Thursday, December 1, 2011

Chinese House Prices Down a Third Month in a Row

China Home Prices Drop for Third Month in November Amid Curbs, SouFun Says
Home prices dropped 0.28 percent last month from October, when they retreated 0.23 percent, according to SouFun, the nation’s biggest real estate website owner. Prices slid in 57 of 100 cities tracked by the company, including in all 10 of the country’s biggest cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, it said in an e-mailed statement.

Markets are very excited about the Reserve Ratio requirement cut of 50 basis points (.5%) except that's a cut from 21.5% which was a record high ratio. I believe it is the signal it sends, rather than any delusion that at 21% reserve ratio could be said to encourage growth, that the markets are reacting to. This is expected to add 350 billion yuan ($55 billion) to the economy.

This is in contrast to the move in August to require banks (as part of a phased in policy that doesn't come to full fruition until February) to hold reserves against margin deposits (letters of credit) which was expected to remove 800-900 billion yuan out of the system over the course of the implementation. That contraction of credit is still ongoing. Of course the amount the banks need to hold against those deposits just went down. (old marketwatch article on this)

No comments: