Property Taxes: There’s a Right Way, and There’s a Wrong Way

Caught this yesterday (excerpt):

Selangor, Penang tax hike woes

ONE part of Pakatan Harapan's manifesto covers cost of living and taxes, and points fingers at federal government policy.

If they are serious about reducing the cost of living and taxes, they should first look at Selangor and Penang.

On Dec 26, the Selangor Mentri Besar's Office scrambled to respond to my assertion that property-related taxes are the main cause of increase in cost of living in Selangor.

Datuk Seri Azmin Ali refused to accept my assertion and blamed Putrajaya and the goods and services tax (GST) for the increase….

…There was a significant increase in cost of living between 2008 and 2011, years before the implementation of GST.

Moreover, the initiatives rolled out in 2016 by the state government were focused on rural residents. The MB's Office said several hundred thousand owners of kampung houses were given exemption on assessments.

But what about urban residents in the cities and towns where over 80% of Selangoreans reside?

The residents in apartments and urban dwellings have had to pay higher quit rent and assessment taxes since 2008?

This is where most of the increase in cost of living happens.

Most Selangor residents live in cities and towns and have been significantly affected by the rapid rise in property prices and rental because of the state government's policy.

I’m not going to play politics here. Property related taxes have increased across most states, and in my opinion probably a bigger factor in the increased cost of living than anything else. We can all argue over who is at fault, but ultimately, nothing much will change unless fundamental reforms are carried out.

Rent Control Doesn’t Work Either

I’ve been falling behind in my blogging – work commitments, travelling, time with the family etc have really eaten into my writing. One of my new year resolutions is to become more active again. Nevertheless, blogging is still likely to take a little bit of a back seat, though I’ll try to keep up to at least once a week, if not more. Just don’t expect long rants.

First up, a paper on the effectiveness of rent controls on housing (abstract):

The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants,Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco
Rebecca Diamond, Tim McQuade, & Franklin Qian

In this paper, we exploit quasi-experimental variation in the assignment of rent control in San Francisco to study its impacts on tenants, landlords, and the rental market as a whole. Leveraging new micro data which tracks an individual’s migration over time, we find that rent control increased the probability a renter stayed at their address by close to 20 percent. At the same time, we find that landlords whose properties were exogenously covered by rent control reduced their supply of available rental housing by 15%, by either converting to condos/TICs, selling to owner occupied, or redeveloping buildings. This led to a city-wide rent increase of 7% and caused $5 billion of welfare losses to all renters. We develop a dynamic, structural model of neighborhood choice to evaluate the welfare impacts of our reduced form effects. We find that rent control offered large benefits to impacted tenants during the 1995-2012 period, averaging between $2300 and $6600 per person each year, with aggregate benefits totaling over $390 million annually. The substantial welfare losses due to decreased housing supply could be mitigated if insurance against large rent increases was provided as a form of government social insurance, instead of a regulated mandate on landlords.

Frisco (I lived there for a few years, so feel entitled to use the short form) is an interesting case. Silicon Valley is next door, and the agglomeration of high tech companies in the area have both increased demand for housing (from internal and external immigrants) as well as boosted house prices substantially. Couple that with Californian zoning regulations, and Frisco has a housing market that is one of the most unaffordable in the world. Rent control is one solution, but the paper estimates that the costs far outweigh the benefits.

This isn’t to say that rent controls don’t work at all, but the specific circumstances in Malaysia are similar – inadequate supply, internal migration to economic centres of activity, increased compliance costs. So I’m comfortable extrapolating the results to our domestic housing problem. The solution is still to reduce barriers to contruction and increase supply in the right market segments.

Notes

Rebecca Diamond, Tim McQuade, & Franklin Qian , "The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants,Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco", paper presented at the NBER Conference on Public Economics, October 26-27 2017

Housing, Inflation and the Cost of Living

I came across a couple of really good articles over the last couple of days on the subject of housing, inflation and GDP that I wanted to share (jump to the end for a summary of both articles).

