2021年经济学人 美国房产投资的“鱼和熊掌”(1)（在线收听）

Inflation

通胀

House on fire

火爆的房地产

What America's hot housing market means for consumer prices

美国火爆的房地产市场对消费者价格来说意味着什么

The American economy last year may have suff?ered its deepest downturn since the Depression, but you would not know it from house prices. The Case-Shiller national house-price index is rising at an annual rate of 13%, its fastest for more than 15 years. Lower interest rates have encouraged people to take out bigger mortgages, and trillions of dollars of fi?scal stimulus have let people spend more on housing.

美国经济去年大概遭受了自大萧条以来最严重的衰退，但在房价中你看不到这一点。凯斯-席勒全国房价指数正以每年13%的速度上涨，是15年来的最快速度。人们受到较低利率的鼓舞申请更多的抵押贷款，数万亿美元的财政刺激也使得人们愿意在住房上花更多的钱。

Yet as prices have breezed ahead, rental growth, which usually follows suit, has sharply slowed. And whether rents catch up or not matters, because they play an outsize role in America's consumer-price infl?ation statistics. In a recent note analysts at Goldman Sachs, a bank, ranked housing costs among their three main "upside" risks to infl?ation, together with wages and infl?ation expectations. Alan Detmeister of UBS, another bank, went further, arguing that "it is only a small exaggeration to say that there is no single variable on which global fi?nancial markets depend more this year than us rents." The behaviour of rental infl?ation could infl?uence the Federal Reserve's decision to withdraw its support for the economy—which would in turn aff?ect everything from the strength of America's recovery to the valuations of an array of assets.

然而，随着房价一路飙升，通常会紧随其后的租金增长却大幅放缓。而租金能否赶上房价也很重要，因为它们在美国消费者价格通胀统计中扮演着重要的角色。高盛银行的分析师在最近的一份报告中将住房成本与工资和通胀预期一起列为三大通胀“上行”风险之一。来自另一家银行UBS(瑞士联合银行)的艾伦·德特迈斯特则更进一步，他认为“可以略微夸张地说，今年全球金融市场对租金的依赖超过了任何单一变量。”租金上涨的行为可能会影响美联储(Fed)撤回对经济支持的决定——这反过来会影响从美国复苏的强度到一系列资产的估值等方方面面。

America's statisticians, like those across the rich world, do not include house prices in infl?ation metrics: the thinking runs that house purchases are in large part an investment, rather than purely a consumption good. Instead they focus on two other measures of housing costs. One is the rents actually paid by tenants. The other is an estimate of what homeowners would need to pay in order to rent their house. Despite boomy prices, rents are rising at just 2% a year, about half the pace seen just before the pandemic.

美国的统计学家和其他发达国家的统计学家一样，没有将房价纳入通胀指标：人们的想法是，买房在很大程度上不是纯粹的消费品，而是一种投资。相反他们关注的是住房成本的另外两项指标。一是租户实际支付的租金，二是房主出租房屋所需支付的费用预估值。尽管房价高涨，但房租仅以每年2%的速度上涨，该数字大约是疫情爆发前的一半。

Economists puzzle over this divergence. Americans' growing fondness for homeownership means more competition for owner-occupied properties but less for tenancies. Renters are more likely than homeowners to have lost their jobs in the past year, and may thus have negotiated rent holidays or discounts. Some landlords in San Francisco are so desperate for new tenants that they are even off?ering bonuses to people who sign a lease.

经济学家对这种分歧感到困惑。美国人越来越喜欢拥有自己的住房，这意味着对自有住房的竞争会更加激烈，而对租赁住房的竞争则会减少。在过去一年中，租房者比房主更有可能失去工作，因此他们可能协商过免租期或给予折扣。旧金山的一些房东迫切需要新房客，他们甚至会为签租约的人提供奖金。