In mid-September, when we looked at the Australian housing market, we said that in the aftermath of Beijing’s crack down on capital controls following its August currency devaluation, that “new Chinese ‘regulations’ may just kill Australia’s golden goose of ‘wealth creation’ as Aussie’s largest trade partner sees its economy collapse.” More:
While the Aussies themselves proclaimed a “war on cash,” it appears, as AFR reports, that Chinese purchases of Australian property have dropped significantly in the past month, according to agents, as buyers struggle to shift money out of the country following Beijing’s move to tighten capital controls. With Chinese banks now limiting any overseas transfer to USD50,000 – in an effort to control capital outflows – and with China dominating the Aussie housing market, one agent exclaimed, “it has affected 70 to 80 per cent of current transactions and some have already been suspended.”
The results were immediate: “the tighter rules in China come as Sydney recorded its lowest auction clearance rate for the year this past weekend, while Melbourne has now recorded two weekends below the same time last year, according to Corelogic RP Data.”
Two months later, the sudden withdrawal of Chinese hot and laundered money has just popped another housing bubble: perhaps the biggest one of all. London.
Citing Richard Barber, a director at broker W.A. Ellis LLP, a unit of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., Bloomberg reports that prices of homes valued at 5 million pounds ($7.6 million) or more fell 11.5% on a per square foot basis from the third quarter of 2014. Bloomberg is eager to assign the plunge on “the government’s stamp duty sales tax”, however that has been around for a while and only after the Chinese devaluation was there such a sudden drop in prices.
What changed? Why China’s far more aggressive crackdown on the exporting of hot money, of course. Just like in Australia.
