借鉴香港的房地产泡沫经验

Televisions here broadcast scenes of crowds jostling to buy apartments in vast residential complexes. Developers compete to pay huge sums for newly released plots of land. These recent developments are familiar signals in Hong Kong, this land of bubbles where property prices expand and contract with astonishing speed and frequency.

Yet here is one interesting point about Hong Kong's turbulent property prices: They inflict remarkably little damage on the city's financial system.

During the whole period from mid-1997 to 2003, when home prices fell by two-thirds, the available data show that no more than about 1.4% of all mortgage borrowers here fell delinquent on their payments by three months or more. By comparison, U.S. home prices are down about 30% from their mid-2006 peak by some measures, but 5.3% of homeowners are behind 90 days or more on payments and 13.6% are behind at least 30 days or in foreclosure, according to LPS Applied Analytics.

That discrepancy holds lessons for Western banking regulators looking for ways to prevent catastrophes on the scale of the recent global credit crisis, which began, as so many financial crises do, in the property market.

When it comes to regulation, 'if you get the property side right, you will protect the financial system to a very large extent,' says Leo Goodstadt, a former top policy adviser to the Hong Kong government who lectures at Trinity College, Dublin.

Here are things that Hong Kong does right when it comes to regulating its banks' exposure to property:

-- Loan-to-value ratios. Rules that limit the amount a bank can lend to no more than 70% of a property's assessed value. For homes valued at about $2.6 million or more, the ratio drops to 60%.

This is the No. 1 factor protecting Hong Kong banks from problems in the property sector. It means home prices have to fall as much as 30% before borrowers are 'underwater,' when the value of the home falls below the value of the loan, giving banks a substantial cushion.

And psychologically, a borrower that already has invested that much money in a property is less likely to walk away from an investment that is underwater.

'That's what's kept the blood off the streets, really, that relatively reduced leverage,' says Simon Reid-Kay, a lawyer who heads Allen & Overy's real-estate practice for Asia Pacific.

-- No nonrecourse lending. As in many other parts of the world, a homeowner who defaults on a mortgage loan in Hong Kong doesn't just risk losing the home; the borrower's bank savings and other assets are fair game, too. By contrast, in much of the U.S. nonrecourse loans -- in which the lender's recovery is limited to the collateral, typically the property -- prevail, making it easier for a person to walk away from a home.

-- No (or very little) funny stuff. In Hong Kong, borrowers can't state what their income is, or the value of their assets, without providing documentation. Banks regularly check this information before they approve a loan.

Low- or no-documention loans in the U.S. that allowed people to obtain mortgages without proof of assets or income were one reason that subprime-loan quality went so sour, setting off the credit crisis.

Hong Kong isn't perfect, though. In some cases, property developers have extended loans that 'top up' the funds home buyers get from banks, allowing a buyer to borrow as much as 90% of a home's value, but the practice is limited.

-- Willingness to target bubbles. While former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan argued that it wasn't the Fed's job to predict asset bubbles, Hong Kong central bankers don't hold such ideological qualms.

When property prices heat up, they change the rules: restricting loan-to-value ratios or raising the tax on home sales as they recently did with more expensive properties.

Within Hong Kong, officials come under frequent attack for not doing enough to target bubbles and make home prices more affordable. The current environment is no exception. And it is clear that Hong Kong's efforts actually haven't prevented bubbles from occurring, a tall order in an economy where the value of the local currency is tied to the U.S. dollar.

When U.S. interest rates are low, Hong Kong's are also, even when the local economy is expanding or inflation is on the rise.

Under those circumstances, says Mr. Goodstadt, 'the best thing is to make sure if there is a bubble, the only people that get hurt are the speculators, not the banking system.'