双语新闻:中国楼市增长放缓房地产市场钱途未卜

2014-04-16 13:56:54来源：可可英语

　　Wu Xuesong, a professor in this city on the Yangtze, says he doubled his money on an apartment he bought as an investment some years back and is ahead on a second.

　　常州是长江边上的一座城市。吴雪松(音)是这座城市里的一名教授，他说他作为投资几年前买下的一套公寓的价值已经翻了一番，现在第二套房也升值了。

　　Buy a third? Forget it.

　　还要买第三套吗?算了吧。

　　Mr. Wu slides open a dining-room window and points to the dark shadow of a new apartment complex, where only a handful of lights are on. 'No one lives there,' he says. 'That shatters my confidence' in China's long-thriving real-estate market.

　　吴雪松打开了餐厅的一扇窗户，用手指着一个黑黢黢的新建住宅小区，那里只有几盏灯亮着。“没人住，”他说，“我的信心破灭了。”他不再相信中国的房地产市场会长盛不衰。

　　Economists have worried for years that China is setting itself up for a housing-market bust. In big international cities like Beijing and Shanghai, prices continue to rise. But evidence is mounting that in dozens of third- and fourth-tier Chinese cities rarely visited by foreigners, overbuilding is out of control and a major property-market slowdown is now under way.

　　Tim Franco for The Wall Street Journal图片：中国小城的楼市寒冬数年来，经济学家们一直担心中国的房地产市场终将崩盘。在北京和上海这样的国际化城市，房价还在继续上涨。但在很少有外国人到访的三四线城市，有越来越多的证据表明，过度建设已经失控，房地产市场增速已出现大幅放缓。

　　The 200 or so Chinese cities with populations ranging from 500,000 to several million account for 70% of the country's residential-property sales. In many of these cities, developers are slashing prices and offering freebies such as kitchen furnishings and parking spaces as they try to work through vast gluts of unsold property. Protests are breaking out among buyers angry that their investments are losing value.

　　在中国，人口数量在50万到数百万之间的城市的数量约有200个，这些城市的住房销售量占了全国住房销售量的70%。在很多这样的城市，开发商通过大幅降价、赠送厨房装修或停车位等方式试图消化大量的未售出存量房。一些购房者因为自己的投资贬值还开始组织抗议。

　　Data in some of these smaller cities is scarce. But in 100 cities tracked by Nomura Holdings Inc., 42% of those classified as Tier 3 and Tier 4 saw housing prices decline in March from February. Home construction in such cities is racing well ahead of population growth, says Beijing research firm Gavekal Dragonomics, as developers continue to build new projects without buyers.

　　这样一些规模较小的城市的相关数据很匮乏。但在野村控股(Nomura Holdings Inc.)追踪的100个城市当中，从2月份到3月份，被归类为三四线的城市中有42%的城市房价下降。北京研究公司龙洲经讯(Gavekal Dragonomics)称，在这些城市中，住房建设速度远远高于人口增长速度，开发商不断开建新项目，但却没人来买。

　　A dramatic housing collapse such as the U.S. suffered a few years ago isn't thought likely here. Chinese families don't borrow as heavily for home buying as Americans, putting at least 30% down. China doesn't have sketchy mortgages like those that infected the U.S. market at its peak, nor home-equity loans that let owners finance shopping sprees on the value of their homes. Chinese financiers haven't put together arcane mortgage-backed securities such as those that blew up in the U.S.

　　人们认为，中国不太可能像几年前的美国一样出现住房价格大幅下跌的情形。中国家庭不像美国家庭那样，在买房的时候大量依靠贷款，而是至少要先付30%的首付。中国市场不像美国市场在高峰时期那样充斥着低质量抵押贷款，也没有房屋净值贷款(房屋所有者以自己房屋的净值为抵押获得这种贷款后就可以大举购物)。中国的金融界人士也没有炮制出复杂的抵押贷款支持证券，而这类证券在美国引发了金融危机。

　　Yet even with market strength holding up in the most prominent cities, the overall value of Chinese housing sold in the first two months of 2014 declined 5% from a year earlier, government statistics show. Private-sector data indicate the decline continued in March.

　　然而中国政府的统计数字显示，虽然多数主要城市的房地产市场依然强劲，但2014年前两个月中国的整体房屋销售额较上年同期下降5%。私人部门机构发布的数据显示，中国3月份的房屋销售额继续下降。

　　Price drops might seem a normal market response to oversupply, but when it comes to housing, the phenomenon isn't benign. China increasingly depends on real estate to drive growth.

　　价格下跌看似是对供应过剩的一种正常市场反应，但对住房市场来说不是一个好现象。中国经济增长对房地产的依赖越来越大。

　　The construction, sale and outfitting of apartments accounted for 23% of China's gross domestic product in 2013, Moody's Analytics calculates. That is up steeply from 10% in 2006 and is higher than American housing's share of GDP reached during the height of the U.S. housing boom in 2006, Moody's says.

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