"Housing banks are social security systems that provide access to home financing for people with different incomes and housing needs. ”
Wenba Jiuling
The real estate market in 2024 is a bit big :
Guangzhou threw out the first room ticket; Shenzhen has started the transformation of urban villages involving 60% of the city's residents; The upgraded version of the special bond for shantytown reform - the issuance of a 350 billion yuan collateral supplementary loan (PSL); 100 billion yuan of housing rental group housing loans are on the way; The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development is even more "amazing", proposing that all localities can design their own real estate policy ...... according to local conditions
These policies are all related to one word: destocking.
According to statistics, in January 2024, the inventory of commercial housing in Baicheng will be as high as 50.2 billion square meters, much higher than the peak inventory of 40.7 billion square meters.
If the "destocking" in 2015 is to de-inventory through the price increase of the shed reform, then in 2024 it will face a more dilemma.
In this context, a voice that had been silent for a long time suddenly emerged:Establishment of the National Housing Bank.
Some time ago, Huang Qifan, the former mayor of Chongqing, mentioned at a forum in Sanya: **Establish a housing bank as soon as possibleTake out 50 trillion to 70 trillion yuanCentralise the purchase of vacant inventory houses and use this time window to build HDB flats or low-cost rental houses similar to Singapore.
At the same time, Ren Zeping's team also published an article titled "The Concept of Establishing a Housing Bank". After all, it is the "policy" to the "system" that is the foundation for the healthy development of China's real estate market.
So, what is the National Housing Bank?
As we know, there are three main types of housing finance systems in the world:
Housing mortgage system, provident fund system and housing savings system.
Residential mortgages are more commercial and capital-oriented, with income requirements for the borrower. The provident fund is mainly for urban residents with stable jobs, and it is compulsory. The housing savings system is a public welfare financing system that supports low-income or homeless people, mainly providing low-interest loans for low-income or homeless people to purchase commercial housing or affordable housing.
Some scholars refer to this housing savings system as a "housing bank". By nature, housing banks are social security systems that provide financing for people with different incomes and housing needs.
It can be said that housing banks, which can not only protect people's livelihoods, but also stimulate the purchase of houses, are a common housing finance system in developed economies.
Globally, there are three main models of housing banking.
The first type is the "two-room" model in the United States. "Two houses" refers to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two of the nation's largest home mortgage companies. The biggest feature of the "two-house" model is "subprime mortgage + ** bottom-up".
To put it simply, under the authorization of the United States, "two houses" can package high-quality housing mortgages into financial assets (such as bonds) and circulate them in the market, and then lend them after recovering the funds, which is called "ABS asset-**" in the market.
The advantage of this model is that there is a credit endorsement, and the liquidity of the mortgage is greatly improved. Due to the policy-based financial attributes, the "two-house" can provide mortgages for low-income groups and ethnic minorities. Of course, there are times when it "gets out of control", and it is the "subprime mortgage crisis" in 2007.
The second type is the Franco-German savings bank model. In addition to providing ultra-low-interest loans for depositors, the housing bank also has public welfare investments such as social housing and urban renewal projects, and the funds basically only flow between institutions and depositors, and are rarely interfered with by external capital.
For example, Schweibbihauer Bank, Germany's largest housing savings institution, has a mortgage interest rate of 215%, and the spread between deposits and loans has remained stable at 2% for a long time, which allows more than 1 in 3 German residents to participate in the project.
The third type is the Singapore** EPF model. In 1955, Singapore established a ** provident fund system, which was used for housing in 1968. Compared with the "voluntary" nature of the Franco-German savings model, it is characterized by "compulsion". The majority of the pool of funds formed by mandatory contributions by residents and their employers is used for the construction of affordable housing (HDB) flats and loans for home buyers.
HDB flats are only available to low- and middle-income earners, with 10% of the CPF going down and the remaining loan being repaid with CPF. Under the housing bank model of "Provident Fund System + HDB Flats", the housing ownership rate of Singapore citizens is as high as 90%, realizing "home ownership".
Although there is no housing bank in the strict sense of the word, a similar idea was proposed by industry scholars as early as 2009. Five years later, CDB set up a housing finance division to issue special residential finance bonds to support shantytown reform and urban infrastructure, which was seen as the first attempt by a housing bank.
In 2015, someone from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development wrote that "the conditions for the establishment of the National Housing Bank are basically ripe", which once sparked heated discussions. In the years that followed, there were occasional recommendations and supporting documents, but most of them were lost.
Whether it is the previous discussion or the current voice, most of them are aimed at the current housing provident fund system, and this system is based on Singapore's ** provident fund system. Since the pilot project in Shanghai in 1991, the housing provident fund has existed in China for nearly 40 years.
In the eyes of the industry, it is feasible to transform the existing housing provident fund system into a housing bank, at least in terms of funds - the current provident fund stock has exceeded 9 trillion yuan.
However, there are still at least four questions to be discussed and resolved about whether there are more positives or negatives for this "new species".
First, what are the shortcomings of the existing housing provident fund system? What are the short-term positives of the transition to a housing bank?