First, the treatment of housing in the construction of the Consumer Price Index, which is commonly used to measure inflation (excerpt):

Headline inflation measures shouldn’t ignore costs of home ownership
Mojmir Hampl, Tomas Havranek 12 September 2017

Statistical offices of many countries measure the costs of home ownership by computing imputed rents, which are then included in headline inflation measures. This is the case for the US, Japan, and Switzerland, among others. In contrast, the harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP) – the EU’s most important inflation statistic – excludes owner-occupied housing, for the technical reason that imputed transactions are inconsistent with the definition of the HICP, and a more complex approach based on net acquisitions would be required (Eurostat 2012, 2013).….

…Because house purchases involve a substantial investment component, their inclusion in headline inflation makes many statisticians uneasy. Conceptually, however, homes are a special case of durable goods, because they provide a claim on a stream of future services. Cecchetti (2007), for example, showed the long-term capital gain from home ownership is very small….

The (Un)affordability of Housing

I’ve been planning on posting this for a while now, but came across this article this past weekend, which provides the perfect entree (excerpt):

Property market bubble set to burst, says think tank

PETALING JAYA: The property bubble in Malaysia is set to burst, but the government must resist the temptation to intervene and allow market forces to coordinate supply and demand, says a think tank.

In an interview with FMT, the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs’ (IDEAS) senior fellow, Carmelo Ferlito explained the two “economic dynamics” which have resulted in the current property situation in the country, where the prices of homes are beyond the reach of most and the oversupply of such homes, has led to many being left unsold.

Figures from the National Property Information Centre (Napic) have indicated that as of the first quarter of 2017, some RM10.08 billion worth of residential units are unsold in Malaysia. This figure does not include serviced apartments, which have since 2015, been classified as commercial properties.

Housing Watch

BNM has a new microsite dedicated to providing info on the housing market, including info on the market, financing stats, and policy measures. Check it out here.

Chart of the Week: Malaysian Residential Housing Stock

The supply side of housing (number of units per quarter; log annual difference; 3Q2002-4Q2004):

In the top chart, the top dotted line is the average from 2002-2008 (about 49.2k per quarter) while the bottom dotted line is the average since (about 24.4k per quarter) . In the bottom chart, the corresponding averages are 5.7% and 2.2%.

So, a big part of the reason why house price inflation increased over the past decade or so is due to the shortfall in supply.

Technical Notes:

1. Data from various reports published by the National Property Information Centre
2. Note that the above data series excludes service apartments to maintain consistency (2016 NAPIC data does not include service apartments)

Chart of the Week: Malaysian House Price Inflation

There’s inflation, there’s food inflation, but then there’s house price inflation (quarterly index numbers; 2000=100):

Technical Notes:

1. Inflation numbers from the Department of Statistics Malaysia
2. Malaysia House Price Index from NAPIC

Demand For Housing

My latest column in the Star (excerpt):

Danger of dip in demand lurks

RECENTLY, the Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Ministry proposed allowing housing developers to extend loans to homebuyers. One common refrain in support of this policy and for house buying in general is that “house prices only go up”.

In one sense, this is rational. Land is the biggest single input into house prices and land isn’t being made anymore (bar the occasional land reclamation or undersea volcano eruption). Global warming is raising sea levels, which reduces available land even further. But this is entirely a supply side argument.

Historically, there have been periods where house prices have not gone up or even gone into retreat. There is nothing inherently special about the housing market in that respect. The global financial crisis was partly triggered by a US housing bubble that burst, as house prices fell over 20% from their peak in 2007 and took eight years to recover.

Affordable Homes: Finance Is Not The Problem

In a rather unusual move, BNM issued a statement yesterday on the current hot topic of housing (in full, emphasis added):

Responsible lending guidelines ensures borrowers' affordability

This is with reference to a media report on requests for Bank Negara Malaysia to review the lending guidelines in relation to the extension of the loan repayment period from 35 to 40 years.

