毕业设计论文 外文文献翻译 金融专业)——房地产

毕业 设计 领导形象设计圆作业设计ao工艺污水处理厂设计附属工程施工组织设计清扫机器人结构设计 论文 政研论文下载论文大学下载论文大学下载关于长拳的论文浙大论文封面下载 外文文献翻译 金融专业)——房地产 From The Economist Home ownership Shelter, or burden? The social benefits of home ownership look more modest than they did and the economic costs much higher In a scene from the film “It’s a Wonderful Life”, a happy couple is about to enter their new home. Jimmy Stewart, whose firm has sold them the mortgage, reflects that there is “a fundamental urge…for a man to have his own roof, walls and fireplace.” He offers them bread, salt and wine so “joy and prosperity may reign for ever”. That embodies the Anglo-Saxon world’s attitude to home ownership. Owning your own roof, walls and fireplace, it is thought, is good for householders because it helps them accumulate wealth. It is good for the economy because it encourages people to save. And it is good for society because homeowners invest more in their neighbourhoods, engage more in civic activities and encourage their children to do better at school than do renters. Home ownership, in short, benefits everyone—not and the more there is of it, the better. Which is why it is usually just the homeowner— encouraged by the government. In America, Ireland and Spain, homeowners can deduct mortgage-interest payments from taxable income. Yet the worldwide crash was bound up in this supposed miracle of social policy. The disaster began with defaults on American subprime mortgages, a financial instrument designed to spread home ownership among the poor. It gathered pace after the failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises that provide cheap home loans. As a result, the home-ownership rate in America has fallen for four years, the first time that has happened in a quarter of a century. In 2008, 2.3m families lost their homes or faced foreclosure—double the average before the crisis—reducing the home-ownership rate from 69% in 2004 to 67.5% at the end of 2008. The number of owner-occupied dwellings also slipped in Britain in 2007-08 for the first time since the 1950s. Subsidised castles So attempts to expand home ownership have contributed to the wider economic crisis without succeeding in their own terms. How does that affect the arguments for supporting home ownership? Should it still be deemed a public good? No, say several economists and commentators. “Given the way US policy favours owning over renting,” writes Paul Krugman, 2008’s Nobel laureate in economics, “you can make a good case that America already has too many homeowners.” Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard University, talks about “the madness of encouraging Americans to bet everything on housing”. So far, policymakers are unmoved. In mid-February Barack Obama proposed a $275 billion plan to support America’s housing market. Outside the Anglo-Saxon world Nicolas Sarkozy, who campaigned for the presidency to turn France into a property-owning democracy, has expanded zero-interest housing loans for the poor. The main economic argument for home ownership is that, in the words of Thomas Shapiro of Brandeis University, “it is by far the single most important way families accumulate wealth”. This argument now looks as weak as house prices. In Britain prices have fallen 21% since their peak in October 2007. Prices in America have fallen more slowly but further, down 30% since their peak in mid-2006 (see chart 1). This has reduced the total value of the country’s housing stock from over $22 trillion in 2007 to $19 trillion at the end of 2008. In the past few weeks, housing markets on both sides of the Atlantic have seen signs of life, but there is every chance that prices have further to fall before they finally reach their low. The collapse in house prices matters most directly to two overlapping groups: those who bought property at the peak of the market and now face “negative equity”; and those (in America) who took out subprime mortgages. Roughly 10m Americans are in negative equity—ie, the cost of their mortgage exceeds the value of their home. In Britain about 3% of households are in negative equity. For homeowners, negative equity makes houses more like a trap than a piggy bank. Those who cannot meet their payments lose their house, their savings and (in America, usually) their credit rating for seven years. The other area of concentrated distress is subprime mortgages, which increased their share of the American mortgage market from 7% in 2001 to over 20% in 2006. