전 세계 부동산 가격 상승, 그 원인과 앞으로의 전망<br /><br />Our next story is the surge in house prices not just here in South Korea, by worldwide.<br />Joining us by phone is Lee Kyung-min of The Korea Times.<br />Kyungmin, what do you have for us.<br />House prices tend to fall as a wider economic downturn looms.<br />But this year, property valuations have kept on rising in many countries despite the deep global recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic.<br />House price growth has accelerated to an annual pace of almost 4 percent among the OECD club of rich countries this year, with even faster rises in Europe and the U.S.<br />In the U.S., falling mortgage rates and higher state benefits shielded the housing market from the pandemic, as prices rose by an annual rate of almost 5 percent in the second quarter.<br />There were even sharper price rises in much of Europe, notably Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Poland.<br />What is the driving force behind the price surge?<br />The surge in price is fueled by the vast stimulus packages from governments and central banks put in place to support struggling companies.<br />The measures largely allowed many workers to keep earning and kept borrowing costs near record lows.<br />For example, in Germany's case, some banks are offering to lend 100 percent of the purchase price.<br />This, together with 10-year mortgages at rates as low as 0.6 percent, is fueling the property market.<br />Regarding this, Germany's central bank has expressed concerns, saying in a recent report that apartments in the country's biggest cities were 30 percent overvalued compared with the long-term ratio of prices to rents. However, it added that this reflected rising land prices rather than any "destabilizing, speculative demand motives."<br />The warning came as the volume of land sold each year in larger cities there has fallen by a third since 2012, whereas prices have more than doubled.<br />This could be highly worrisome. What do the experts say?<br />They mostly agree that there are risks ahead.<br />But they also say the influx of capital is attributable to investment funds being reallocated from financial markets to the housing market.<br />Of note is that banks are starting to rein in their mortgage lending, an indication that they are increasingly becoming fretful about risk perceptions related to the general economic outlook.<br />They mean that a lack of appetite for lending or tighter credit standards due to worries about borrowers' creditworthiness may challenge the degree to which the monetary easing affects the real economy.<br />Indeed, concerns are that the pandemic could leave eurozone lenders with an extra €1.4tn of bad loans, well above the levels of the region's 2012 debt crisis.<br />If that worst-case scenario happens, analysts predict that house prices could plunge, triggered by a sudden tightening of the ultra-loose mortgage market.<br />Thank you for your reporting Kyung-min.<br />
