经济学人下载:住房投资回报率到底高不高?(1)

University challenge 

大学挑战

The returns on housing investment are not what they are cracked up to be 

住房投资的回报并不是他们所吹嘘的那样

Brits, it is said, have a penchant for nostalgia. So take a trip down memory lane to the autumn of 1997, a happier time. The British economy appeared to be gathering speed. The Bank of England raised interest rates to 7.25%. But how resilient was the consumer? A drop in retail sales could be put down to Princess Diana's funeral. The bigger puzzle was the property market. House-price in-flation on the Halifax measure was in the mid-single digits. The Nationwide index had it rising into the teens. It was unclear which of these gauges was right. 

据说英国人对怀旧情有独钟。所以，沿着记忆的小路回到1997年的秋天，那是一段更加快乐的时光。英国的经济似乎正在加速。英格兰银行将利率提高到了7.25%，但消费者的适应能力有多强？零售销售额的下降可能要归咎于戴安娜王妃的葬礼。更大的谜题是房地产市场。按照哈利法克斯的衡量标准，房价涨幅在个位数中间。全国范围内的指数已经涨至百分之十几，目前还不清楚哪一种衡量方法是正确的。

Trying to work out whetherthe economy is strong or very strong is a nice problem to have. But this episode from the 1990s highlights something else. Measuring house prices is trickier than measuring the price of shares or a basket of consumer goods. Getting a good handle on total returns is harder still. Long run ground-level data on rental income and maintenance costs are rather scarce. 

想要弄清楚经济是强劲还是非常强劲是一个很好的问题，但这段发生在20世纪90年代的插曲还凸显了另一个问题：衡量房价要比衡量股价或一篮子消费品的价格更加棘手，而想要很好地搞清总回报更是难上加难，因为有关租金收入和维修费用的长期现实数据少得可怜。

A new paper deals with these difficulties by drawing on the archives of the endowment funds of four Oxbridge colleges, which for centuries have been big investors in property. Two of them (Trinity College, Cambridge, and Christ Church, Oxford) were founded by Henry VIII, who conferred a portfolio of land on both. The study finds that after-cost returns to housing were considerably lowerin the 20th century than previously thought. Property is a farless attractive investment than you might expect. 

一篇新论文利用了牛津和剑桥四所学院捐赠基金的档案资料解决了这些难题。几百年来，这四所学院一直是房地产的大投资者。其中两所学院(剑桥的三一学院和牛津的基督教堂)是亨利八世建立的，他给这两所学院都授予了土地。研究发现，在20世纪，住房的成本后回报率远低于之前的预期。房地产是一项远没有你想象的那么有吸引力的投资。

Only a small fraction of houses change hands each year. They may not be representative of the overall stock, and thus of changes in housing wealth. The average sales price might rise from one period to the next simply because more houses that are bigger, of better quality or in nicer locations are being bought and sold this yearthan last year. This is why most closely watched gauges, including the Halifax and Nationwide indices, adjust transactions for characteristics such as the number of bedrooms. Still, some quality improvements (or degradations) will evade even the most careful statistician. 

每年只有一小部分房屋易手。它们可能不能代表整体存量，也代表不了房产价值的变化。平均售价可能会从一个时期上升到下一个时期，仅仅是因为今年比去年有更多更大、质量更好或位置更好的房屋被买卖。这就是为什么最受关注的指标，包括哈利法克斯指数和全国指数，会根据卧室数量等特征来调整交易。然而，即使是最细心的统计学家也无法发现一些质量上的改善(或下降)。