Second, will the housing banking system lead to a certain extent the commercial housing, especially the commercial housing built under the high turnover of the real estate industry after 2015, and further, will there be a turning point in the process of China's real estate market?
Third, there is the issue of money. Funding for the formation of a housing bank**? How will the pool of up to 70 trillion yuan be replenished?
Fourth, is it possible for the models or experiences of developed countries, such as the assetization of the "not very good" reputation, to be integrated into the reform of the National Housing Bank with Chinese characteristics?
The establishment of the National Housing Bank is a pro or con, and the minibus invited four big leaders in real estate & macroeconomics, let's take a look at their views.
The National Housing Bank is a non-profit financial institution with both market operation mechanism and security attributes, which is inclusive and aims to provide the vast majority of middle-income people with housing loans at the same low interest rate as the provident fund.
But what are the problems with the existing provident fund system? For example, there is a "silo phenomenon", and the national provident fund cannot be operated in a unified manner. Like the deposit funds of the Shenzhen Provident Fund Management Center, it has nothing to do with Shanghai. Another example is that the inclusiveness is extremely low, and the annual loan rate of the provident fund in 2021 is only 189%, to put it bluntly, your money is used by a small number of people.
So if the provident fund system needs to be reformed deeply, the National Housing Bank is the way forward.
However, the housing bank cannot be like the current provident fund system without market-oriented financial means, otherwise it is a source of water, and financial investment alone cannot support such a huge demand for inclusive housing loans, so it is a challenge in terms of capital.
The "two-room" system in the United States is actually a very good reference directionAlthough it led to the subprime mortgage crisis, it was not the fault of the system itself, but the over-financialization and the loss of regulation. The system is good, and we should not choke on food, but should learn from it.
In addition, whether we should learn from the "Singapore experience" and explore the "** CPF + HDB flat" model remains to be considered. Because Singapore is a city-state, it is likely to become a backward model in China.
The establishment of a housing bank has a certain practical significance, especially in the context of the new cycle towards a dual-track system, through the housing bank can play a role in digesting the inventory of commercial housing and solving the housing problem of low- and middle-income residents.
Singapore itself is also a dual-track market, and HDB insurance covers a wide range of people, but commercial housing is still needed for a better living environment or a larger area. Commercial housing itself is market-oriented, and housing prices are significantly higher than HDB flats.
In the future, the dual-track housing system in Chinese mainland will return to the commodity attribute of commercial housing, that is, marketization, and remove the administrative restrictions on commercial housing, such as purchase restrictions and loan restrictions. Due to the large geographical area of China and the differences in income between regions, the differentiation of commercial housing in different regions will be more obvious, which will be quite different from Singapore's commercial housing.
Therefore, from the perspective of future trends, under the housing banking system,Commercial housing is not necessarily, it is likely to be the differentiation of affordable housing and commercial housing.
To resolve the real estate inventory, it is by "encouraging commercial banks to provide preferential loan interest rates" or by encouraging real estate enterprises to "appropriately reduce commercial housing".
Obviously, commercial banks and real estate enterprises are both market-oriented entities, and they cannot completely look at the face of the policy. Looking at the experience of other countries in solving the housing problem, what China lacks most at present is the national housing finance system.
The housing bank can not only reduce the cost of housing financing, support the reasonable demand of ordinary people to buy houses, but also resolve the current real estate inventory.
The National Housing Bank can be rebuilt on the basis of the provident fund center, and the original institutions, personnel and funds can be seamlessly connected.
At present, there is an excess provision of 50 billion yuan in the national housing provident fund loan risk reserve, which can be directly converted into the registered capital of the National Housing Bank. In the past, some funds invested in infrastructure, affordable housing and other fields can be used, such as PSL, special bonds, reloans, etc.
After that, it can operate according to the standards and models of financial institutions, and these funds can enter the bond market completely, and can also be appropriately allocated.
On the one hand, the housing banking business draws on overseas experience to provide low-interest loans.
How do you determine if a loan is eligible? Buyers can be divided into basic housing credit and housing investment credit through the criteria of the number of ordinary housing units, the per capita housing area of the family, and the per capita housing amount of the family, and the preferential interest rate for the former; The latter is placed under the management of commercial banks.
On the other hand, the Housing Bank acquires land and commercial housing inventory from developers for affordable housing.
With the short-term goal of "ensuring the delivery of the building" and "destocking", the delivery of the building is the top priorityEstablish a housing bank, establish a special fund for the acquisition of developers' land and commercial housing inventory, and after the developer gets the funds, it is limited to ensure the delivery of the building to prevent unfinished.
The current practice is to let the local government ensure the delivery of the building, but there is a certain financial pressure on the local government. If the real estate enterprise is acquired by the housing bank, there is still a surplus of the collection funds, which can be used to acquire land, the land finance will be restored, and the pressure on local debt can be alleviated.
The author of this article |Xu Tao |LiabilityEdit |He Mengfei.
Editor-in-Chief |He Mengfei. |Image source |vcg