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the delinquency rate was 22% in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared with only 5% for prime loans. Many people have concluded that, in Mr Krugman’s words, “home ownership isn’t for everyone.” However, a study by the Centre for Community Capital, part of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, casts some doubt on that conclusion. It compared a group of people who took out subprime loans with a group of borrowers from the Community Advantage Programme (CAP), a government-backed scheme that lends to the sort of people who might have had a subprime mortgage. The default rate for CAP borrowers was only a quarter what it was for subprime mortgage holders, even though the incomes and backgrounds of borrowers were similar. Since the real problem lay partly in the mortgages, rather than the borrowers, this suggests the subprime crisis was a financial-market mess, as well as a housing one. Does that also imply that home ownership has the economic benefits that its proponents claim? Two pieces of evidence seem to support such a view. The first is that housing has fared better in the crisis than other assets. Share prices are around 50% below their peaks in many countries, so compared with shareowners, homeowners have not done badly. However, home ownership in a downturn has one big disadvantage: most people buy shares outright but homes on margin (ie, they put down a small stake, if anything). If share prices fall by 10%, you lose 10%; if house prices fall by 10%, you may lose your entire savings. The value of American homeowners’ equity in their own houses has slumped from a peak of $12.5 trillion in 2005 to just $8.5 trillion at the end of 2008. This undermines one claim that homeowning is economically beneficial. The other piece of evidence for home ownership’s benefits is that the house-price fall has so far spared most existing homeowners from absolute losses. In America, for example, house prices have fallen back only to where they were in 2004. There were roughly 29m house sales in the United States between 2004 and 2007, compared with 115m households, and anyone who bought before then is probably sitting on a nominal profit. However, as Harvard University’s Martin Feldstein points out, if house prices rise, people feel richer and borrow and spend more. If they feel poorer, they may cut back even if the price of their house has not fallen below what they paid for it. Subsidies to home ownership have thus increased economic volatility. They boosted consumption, as homeowners used their houses as collateral to finance consumption or investment. In America mortgage-equity withdrawals reached $9 trillion between 1997 and 2006—equal to more than 90% of disposable income in 2006. This gave homeowners more to spend in the good times but less in bad ones. In Britain home-equity withdrawals added the equivalent of 3% of post-tax income to households in the fourth quarter of 2007 but subtracted 3% a year later. So changes to house prices aggravate the economic cycle. Recent research by the IMF finds that a quarter of the 100-odd recessions since 1960 have been associated with house-price busts and that these contractions “are deeper and last longer than other recessions do”. Subsidies to home ownership have also weakened financial services. They encouraged more people to buy houses (which was the point), but, logically enough, also encouraged lenders to take greater risks with housing. This was fine while house prices were rising, but the fall exposed how vulnerable banks’ balance sheets had become. Moreover, if public policy aims to create wealth, there are other ways of doing it. People could invest their savings in the stockmarket and rent their homes, for example. Had they done so in the past two years, they would have done worse than homeowners. But for three decades before that, equity prices easily outstripped property prices (see chart 2), so in the long run equities have been a better bet than houses. (Admittedly, this strips out the effects of share dividends and imputed rents, which favour property.) Housing suffers from two further weaknesses as an investment. It sucks up disproportionately large amounts of money, falling foul of the idea that investors should diversify: in America the equity tied up in houses accounts for 45% of the net worth of the average householder. And it is illiquid. If you need to raise money, you cannot sell a room or two, whereas you can always sell a few shares. It is hard to argue houses are the best asset for building wealth. “Perhaps the most compelling argument for housing as a means of wealth accumulation”, argues Richard Green of the University of Southern California, “is that it gives households a default mechanism for savings.” Because people have to pay off a mortgage, they increase their home equity and save more than they otherwise would. This is indeed a strong argument: social-science research finds that people save more if they do so automatically rather than having to choose to set something aside every month. Yet there are other ways to create “default savings”, such as companies offering automatic deductions to retirement plans. In any case, some of the financial snake oil peddled at the height of the housing bubble was bad for saving. Subprime, interest-only