我
不愿使用"泡沫"这个过分夸大的词汇，但在谈到伦敦的房地产市场时，这还是无法避免。这里正在发生的一切简直就是荒谬。
从任何一家房地产代理商的窗口往里望去，你会认为人们都疯了。然后你会意识到价格是以英镑计算的，将之转换成美元的话，你还得在原来的价格数字基础上再加60%。
在并不时尚的泰晤士河南岸，带一座小花园的一居室公寓要价50万英镑（约合80万美元），这是真的吗？切尔西一套不算大的两居室公寓竟然要价200万美元？
就像网球名将麦肯罗（John McEnroe）在温布尔登常说的那样，你一定在开玩笑。
尽管英国的大部分地区还在竭力同财政紧缩、实际工资下降和预算减少做斗争，但伦敦的房地产市场已经再次受到另一轮楼市狂热的严重影响。这可是伦敦的房地产市场，全球最好的市场啊！
高端地产经纪公司Knight Frank统计的一项指数显示，伦敦市中心高档物业的价格已接近甚至有可能超过几年前令人晕眩的峰值水平。地产经纪的玻璃窗上贴满的价格条也同样揭示了这一点。
这就好像雷曼兄弟倒闭以及之后的金融危机全然没有发生过。
到底怎么了？
伦敦投资公司Peel Hunt 的分析师哈代（Robin Hardy）是这么向我解释的：伦敦的房地产就像21世纪的瑞士银行帐户。埃及、叙利亚和南欧的富豪正抓紧将资金从动荡的国内转移到这里。由于没有其它更为理想的投资渠道，这些人便将钱砸在了有"百万富翁游乐场"之称的伦敦市中心的物业上。
哈代说，如果你的目标只是保本，那么置业是一种相对安全的投资方式。这些富豪认为，相比把钱存在大马士革的一家银行里，在斯隆街（Sloane Street）投资一套公寓更为安全。
高端房地产代理商Foxtons告诉我，今年该公司在斯隆广场（Sloane Square）的分支机构售出的房屋中有80%为海外买家所购买。
这不过是一个已经流传了一段时间的故事的最新进展。海湾酋长、俄罗斯寡头、印度新贵以及中国富豪，伦敦已然成为国际超级富豪的游乐场。俄罗斯人的钱已经涌入这座城市至少十年。本地一位对冲基金经理告诉我，伦敦地产是"俄罗斯资金的洗钱机"。
从杰明街（Jermyn Street）到旧邦德街（Old Bond Street）的那些最高档的购物区里你能看出端倪。
石油和新兴市场的繁荣支撑此地的房价至少已有十年的时间。通过给予外国人优惠的税收政策，英国巧妙地助推了这一趋势。
我的一个朋友几年前曾向我介绍一位海湾国家酋长是如何坚定地在海德公园（Hyde Park）北面买下一套又一套的公寓。这位酋长喜欢每年夏天来伦敦小住两个月以躲避海湾的炙热。他总是要带上一大家子人和随从。他并不在意价格，只想买下尽可能多的公寓。
还有其它因素在起作用。伦敦已成为欧洲的金融重心。巨大的赚钱机器早已开到了伦敦城老金融区之外。实力雄厚的对冲基金和神秘的大宗商品交易公司占领了伦敦高档社区的大街小巷，以及重新开发的Docklands的塔楼。这也成为了助推伦敦房价的主要因素。
住房供应是有限的，特别是在那些最佳区域。伦敦对于哪些区域的土地可以作何种使用有着严格的法律规定，所以伦敦新开发的房地产项目很少。
低利率也是推涨伦敦房地产市场的一个因素。笔者的一位朋友曾说，他那明显价格过高的住房每年的按揭成本却很低，因为他的可调息按揭贷款目前的借款利率只有1%。
照伦敦人的说法，这里的房地产奇迹能够无限期延续下去。房价将持续高涨。伦敦的房地产业将不会再遇到多少熊市。大多数熊市都已经历过了。
但几个不利因素却是人们决定投资伦敦房地产之前应该考虑到的。
首先，伦敦那些晚上彻夜黑灯的住宅越来越多。这个周日我与一位相交最久的朋友去酒吧，他向我描述了伦敦市中心一年到头都不大被使用的房屋如何越来越多。你只需在大街上漫步时抬头望一下，就能看到街边建筑物的窗户很少是亮着的。
房地产经纪公司莱坊(Knight Frank)新近进行的一项研究发现，那些国际精英们决定卖掉在伦敦的住房时给出的最重要理由之一不过是，他们不大用得着这些房子。
第二个令人担忧的因素是，越来越多货真价实的英国人被挤出了伦敦。过去10天笔者在与英国议会一位伦敦籍议员和伦敦一家基金的高管共进晚餐时，他们都哀叹说，那些开始在伦敦讨生活的年青人已不再负担得起伦敦人以往常住的那些房子了。高涨的房价已经把他们挤出了伦敦。许多中产阶级也面临同样的命运。这种局面最终将无法维持下去。它将扼杀伦敦这座城市的活力。
第三个问题是，利率无法永远停留在1%的低水平。利率迟早都要升上去，当那一天真的到来时，许多住房贷款都将因不堪重负而无法偿还。珍惜现在的幸福时光吧。
第四个问题是经常被人遗忘。在互联网和现代科技大行其道的今天，像伦敦这种居住成本高的大城市，其比较优势其实是在下降的。20年前，如果你想在英伦三岛经营一只对冲基金，你或许不得不在伦敦开展相关业务。而如今再也不是这种情况了。你可以在伦敦以外的地方运营这只基金，而那里的生活成本会低很多，生活质量也会比伦敦好很多。
第五个问题可能是对房主最为不利的，那就是租房收益率的大幅下降。
据莱坊说，过去10年伦敦黄金地段的房屋售价已经增长了一倍，而伦敦黄金地段的房屋租金只上涨了不到10%。二者相抵，导致房主的租房毛收益率平均只有3.6%，低于10年前6%的水平。我与房主和租户们交流后发现，一些房主的租房毛收益率甚至更低。
如果你再将买卖、维修房屋的成本以及房产税和物业费从房屋租赁收益中减去，一些房主靠出租房子就算能有所收益，也几乎赚不到什么钱了。
那些捍卫当前房价合理性的人通常会立即反驳说，人们投资买房不是为了赚取那点租房收益，他们是为了赚取资本利得！
这种论调真够呛，在一个理性的市场上，收益率是资本利得的推动力。某种资产的价格之所以上涨，是因为其所有人正在从这份资产上赚大钱，从而引得其他人也想拥有这种资产。那种认为人们会把一种不挣钱资产的价格持续推高的想法，往好里说也是痴心妄想。
