2015-02-04

Is Weak Yuan An Omen of Real Estate Collapse?

The article linked below, originally published in BWCHINESE, asks: Is Yuan Devaluation An Omen of Real Estate Depreciation?

The answer is affirmatively no and the author goes on to lay out the thinking of the bears:
2015 "devaluation will stop rising house prices, resulting in decline of speech" has made a comeback on the grounds that yuan devaluation would lead to real estate devaluation, which would lead to hot money flowing out of China, leading investors to abandon the domestic property and invest abroad, resulting in increased cost of financing for state-owned enterprises, resulting in domestic corporate debt risk, will lead to increased housing supply, housing prices will lead developers dumping homes, leading to the bubble burst, prices plummeted.
The author disagrees with this line of thinking because he says the yuan won't depreciate. Why did the yuan drop?
First, the Greek left-wing radical party in the coalition won national elections, the new government may make a Greek exit from the euro zone, giving the euro hit.

Second, over the weekend the ECB announced the implementation of quantitative easing.

Almost everyone expects that within the next few days will no longer limit the RMB devaluation will not last, because any opponent arbitrage plate may be encountered in Bank of China, China has enough foreign exchange reserves, you can always sell with the means to cope with the market because abnormal fluctuations in the exchange rate caused by arbitrage.

Therefore, devaluation is the Chinese economy, but the devaluation is limited, the central bank intervenes only occasionally, may require only further widen the yuan exchange rate fluctuations. This is from the RMB exchange rate market just a stone's throw away.
This argument is correct as far as it remains true. What happens if the central bank has to intervene constantly?

The author doesn't make much of a case against the view beyond stating that the exchange rate and home prices are not related. He also argues that supply and demand are more important for home prices.

This was a top article in the finance section today and the real estate section, and shows how the conversation has turned negative on the yuan in the wake of a few days of depreciation.

iFeng: 人民币贬值是中国房地产贬值前兆?

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