and other kinds of mortgage instruments allowed people to buy their homes without a down-payment and without building up equity. “Negative amortisation” (neg-am) mortgages even let people pay only part of their interest each month and to add the rest to the principal, increasing their debt, not their savings. Home-equity loans had the same effect. Where the heart is The main arguments for home ownership, though, are not primarily economic, but social. Home ownership, argue those who want to expand it, benefits society because it encourages stable, more law-abiding communities; it makes people more likely to vote in local elections and join clubs; and it benefits future generations because, it turns out, the children of homeowners do better at school and have fewer behavioural problems than children of renters. On the face of it, the evidence for these claims is strong. In America homeowners are less likely to move than renters, so areas with a lot of homeowners are more stable. According to the 2007 American Housing Survey, homeowners stay where they are for about nine years whereas renters move every two. More stable neighbourhoods are more law-abiding. According to a study of New York City, the home-ownership rate was second only to income as an explanation for different crime rates. The link between ownership and political participation is stronger still. In America in the early 1990s, 69% of homeowners voted, compared with only 44% of renters. Homeowners are more likely to know who their representatives are; more likely to support local causes or parent-teacher associations and (this being America) more likely to go to church. Perhaps the most surprising link is between ownership and children. One study in America found that, in 2000, the mathematics scores of the children of homeowners were 9% higher than those of renters’ children; reading levels were 7% higher. This had nothing to do with income: the research controlled for that. In another study homeowners’ children were 25% more likely to graduate from high school and more than twice as likely to go to university. Their teenage daughters were also less likely to become pregnant. These studies, though, are not the last word. They find a link between children’s education and homeowning. But is this because, as some suggest, home ownership requires parents to possess managerial or financial skills that they pass on to their children? Or is it because the people with those skills help their children at school and also buy houses? No one knows. Nor is it certain that owners always take better care of their neighbourhoods than renters do. Some studies claim that the effect in fact depends on a few public-spirited people willing to set an example. Renters can be public-spirited too. In America areas with lots of renters tend to be transient because the typical rental period is short. In Germany, though, people rent for years. Stable neighbourhoods and widespread home ownership can go together but do not need to. As Bill Rohe of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill puts it, “evidence regarding the societal benefits of home ownership is highly conjectural.” Still, on balance, home ownership gives people a stake in the state of their surroundings. Thriving streets increase the value of properties, giving owners incentives to improve them further. Renters get no such benefit; they may even have to pay more if the neighbourhood improves. Whether stability is such a good thing in a downturn, though, is a different matter. A decade ago Andrew Oswald of Warwick University argued that owning your own home makes you more reluctant to move, so labour markets tend to become more rigid as home ownership increases. He claimed that increases in the level of home ownership (though not necessarily the level itself) are associated with rises in unemployment. Ireland, Greece and Spain all saw large increases in home ownership in the 1980s and 1990s, and had relatively high unemployment. America and Switzerland had stable ownership rates, and escaped the long-term rise in joblessness. His argument remains controversial. Critics point out that many things other than home ownership might prevent people from moving (children’s schools, friends and so on). Anyway, liquid housing markets should make it possible for people to move, if they want to. It is also possible that, even if people were trapped in distressed areas, jobs should move there to take advantage of the willingness of homeowners to accept lower wages. All that said, Mr Oswald’s arguments seem especially powerful at the moment. The recession in America is bearing down most heavily on two groups of states: Florida, California and Nevada, which had the largest house-building booms in the 1990s; and Michigan, New Hampshire, Delaware, West Virginia and Mississippi, which have the highest home-ownership rates. People are not, in