伦敦的房价会调头下行吗？如果会，将出现在什么时候？ 这当然谁也说不好。不过对那些生活和工作在英国的人来说，结论是显然的。如果我回到英国居住，可能的话我会尽量避免生活和工作在伦敦。如果我非得住在伦敦，我会选择租房。
Brett Arends
（本文版权归道琼斯公司所有，未经许可不得翻译或转载。）
I hesitate to use the overplayed word 'bubble.' But in the case of London property, it's hard to avoid.
What's happening here is absolutely ridiculous.
Look in the window of any real-estate agent here and you think people have gone crazy - and then you realize that the prices are in British pounds, and that to convert to dollars you have to add another 60%.
Half a million pounds ($800,000) for a one-bedroom condo with a small garden on the southern, unfashionable side of the river Thames? Really? And $2 million for a modest two-bedroom condo in Chelsea?
As John McEnroe used to say at Wimbledon, you cannot be serious.
While the rest of Britain grapples with austerity, falling real wages and budget cuts, London real estate - super-prime London real estate, the best of the best - is back in the grip of another mania.
According to an index maintained by high-end real-estate firm Knight Frank, prime central London prices are nearing and may even be surpassing the giddy levels seen at the peak a few years ago. The brokers' windows tell the same story.
It's like that whole Lehman thing never even happened.
What's going on?
'London property is the 'Swiss bank account' of the 21st century,' Robin Hardy, an analyst at London investment firm Peel Hunt, explained to me. Rich people in places like Egypt, Syria and southern Europe are rushing to get their money away from the turmoil, and for want of a better alternative, they are plunking it down in the 'millionaire's playground' of central London.
'It's seen as a relatively safe place to put your money if your objective is capital preservation,' he said. They think money is 'safer invested in an apartment in Sloane Street than in a bank account in Damascus.'
Foxtons, a high-end real-estate agency, told me that 80% of its sales this year at its Sloane Square branch have come from overseas buyers.
This is just the latest twist to a story that's been running for some time. Gulf sheikhs. Russian oligarchs. Newly rich Indian and Chinese tycoons. London has become a magnate for the international super-rich: a millionaire's playground. Russian money has been flooding in for at least a decade. One hedge-fund manager here told me London property was a 'laundromat for Russian money.'
