Abacus | Is Hong Kong’s property bubble finally ready to burst? Here are two things to watch
As far back as 2009 the International Monetary Fund warned of a dangerous property bubble in Hong Kong – is this the year they are proved right?
Stein’s Law, named after Herbert Stein, chief economic adviser to disgraced US president Richard Nixon, states that “if something cannot go on forever, it will stop”.
Well, the nine-year run-up in Hong Kong housing prices cannot go on forever. One day it must stop. And then home prices in the city will fall – a lot.
The difficulty is working out when that day will come. The upward track in Hong Kong property prices since the financial crisis has been liberally dotted with gravestones of the reputations of analysts who called the end of the great bull market too early.
As long ago as December 2009, barely nine months after the depths of the crisis, the International Monetary Fund was warning about the risks of a dangerous bubble in the Hong Kong property market.
And, ever since, prices have continued to rise. Last week the Centa-City leading index of secondary market prices hit a new high, fully 124 per cent above its level when the IMF first issued its bubble alert back in 2009.
