or predictable. The housing market does not react as directly as you might expect to interest rate movements. Over the nearly seven years of the current boom, from February 2012 to the present, all major domestic interest rates have increased, not decreased. So, while interest rates have been low, they have moved the wrong way, yet the boom has continued.
但是市场对于利率的反应是不是即刻的或者可预测的。房屋市场不会像你预期的那样立刻对利率变动做出反应。从2012年2月到现在，当前繁荣的近7年，所有主要的国内利率都上涨了，而不是降低。 因此尽管利率是降低了，他们却找错了方向，因为这场繁荣还在继续。
Another explanation is simple economic growth. But, as a matter of history, prices of existing homes — as opposed to the supply of newly built homes — have generally not responded to economic growth. There was only a 20 percent increase in real prices of existing homes in the 50 years from 1950 to 2000 despite a sixfold increase in real G.D.P.
另一个解释是简单的经济增长。 但是纵观历史， 和新建房屋相反，现有房屋的价格通常对经济增长没有反应。 1950年到2000年这50年间，现有房屋无视GDP六倍的增长仅仅上涨了20%。
The simplest narrative being given for the current boom is just that the 2008-2009 financial crisis and the so-called Great Recession are over and home prices are returning to normal.
对当前繁荣的最简单的叙述是，2008-2009金融危机和所谓的大萧条结束，房价正在恢复正常。
But that explanation does not cut it either. In September they were 11 percent higher than at the 2006 peak in nominal terms, and almost as high in real terms. This is not a return to normal, but a market that appears to be rising to a record.
It is difficult to assess the contribution of President Trump to the current boom.
但是这种解释也无法立足。9月份挂出的房价比2006年的峰值高11%， 但是房屋的实际造价几乎一样。这不是恢复正常，市场明显在上涨到一个新的记录。
难以评估特朗普总统对这场热潮的贡献。
It is certainly less obvious than the role of President George W. Bush in the 1997-2006 boom. Mr. Bush extolled the benefits of “the ownership society” and in 2003 he signed the American Dream Downpayment Act, which subsidized home purchases. In his 2004 re-election bid he boldly asserted: “We want more people owning their own home.” This seems to have contributed to an atmosphere of high expectations for home price increases.
可以肯定的是没有乔治 W. 布什总统在1997-2006年的繁荣里扮演的角色明显。布什先生赞扬了“所有制社会”的好处，并在2003年签署了美国梦预付款法案，该法案补贴购房。在他2004年的连任竞选中，他大胆地宣称：“我们希望更多的人拥有自己的房屋。”这似乎促成了对房价上涨的高度期望。
The Trump administration’s attitude toward housing is less clear. President Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” has overtones of the “American dream.” But provisions of his Tax Reform and Jobs Act of 2017 were unfriendly to homeowners.
川普政府对于房市的态度并不明确。特朗普总统的口号“让美国再次伟大”再次宣扬了“美国梦”。但2017年的“税改和就业法”规定对房主并不友好。
Even without major further interest rate increases, there would seem to be a limit on how much the prices of existing homes can increase. After all, people must struggle to cover a range of living expenses, and builders are supplying fresh new offerings to compete with the existing houses on the market.
即使没有重大的进一步加息，现有房屋的价格增长似乎也是有限的。毕竟，人们必须努力支付一系列生活费用，建筑商也正在提供新房，以与市场上的现有房屋竞争。
Perhaps the home price increases are now a self-fulfilling prophesy. As John Maynard Keynes argued in his 1936 “General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,” people seem to have a “simple faith in the conventional basis of valuation.”
也许如今的房价上涨是一种自我实现的预言。正如约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯（John Maynard Keynes）在其1936年的“就业，利息和货币通论”中提出的那样，人们似乎对传统的估值依据有着“简单的信念”。
If the conventional basis is now that home prices are going up 5 percent a year, then sellers, who would otherwise have no idea what to ask for their houses, will just put a price based on this convention. And likewise buyers will not feel they are paying too much if they accept the convention. In the United States, we may believe that the process is all part of the “American dream.”
如果传统依据是房价每年上涨5％，那么卖家将只根据这个惯例定价，否则他不知道要多少。同样买家如果接受了这个定价也不会觉得太贵。在美国，我们可能认为这个过程就是“美国梦”的一部分。
It can’t go on forever, of course. But when it will end isn’t knowable. The data can’t tell us when prices will level off, or whether they will plunge catastrophically. All we do know is that prices have been roaring higher at a speed rarely seen in American history.
它不会永远持续下去。但是什么时候结束是不可知的。数据不能告诉我们什么时候价格会稳定，或者它是否会灾难式跳水。我们能知道的仅仅是房价已经以美国历史上罕见的速度一路高歌地上涨。
Robert J. Shiller is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale.
Robert J. Shiller 是耶鲁大学经济学斯特林教授。（斯特林教授是耶鲁大学教授的最高级别, 授予在其领域内顶尖水平的终身教授）
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