You can see it in the fanciest shopping districts, from Jermyn Street and Old Bond Street.
The booms in oil and emerging markets have been very good for prices here for at least a decade. Great Britain, through generous tax treatment of foreign nationals, has cleverly encouraged the trend.
A friend of mine a few years ago described how a Gulf sheikh was steadily buying up more and more of her condo development just north of Hyde Park. The sheikh liked to come to London for two months every summer to escape the Gulf heat, and he liked to bring his extended family and entourage. He didn't care much about price, and he wanted as many condos as he could get.
There are other factors at work. London has become the financial capital of Europe. The giant money machine has spread far beyond the old financial district of the City of London. High-powered hedge funds and secretive commodity firms crowd the alleys and lanes of Mayfair and the towers of redeveloped Docklands. The windfalls have long been seen as a major driver of property prices.
Housing supply is limited, especially in the best areas. London has tough zoning laws, so there is very little new development.
And you can also throw into the mix low interest rates. A friend explained how his grossly overpriced home cost him very little every year, because he is paying just 1% interest on a flexible mortgage.
To hear people tell it here, this miracle will go on indefinitely. Prices will keep rising skyward. You no longer encounter many bears of London property. Most have given up.
But there are a couple of wrinkles that should give people pause.
First, you see more and more dark windows. On Sunday I went to a pub with one of my oldest friends. He described how more and more properties in central London were simply unused most of the year. You'd look up at the windows as you walked down the street, and very few were lit up.
A recent study by Knight Frank found that one of the top reasons the international elite gave for selling a London home was simply that it was surplus to their needs.
The second concern is that more and more actual British are being crowded out of the city. Over dinners in the past 10 days, both a London member of Parliament and a top executive at a fund firm here have bemoaned the fact that young people can no longer afford to move into the usual London neighborhoods when they start their careers here. They've been priced out. Many of the middle-class are suffering the same fate. Ultimately, this simply becomes unsustainable. It will strangle the city's vitality.
The third problem is that 1% interest rates will not last forever. Sooner or later they will have to rise, and when they do, a lot of home loans will become unmanageable as well as unrepayable. Happy times.
The fourth issue is one that often gets forgotten. In the age of the Internet and modern technology, the comparative advantages of big, expensive cities like London are actually in decline. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to run a hedge fund in the British Isles, you probably had to do it in London. That is no longer the case. It is a lot cheaper - and the quality of life much better - if you move out of town.
The fifth problem, though, is probably most ominous: the plunge in rental yields.
According to Knight Frank, while prime London sales prices have doubled in the past 10 years, prime London rents have risen by less than 10%. The net result is that landowners are getting a gross yield of maybe 3.6% on average, compared to more than 6% a decade ago. Conversations I've had - with renters and owners - suggest some are getting even less.
Once you subtract all the costs of buying and selling a home, maintenance, taxes and condo fees, some landlords are making very little - if anything.
As usual, the defenders of current prices are quick with a rebuttal: 'But people aren't investing for the yield,' they say. 'They are investing for the capital gains!'
Alas for this argument, in a rational market, yields are the drivers of capital gains. The price of an asset goes up because the current owners are earning so much money that outsiders want in. The idea that people will keeping bidding up prices of an asset that makes no money is quixotic at best.
Will it turn? If so, when? It's anyone's guess. But for those living and working in Britain, the conclusions are pretty obvious. If I moved back to this country, I would avoid living and working in London if at all possible. And if I had to be in London, I'd rent.
Brett Arends
What's happening here is absolutely ridiculous.
Look in the window of any real-estate agent here and you think people have gone crazy - and then you realize that the prices are in British pounds, and that to convert to dollars you have to add another 60%.
Half a million pounds ($800,000) for a one-bedroom condo with a small garden on the southern, unfashionable side of the river Thames? Really? And $2 million for a modest two-bedroom condo in Chelsea?
As John McEnroe used to say at Wimbledon, you cannot be serious.
While the rest of Britain grapples with austerity, falling real wages and budget cuts, London real estate - super-prime London real estate, the best of the best - is back in the grip of another mania.
According to an index maintained by high-end real-estate firm Knight Frank, prime central London prices are nearing and may even be surpassing the giddy levels seen at the peak a few years ago. The brokers' windows tell the same story.
It's like that whole Lehman thing never even happened.
