JUST how bad is China's housing bubble? One important measure—the most important forthose trying to get a foot on the property ladder—is affordability. Many believe that Chinesehousing prices have soared well beyond the reach of ordinary people. There is some truth tothat. But a closer look at the data reveals a more complex picture. The Economist IntelligenceUnit, our sister company, created a city-level index to track the relation between housing pricesand incomes across China. Two points stand out.
First, the country's biggest cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, with populations of more than10m, are in a class of their own in terms of unaffordability (see chart; for full results go to ourwebsite). Homes are markedly cheaper in almost all slightly smaller cities, even though theyhave millions of residents. The price of a 100-square-metre house is on average 14-fold higherthan annual household incomes in mega-cities. For cities with populations of less than 10m, theprice to income ratio is eight. It thus makes sense for China's cities to tailor their housingpolicies to their own needs; some must focus on building more subsidised homes, while othersneed to attract new residents to occupy their many homes now standing empty.
Second, regardless of city size, housing has become more affordable over the past four yearsthroughout China. At the peak, in April 2010, house prices on average were nearly 12 timeshousehold incomes; that has dropped to less than nine times today. Prices are higher than inmany developing countries, but they are not wildly divergent.
The apparent improvement in affordability does not tally with the perception of manyChinese. But the official price data used in constructing this index show that people areadjusting to high inner-city prices by buying homes that are ever farther from urban centres.That may not be especially painful: suburbs are increasingly well-connected by roads andrailways.
The bigger concern, especially in smaller cities, is that China suffers from an oversupply ofhousing. So many homes have been built that prices in such cities are now declining quicklyrelative to incomes. That is desirable. But a big, sudden rise in affordability could poseconsiderable risks to the financial system, which is heavily exposed to loans made to theproperty sector. So far, at least, China has yet to experience the pain of a property-marketcrash.