美国房市复苏的假象

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These discounts are a clever bit of financial engineering. John Burns, a property consultant, notes that prepaying 6% of a mortgage upfront, and obtaining lower rates for the rest of its life, works out as big a saving for buyers as cutting home prices by 16% but leaving them with higher rates. The obvious question is whether such discounts are sustainable.There are two potential snags. Homebuyers would struggle to resell their homes at the same price to buyers not benefiting from mortgage buydowns. As a result, Mr Burns thinks that appraisers may cut contracted home values, which would force sellers to lower prices. Second, buydowns fly in the face of what the Fed has been trying to do: tamping down on property purchases to bring demand and supply into better balance.

这些折扣是金融工程的一个巧妙之处。房地产顾问约翰-伯恩斯指出，预先支付6%的抵押贷款，并在余下的时间里获得较低的利率，对买家来说，这相当于将房价降低16%，但留给他们较高的利率。显而易见的问题是，这种折扣是否可以持续。有两个潜在的障碍。购房者将很难以同样的价格将他们的房子转卖给没有受益于抵押贷款减免的买家。因此，伯恩斯先生认为，评估师可能会削减签约的房屋价值，这将迫使卖家降低价格。其次，购买贷款与美联储一直以来的努力背道而驰：抑制房地产购买，使需求和供应达到更好的平衡。

consultant n.顾问 upfront adv.预付 work out 算出，结果是 sustainable adj.能维持的 snag　n.障碍 appraiser n.评估师 fly in the face of 违背 tamp down 抑制

Last year Jerome Powell, the Fed's chairman, spoke of the need for "a bit of a reset"in the property market. Mortgage payments on new homes now reach nearly 30% of average household income in America, almost double their average in the 2010s. A rise in incomes, a decline in mortgage rates or a decline in house prices would bring affordability back to pre-covid levels. All three have started to happen, but there is a long way to go.

去年，美联储主席杰罗姆-鲍威尔谈到需要对房地产市场进行"重新定位"。在美国，新房的抵押贷款支付现在达到了平均家庭收入的近30%，几乎是2010年代平均水平的两倍。收入的增加、抵押贷款利率的下降或房价的下跌将使可负担性恢复到Covid前的水平。这三种情况都已开始发生，但还有很长的路要走。

There is also a more inflexible part to the equation: the supply of housing. Homeowners who have locked in low rates are loth to move. There are just 1.1m existing homes on the market for resale, half the average since the late 1980s. Meanwhile, homebuilders are more prudent than they were two decades ago in the lead-up to the global financial crisis. When the covid buying mania got going, housebuilding ticked up but did not soar, since developers saw the boom as ephemeral. Then, when the market softened, they almost immediately scaled back their activity. Dhaval Joshi of bca Research notes that similar-sized declines in housing investment have almost always presaged recessions in the past. Robert Dietz of the National Association of Home Builders shares this concern: "You' ve never really had a time where there have been price declines and a significant decline in residential investment, and a recession has not happened."

等式中还有一个更不灵活的部分：住房的供应。锁定了低利率的房主不愿意搬家。市场上仅有110万套现有房屋可供转售，是1980年代末以来平均水平的一半。同时，与20年前全球金融危机爆发前相比，房屋建筑商们更加谨慎。当新冠大流行期间的购买狂热开始时，房屋建造量增加了，但并没有飙升，因为开发商认为繁荣是短暂的。然后，当市场疲软时，他们几乎立即缩减了他们的活动。bca Research的Dhaval Joshi指出，在过去，类似规模的住房投资下降几乎总是预示着经济衰退。全国住房建筑商协会的罗伯特-迪茨也有同样的担忧：”你从来没有真正遇到过价格下跌和住宅投资大幅下降而经济衰退没有发生的时候。”

equation n.等式 ephemeral adj.短暂的 prudent adj.谨慎的 presage v.预示 mania n.狂热

This runs counter to the hope in financial markets that America can steer clear of a downturn, andcounter to the hope in the property market that the worst is already behind it. Firms, economists and investors have learned to be wary of inflation head-fakes over the past two years: short-lived bouts of receding inflation that give way to a reassertion of price pressures. The housing recovery may also prove to be a head-fake, with the sector on a weaker footing than it appears andthe Fed compelled to keep rates higher for longer. A lot is riding on the spring selling season.

这与金融市场希望美国能避开经济衰退的想法背道而驰，也与房地产市场希望最坏的情况已经过去的想法背道而驰。公司、经济学家和投资者在过去两年中已经学会了对通货膨胀的假象保持警惕：短暂的通货膨胀消退，让位于价格压力的重新爆发。住房复苏也可能被证明是一种假象，该行业的基础比表面上要薄弱，而美联储不得不将利率维持在更高的水平。很多事情都取决于春季的销售季节。

run counter to 背道而驰 steer clear避开 wary adj.警惕的 head-fake 假象 recede　v.减弱，后退 reassertion n.重新发挥作用 compel v.强迫 ride on取决于