Nobel Economist Proposes Solution To Eradicate Property Price Crashes
written by Bella Palmer
Regardless of whether you are own investment properties or just your own home, the prospect of falling into negative equity in the event of a property market slump is a nightmare. Thousands were badly burned when property prices crashed by
Selling without taking a huge loss becomes impossible when a property falls into serious negative equity. While prices subsequently recovered and even surpassed 2008 peaks in some parts of the UK, especially in London and the south east, in others they never did. In Northern Ireland property prices are still 30% below where they were in 2008.
Nobel
In the UK and USA, almost half of household wealth is tied to property prices. That has a knock-on effect, deepening any recession that hits the property market. The economies on both sides of the Atlantic are strongly tied to property markets. That has positives and negatives. When house prices go up, economies tend to boom as consumer confidence burgeons. When they go down, the bottom can fall out of consumer spending.
Property industry experts were, however less than convinced that the solution proposed by Professor Shiller and the rest of the team working on the paper would work in
Many commentators, including the think tank Civitas, see this as a positive. Without the incentive to profit from rising house prices, property would not represent a speculative investment. That would be expected to reduce demand and keep prices more stable, most probably reducing them. Such a development would appeal to the 80% of home owners who only view property as a primary residence.
In theory, were the proposed solution to be adopted as a mainstream component to mortgages, it would not mean there was no longer any case for owning investment properties. However, the model would change drastically to one where the business case would rest entirely on rental income. Investment properties would look like bonds or stable, dividend-returning shares.
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