The Unassuming Economist

On cross-country:

• City house prices outpace national markets. Predictions of ‘the death of the city’ now seem a distant memory as cities are now outpacing their national housing markets with prices rising by 9.8% on average in the year to Q2 2021. – Knight Frank
• Berliners Are Angry About Housing. And So Is Much of Europe. Soaring rents and out-of-reach prices have fueled property inequality – Bloomberg
• Sergei Gordeev: the Russian property tycoon betting on prefabricated blocks. Having netted billions of dollars from a housing boom, PIK’s chief executive wants to upend the sector – FT

On the US:   

• It Shouldn’t Take 50 Meetings to Build Some Apartments – New York Times
• Why Isn’t There Enough Housing? Zoning And Homeowner Resistance – Forbes
• Eviction Record Expungement Can Remove Barriers to Stable Housing – Center for American Progress
• California’s Smart Plan to Let Homeowners Be Homebuilders. The way to blunt Nimby resistance to badly needed housing construction is to give single-family owners a path to profit from new development. – Bloomberg
• Why Democrats Would Be Fools to Slash Biden’s Housing Plan. Lawmakers will have to make tough decisions to reach a deal on reconciliation. But chopping historic housing investments isn’t the answer. – Politico
• Single-family Zoning: Can History be Reversed? – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
• What Do Runaway Home Prices Mean for the US? – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
• Mortgage Payments Are Getting More and More Unaffordable. Record growth in home prices is erasing savings typically delivered by low interest rates – Wall Street Journal
• The Housing Boom Is Not A Bubble – Forbes
• What’s Driving the Huge U.S. Rent Spike? Rent increases of 20% or more are making life difficult for low-income tenants in many cities, just as eviction bans and unemployment relief are running out. – Bloomberg
• If your rent is going up, this episode is for you – New York Times

On China

• Empty Buildings in China’s Provincial Cities Testify to Evergrande Debacle. The property giant borrowed heavily to develop in out-of-the way places like Lu’an – Wall Street Journal
• China property sector woes intensify after mid-sized developer defaults. Fantasia misses payment as Evergrande keeps investors hanging on share trading suspension – FT  
• Beijing crackdown threatens to crush China’s love of London property. Thousands of high-end flats bankrolled by Chinese developers lie unfinished and unsold – FT
• The economic threats from China’s real estate bubble. Property’s great investment boom has reached its limit — the economy needs new drivers of demand – FT

On other countries:  

• [Australia] RBA Remains Dovish, Warns on House Prices. The Australian central bank held the official cash rate at 0.1%, where it has stood since late 2020 – Wall Street Journal
• [Australia] Australia’s house price boom: what’s happening and how can it be brought under control? The property frenzy is locking young people out of the market and creating economic risks. Will anything stop it? – The Guardian
• [Australia] Banks given new borrowing rule as Australian house prices soar. Regulator Apra tells lenders to ensure new mortgagees can cope with three percentage point rise in interest rates – The Guardian
• [Australia] Australia’s flying house prices – a catch-22? – EY
• [Croatia] The effect of housing loan subsidies on affordability: Evidence from Croatia – Journal of Housing Economics
• [Hong Kong] Hong Kong’s Lam to Target Housing Crisis in Policy Address – Bloomberg
• [Hong Kong] Carrie Lam policy address: massive housing plan near Hong Kong’s border to play starring role in speech, but vision has its critics. Blueprint calls for expanding on existing plan for New Territories North and will be comparable in scale with Lantau Tomorrow Vision, sources say. Proposal could make it easier for villagers to sell ancestral land, releasing abandoned farmland and earmarking funds to buy private holdings – South China Morning Post
• [Hong Kong] Hong Kong’s Massive Land Reform Unlikely to Tame Prices for Now – Bloomberg
• [Hong Kong] Hong Kong Developers Surge on Lam’s Northern Metropolis Plan – Bloomberg
• [New Zealand] New Zealand raises rates to rein in property prices and inflation worries. Central bank increases lending rate to 0.5% despite Covid lockdown in Auckland – FT
• [United Arab Emirates] Behind the Sizzle of Dubai Home Boom, Key Vulnerability Persists – Bloomberg
• [United Kingdom] Displaced: The Human Cost of London’s Housing Crunch. The story of Davida Dawkins shows how London’s push to build more affordable housing may still not be enough for its most vulnerable residents. – Bloomberg