What's going on?
'London property is the 'Swiss bank account' of the 21st century,' Robin Hardy, an analyst at London investment firm Peel Hunt, explained to me. Rich people in places like Egypt, Syria and southern Europe are rushing to get their money away from the turmoil, and for want of a better alternative, they are plunking it down in the 'millionaire's playground' of central London.
'It's seen as a relatively safe place to put your money if your objective is capital preservation,' he said. They think money is 'safer invested in an apartment in Sloane Street than in a bank account in Damascus.'
Foxtons, a high-end real-estate agency, told me that 80% of its sales this year at its Sloane Square branch have come from overseas buyers.
This is just the latest twist to a story that's been running for some time. Gulf sheikhs. Russian oligarchs. Newly rich Indian and Chinese tycoons. London has become a magnate for the international super-rich: a millionaire's playground. Russian money has been flooding in for at least a decade. One hedge-fund manager here told me London property was a 'laundromat for Russian money.'
You can see it in the fanciest shopping districts, from Jermyn Street and Old Bond Street.
The booms in oil and emerging markets have been very good for prices here for at least a decade. Great Britain, through generous tax treatment of foreign nationals, has cleverly encouraged the trend.
A friend of mine a few years ago described how a Gulf sheikh was steadily buying up more and more of her condo development just north of Hyde Park. The sheikh liked to come to London for two months every summer to escape the Gulf heat, and he liked to bring his extended family and entourage. He didn't care much about price, and he wanted as many condos as he could get.
There are other factors at work. London has become the financial capital of Europe. The giant money machine has spread far beyond the old financial district of the City of London. High-powered hedge funds and secretive commodity firms crowd the alleys and lanes of Mayfair and the towers of redeveloped Docklands. The windfalls have long been seen as a major driver of property prices.
Housing supply is limited, especially in the best areas. London has tough zoning laws, so there is very little new development.
And you can also throw into the mix low interest rates. A friend explained how his grossly overpriced home cost him very little every year, because he is paying just 1% interest on a flexible mortgage.
To hear people tell it here, this miracle will go on indefinitely. Prices will keep rising skyward. You no longer encounter many bears of London property. Most have given up.
But there are a couple of wrinkles that should give people pause.
First, you see more and more dark windows. On Sunday I went to a pub with one of my oldest friends. He described how more and more properties in central London were simply unused most of the year. You'd look up at the windows as you walked down the street, and very few were lit up.
A recent study by Knight Frank found that one of the top reasons the international elite gave for selling a London home was simply that it was surplus to their needs.
The second concern is that more and more actual British are being crowded out of the city. Over dinners in the past 10 days, both a London member of Parliament and a top executive at a fund firm here have bemoaned the fact that young people can no longer afford to move into the usual London neighborhoods when they start their careers here. They've been priced out. Many of the middle-class are suffering the same fate. Ultimately, this simply becomes unsustainable. It will strangle the city's vitality.
The third problem is that 1% interest rates will not last forever. Sooner or later they will have to rise, and when they do, a lot of home loans will become unmanageable as well as unrepayable. Happy times.
The fourth issue is one that often gets forgotten. In the age of the Internet and modern technology, the comparative advantages of big, expensive cities like London are actually in decline. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to run a hedge fund in the British Isles, you probably had to do it in London. That is no longer the case. It is a lot cheaper - and the quality of life much better - if you move out of town.
The fifth problem, though, is probably most ominous: the plunge in rental yields.
According to Knight Frank, while prime London sales prices have doubled in the past 10 years, prime London rents have risen by less than 10%. The net result is that landowners are getting a gross yield of maybe 3.6% on average, compared to more than 6% a decade ago. Conversations I've had - with renters and owners - suggest some are getting even less.
Once you subtract all the costs of buying and selling a home, maintenance, taxes and condo fees, some landlords are making very little - if anything.
As usual, the defenders of current prices are quick with a rebuttal: 'But people aren't investing for the yield,' they say. 'They are investing for the capital gains!'
Alas for this argument, in a rational market, yields are the drivers of capital gains. The price of an asset goes up because the current owners are earning so much money that outsiders want in. The idea that people will keeping bidding up prices of an asset that makes no money is quixotic at best.
Will it turn? If so, when? It's anyone's guess. But for those living and working in Britain, the conclusions are pretty obvious. If I moved back to this country, I would avoid living and working in London if at all possible. And if I had to be in London, I'd rent.
Brett Arends
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