Bank Negara Malaysia wishes to state that financial institutions will continue to lend to individuals who can afford to take on a housing loan, including for the purchases of their first homes. In July 2016, outstanding housing loans extended by financial institutions continue to grow at 10.1%y-y and totalled RM460.2 billion. About 75 per cent of borrowers (approximately 1.5 million borrowers) with housing loans are first time house buyers.

Access to financing is not the main problem confronting potential buyers of affordable houses. The fundamental issues that require resolution are affordability and the shortage of supply of reasonably priced houses.

How To Make Housing Affordable In Malaysia

Read this.

This Is NOT How To Finance Affordable Housing

Coming late to this particular party, but better late than never (excerpt):

Putrajaya allows developers to give housing loans

PETALING JAYA, Sept 8 — The Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Ministry today announced the introduction of an initiative that enables property developers to give out loans to buyers at an interest rate of between 12 and 18 per cent.

Minister Tan Sri Noh Omar said that the move is intended to assist Malaysians who are unable to get a full housing loan from banks or those who may only be given a partial housing loan….

State of the Households II

I was at the launch ceremony at Khazanah Research yesterday, and while the report doesn’t present anything new, it compiles all the various statistics domestically available into one document to present a holistic picture of Malaysian households.

You can download the report here.

Oh, and I love the new interactive socio-economic map of Malaysia!

Thanks go to @Inequality_MYS for the invite.

Dato’ Charon on the State of Malaysian Households

Khazanah Research Institute is a new policy think tank that just started up last year. Here's their MD on their first publication, "The State of Households" in Malaysia:

Your browser does not support native audio, but you can download this MP3 to listen on your device.

You can download the report here, and the Executive Summary here.

There's really no big surprises in the report (at least for me), but the KRIS report does a great job of showcasing the data in a very impactful way, for example showing the differences in access to public goods between rich states and poor states. I absolutely love two of the charts they came up with - household expenditure by income strata and category (pg 18) and GDP per capita comparing both states and cities internationally (pg 8). KL for instance, has a GDP per capita equivalent to Korea's and within striking distance of Seoul, but is nearly 2.5x the Malaysian average and almost 7x that of Kelantan. The Klang Valley is almost literally a different country from the rest of Malaysia.

Containing Housing Price Appreciation: Assessing The Options

There’s a growing body of work examining the effect of macroprudential policies on asset prices. This one offers a fairly comprehensive assessment (abstract):

Can Non-Interest Rate Policies Stabilize Housing Markets? Evidence from a Panel of 57 Economies
Kenneth N. Kuttner, Ilhyock Shim

Using data from 57 countries spanning more than three decades, this paper investigates the effectiveness of nine non-interest rate policy tools, including macroprudential measures, in stabilizing house prices and housing credit. In conventional panel regressions, housing credit growth is significantly affected by changes in the maximum debt-service-to-income (DSTI) ratio, the maximum loan-to-value ratio, limits on exposure to the housing sector and housing-related taxes. But only the DSTI ratio limit has a significant effect on housing credit growth when we use mean group and panel event study methods. Among the policies considered, a change in housing-related taxes is the only policy tool with a discernible impact on house price appreciation.

What Explains House Price Booms

Keeping to the theme from last week, there’s a new paper on house price booms in the latest NBER working paper roundup (abstract):

What Explains House Price Booms?: History and Empirical Evidence
Michael D. Bordo, John Landon-Lane

In this paper we investigate the relationship between loose monetary policy, low inflation, and easy bank credit with house price booms. Using a panel of 11 OECD countries from 1920 to 2011 we estimate a panel VAR in order to identify shocks that can be interpreted as loose monetary policy shocks, low inflation shocks, bank credit shocks and house price shocks. We show that loose monetary policy played an important role in housing booms along with the other shocks. We show that during boom periods there is a heightened impact of all three “policy” shocks with the bank credit shock playing an important role. However, when we look at individual house price boom episodes the cause of the price boom is not so clear. The evidence suggests that the house price boom that occurred in the US during the 1990s and 2000s was not due to easy bank credit. Loose monetary policy (as well as low inflation) played some role but the residual which may be picking up other factors such as financial innovation and the shadow banking system is the most important shock. This result is robust to many alternative specifications.

