经济学人下载:住房投资回报率到底高不高?(2)

The Oxbridge archives are rich enough to allow for the construction of something like an ideal property index, however. The study's authors dredged for detailed data on sales and purchases (from transaction ledgers) and on rents and maintenance costs (from rent books) over the period from 1901 to 1983. To keep quality constant, they tracked the growth in rents on the same properties from one year to the next. They then linked these annualrates in a chain to create a quality-adjusted long-run series of income growth. This series has the added advantage of being based on cashflows, rather than the rent required by the lease, which is not always paid. (Rent holidays were a thing before this pandemic.) Alongside this, the authors put together a long-run series of gross yields by matching the transaction data with the income figures. They arrive at a net yield by subtracting maintenance costs. 

然而，牛津剑桥的档案资料非常丰富，足以用来构建一个类似理想房产指数的东西。该研究的作者挖掘了1901年至1983年期间的销售和购买记录(来自交易账簿)以及租金和维护成本(来自租金账簿)的详细数据。为了保持质量不变，他们追踪了同一套房产的租金每年的增长情况。然后，他们将这些年增长率连接在一条链上，创造出经过质量调整的长期收入增长系列。这个系列的额外优势在于，它不是基于并不总是支付的租赁要求的租金，而是基于现金流。(在疫情爆发之前就已经有了“免租期”这一说。)与此同时，作者通过将交易数据与收入数据相匹配，得出了一系列长期的毛收益率。它们通过减去维护成本得到净收益。

The authors used these ingredients to derive a consistent measure of long-run returns. The results are fascinating. The net annual real return on residential property was 2.3%. That is surprisingly low. By comparison "The Rate of Return on Everything", an oft-cited study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economicsin 2019, puts the net returns on British housing at 4.7% over the same period. 

作者利用这些因素得出了长期收益的一致衡量标准，结果令人着迷。住宅地产的净年实际回报率为2.3%，也就是说出奇地低。相比之下，2019年发表在《经济季刊》上的一项经常被引用的研究《所有事物的回报率》认为同期英国住房的净回报率为4.7%。

What explains the discrepancy? Perhaps the Oxbridge sample is not representative of the returns that could have been achieved. Put bluntly, the colleges might have had duff portfolios (or especially bad tenants). The evidence on whether college endowments are good investors is mixed. But the study is clear that portfolios were well diversified by region and type, and were managed with a strong eye to long-term returns. Another explanation is that the bottom-up Oxbridge-based study is closer to the truth, because it has a better handle on the more distant past. Top-down housing data in Britain before around 1970 adjusts for neither mix nor quality. What looks like price appreciation or rising real rents may simply be quality improvement. 

如何解释这种差异呢？或许牛津和剑桥的样本不能代表本可以获得的回报。说白了，这些大学的投资组合可能都很差劲(尤其是糟糕的租户)。关于大学捐赠基金是否是优秀投资者的证据有好有坏。但这项研究清楚地表明，投资组合按地区和类型进行了很好地多样化，并且在管理时高度关注长期回报。另一种解释是，这项基于牛津和剑桥的自下而上的研究更接近事实，因为它更好地处理了更久远的过去。1970年以前英国自上而下的住房数据既不考虑混合因素也不考虑质量。看似价格上涨或房租上涨，其实可能只是质量的提高。

Look ahead, and there are big challenges for property investors. The pandemic will change how people live and work, and thus where they live and work. Understanding the pastis scarcely any easier. In the current circumstances it is not only Britons who might be wallowing in nostalgia. But it would be a mistake to exaggerate how good the past was. 

展望未来，房地产投资者将面临巨大挑战。新冠将改变人们的生活和工作方式，从而改变他们的生活和工作地点。了解过去也不容易。在目前的情况下，沉浸在怀旧之中的不仅仅是英国人。但是，夸大过去的美好是不对的。