China Property Developers

  • The Chinese property market is the biggest asset market on earth (worth $60 trillion).
  • Its potential crash has been one of the key narratives in financial market for the past two decades.
  • There are now signs of things cracking, as written up so brilliantly in this Net Interest piece.
  • This chart, for example, looks at property developer cash flow – where the picture has turned decidedly negative.

Realtors Confidence Survey

  • June 2021 survey paints a less than perfect picture.
  • Several metrics indicate that demand is softening although the market is still broadly strong.
  • The REALTORS® Buyer Traffic Index decreased from 77 in May 2021 to 71 (moderately strong conditions) in June 2021.”
  • On average, a home sold had more than 4 offers, slightly lower than the average of 5 offers in last month’s survey.”
  • On top of this inventory (the most important variable for house prices) is starting to bottom seasonally.
  • h/t Calculated Risk.

UK Housing Affordability Pt 2

  • “However, house prices are close to a record high relative to average incomes. This is important because it makes it even harder for prospective first time buyers to raise a deposit. For example, a 10% deposit is over 50% of typical first time buyer’s income. A potential buyer earning the average wage and saving 15% of take home pay would now take five years to raise a 10% deposit.”
  • Nationwide House Price Index June 2021.

UK Housing Affordability Pt 1

  • Despite the increase in house prices to new all-time highs, the typical mortgage payment is not high by historic standards compared to take home pay, largely because mortgage rates remain close to all-time lows – in fact, on this measure affordability remains broadly in line with its long run average, as shown in the chart
  • Nationwide House Price Index June 2021.

WeWork Resurrection

  • WeWork is trying to go public again, this time via a SPAC.
  • Below is a link to their investment deck. Lots of interesting data.
  • The company lost $1.7bn last year but expects things to improve as normal conditions return.
  • They believe a WeWork solution would save 26% vs. the cost of traditional real-estate.
  • The transaction puts enterprise value at $9bn or 6.6x adjusted 2023E EBITDA.
  • There are a lot of adjustments to EBITDA that need to be looked into and SPAC transactions have issues, but on the surface that looks a lot more reasonable than the peak valuation of $47bn.
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