The Trouble With Bubbles (Warning: Wonkish Post)

How can you tell you’re in an asset bubble? How can anyone not look at this graph and say that we’re not (index numbers; 2000=100):

But I couldn’t and still can’t, at least not by any objective measure. Here’s a look at why.

Why RPGT Won’t Make Much Difference

One of the measures taken in Budget 2014 is a hike in RPGT, effective January 1, 2014:

Disposal	Current	Companies	Individuals	Non_citizens
Within 2 years	15%
Within 3 years	10%	30%	30%	30%
in the 4th year	10%	20%	20%	30%
in the 5th year	10%	15%	15%	30%
in the 6th and subsequent years	0%	5%	0%	5%

The idea is to limit speculative activity by imposing an additional charge on profits made on disposal of property assets.

The Network Costs Of Affordable Housing

A friend told me a story the other day, about how his son when first starting out in working life lived in a shoebox apartment and his kids had to study under park lamps, because the apartment complex was too noisy from all the neighbours watching TV.

Just because you can afford to own a home, doesn’t make it a suitable place for bringing up children…or for addressing urban poverty or multi-generational inequality (excerpt):

Housing versus Habitat

...Consider low-income housing. Most developing countries, and many rich ones, define their housing deficit according to the number of families living in units deemed socially unacceptable…

Home Ownership: Beware What You Wish For

I’m ambivalent on the issue of home ownership – on the one hand, I recognise that society acknowledges the basic human right to adequate shelter. On the other hand, the economist in me sees the opportunity and financial costs involved…and doesn’t think that the right to shelter is equivalent to the right to own it.

And here’s one paper that supports the latter view, looking at the costs to society as a whole (abstract):

Does High Home-Ownership Impair the Labor Market?
David G. Blanchflower, Andrew J. Oswald

We explore the hypothesis that high home-ownership damages the labor market. Our results are relevant to, and may be worrying for, a range of policy-makers and researchers. We find that rises in the home- ownership rate in a U.S. state are a precursor to eventual sharp rises in unemployment in that state. The elasticity exceeds unity: a doubling of the rate of home-ownership in a U.S. state is followed in the long-run by more than a doubling of the later unemployment rate. What mechanism might explain this? We show that rises in home-ownership lead to three problems: (i) lower levels of labor mobility, (ii) greater commuting times, and (iii) fewer new businesses. Our argument is not that owners themselves are disproportionately unemployed. The evidence suggests, instead, that the housing market can produce negative ‘externalities’ upon the labor market. The time lags are long. That gradualness may explain why these important patterns are so little-known.

Gold, Quantitative Easing, And Property Prices In Malaysia

I read this over the weekend:

Applying the brakes – made for the short term – can be dangerous
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
By DATUK ALAN TONG

...Recently there has been a proposal to raise the floor price of properties for foreigners from RM500,000 to RM1mil to curb or control the prices of houses from increasing too fast. This proposal is on top of the other “cooling off” measures such as the 70% housing loan policy for purchase of a third property, the increase of real property gains tax from 5% to 10% imposed on properties sold within two years of the sale and purchase agreement, and the new ruling on housing loan limits based on net income rather than gross.

There is no doubt that the introduced “cooling off” measures have reduced the buying spree of properties. However, the intended objective of these measures to control the price of properties has yet to be seen. Introducing measures without critically identifying the root cause of the increasing property prices may instead create situations that would not be beneficial to the industry as explained by the theory of Risk Homeostasis.

So, what determines rising prices?