fact, moving as frequently as they used to: the share of those moving house in 2007-08—11.9% of the population—was the lowest since records began. So labour markets look less flexible than they were. Negative equity exacerbates immobility because people are reluctant to move if it means selling at a loss. Researchers at the Wharton School reckon that people in negative equity are only half as likely to move as those who are not. In all these ways, high home ownership may prolong and deepen a recession. The problem remains of how to weigh the economic costs against the social benefits of home ownership. There can be no easy judgment about this but the recent rise and fall of house prices suggests both that the costs are greater and the benefits smaller than once thought. If owning were such a boon, you would expect neighbourhoods with lots of owners to have done better than those with lots of renters during the boom years. That does not seem to have happened What has happened, though, is that above a certain level, foreclosures have done a lot of damage during the bad years. Recent studies of New York and Cleveland find that, if lenders foreclose on 3-4% of properties in an area, local prices fall even faster and further than average. Rows of For Sale signs almost certainly have the same effect in Britain. In other words, ownership can sometimes be worse for a neighbourhood than renting. A shelter—for your money Lastly, and perversely, the decade of obsession with expanding home ownership may actually have reduced neighbourhood stability. Nicolas Retsinas, the director of the Joint Centre for Housing Studies at Harvard University, suggests that, until the crash in 2008, Americans were coming to see their homes as financial investments rather than as places to live. That is true in other countries. Neg-am mortgages in America and buy-to-rent arrangements in Britain were based on the assumption that houses were primarily investments. As a result, people seem to have started to buy and sell homes more frequently. Between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, the number of new houses sold almost doubled in America, from just over 600,000 to over 1.2m in 2006. Perhaps that made labour markets more mobile, but it was certainly not what policymakers were aiming for when they set out to increase home ownership. Their efforts in the past few years seem to have weakened, though not destroyed, the best arguments for treating home ownership as something to be encouraged: that it increases people’s savings and creates better neighbourhoods for everyone. But perhaps you should not be surprised by that. As Adam Smith wrote in “The Wealth of Nations” two centuries ago, “a dwelling-house, as such, contributes nothing to the revenue of its inhabitants.” 自有住房--是避难营还是重担, 自有住房带来的社会利益中看不中用，而且经济成本高昂。 电影《美妙生活》中有一个这样的场景:一对幸福的夫妇即将搬进新家。吉米斯图尔特所在的公司已向他们出售了抵押借款，他 表 关于同志近三年现实表现材料材料类招标技术评分表图表与交易pdf视力表打印pdf用图表说话 pdf 示“对一个要拥有自己房产的男人而言.....，这是基本的需要。”吉米为他们提供了基本生活所需求，因此“快乐、繁荣或会永存”。 这体现了盎格鲁撒克逊时期对自有住宅的看法。认为，拥有了自己的房子对房主有利，因其有助于财富积累;对经济有利，因其鼓励人们储蓄;对社会有利，因相较于租房者，屋主会更多地投资于所在地区，更多地参与公民活动，鼓励子女在校表现良好。简而言之，自有住房使每个人受益——不仅仅是房主——而且越多的人拥有住宅，益处越大。这就是其常常受政府鼓励的原因。在美国、爱尔兰和西班牙，房主可将所支付的抵押借款利息从其须纳税的收入中扣除。 然而全世界范围内的经济下行都热衷于这一社会政策所带来的假像奇观。灾难始于美国次级抵押借款违约，这是为扩大穷人拥有自有住宅而设计的金融工具。在提供低利率房贷的美国两大国有企业房利美和房地美破产后，违约加速。结果，美国自有住宅率连续四年下跌，为25年来首次。2008年，有230万家庭失去住宅或面临止赎权——是危机前均值的两倍——自有住宅率由2004年的69%降至2008年底的67.5%。英国2007至2008年间自有住房数量亦下滑，为上世纪50年代来首次。 补贴城堡 此番扩大自有住宅的努力却助推了经济危机进一步加深，而未实现其初衷。这如何影响支持自有住宅的论点,还应认为它对公众有利,几名经济学家和评论家对此持否定态度。2008年诺贝尔经济学奖得主保罗?克鲁格曼写道“鉴于美国政策相较租赁更倾向于支持自有住宅，你可以看到这样的事实:美国自有住房者泛滥。”哈佛大学经济学家爱德华?格莱泽认为“鼓励美国人将一切身家都下注在住房上是疯狂的。” 迄今为止，决策者还无动于衷。贝拉克?奥巴马二月中旬提出一个2.75亿美元支持美国住房市场的计划。盎格鲁-撒克逊世界外的尼古拉?萨科奇在竞选 总统时就要把法国转变为财产所有民主制国家，他已对穷人展开了零利率住房贷款。对自有住宅的主要经济论点，用布兰德斯大学托马斯?夏皮罗的话说就是“目前为止唯一最重要的家庭财富积累方式”。现在看来这个论点跟房价一样脆弱不堪。 英国房价自其2007年10月峰值已下挫21%。美国房价跌速虽缓但跌幅更甚，自其2006年年中峰值下挫了30%。这致使美国住宅总值由2007年的22万亿美元缩水至2008年末的19万亿。过去几周来，大西洋两岸的房地产市场已现曙光，但房价在最终触底前随时有进一步走跌的可能。房价暴跌最直接关系到的是两个 ”的人;还有那些办理重叠群组:那些在市场高点购入房产，目前面临“负资产 了次级抵押借款的人(在美国)。大约有1000万美国人处于“负资产”状态，即其抵押借款成本超过了房屋价值。英国约有3%的家庭处于这种状态。对处于“负资产”状态的房主来说，住房相较储钱罐更似罗网。那些支付不出钱的人到头来没了房子、存款还有(通常发生在美国)他们七年内的信用评级。 另一损失惨重的就是次级抵押贷款领域，其占美国抵押信贷市场的份额由2001年的7%升至2006年的20%以上。据美国抵押贷款银行协会数据，2008年第四季度过期还款比率为22%，而普通房屋贷款仅为5%。许多人已总结出，用克鲁格曼的话说就是“不是每个人都可有自有住房。”然而北卡罗来纳大学查普希尔分校的社区资本中心所做的一项研究对该结论提出了质疑。该研究对次级抵押借款人与从社区优先计划署借款的人加以比较，CAP是由政府支持、将钱借给那些本可办理次级抵押借款的人。虽然借款人的收入与背景相似，但后者的违约率仅为前者的四分之一。由此可见问题的部分真正原因是在于抵押借款，而非借款人，这意味着次贷危机是一种金融市场混乱及房地产市场的混乱。那还意味着自有住房还具有其支持者所宣称的经济利益么,支持此观点的论据有两个:其一，相较其它资产，房地产在此次危机中表现良好。在许多国家，股价较其峰值约降50%，相较股票持有人，房主处境不算坏。然而，处于下滑趋势的自有住房有一个很大的劣势:绝大多数人可直接购买股票，而买房则要有保证金(即无论如何都要占用一小笔资金)。如果股票下跌10%，则损失10%;如果房价下滑10%，损失的则是全部存款。美国房主对其所拥有房产的产权净值已由2005年峰值的12.5万亿美元暴跌至2008年末的8.5万亿美元。这也削弱了自有住房存在经济利益的观 点。 另一认为自有住房有好处的论据则为:迄今为止房价下滑已使当前大多数房主免遭绝对性损失。例如，美国房价仅跌回2004年水平。在2004至2007年间，房屋销售量大约为2900万套，而相比之下，在此之前就购房的1.15亿家庭来说，大概可坐享一份名义利润。然而，正如哈佛大学经济学教授马丁?费尔德斯坦所指出的，当房价上涨时，人们感觉比较富有，进而会借更多，花更多。而当他们感觉较穷时，即使他们的房价没有跌至其购入价以下，他们也许会削减借贷和支出。 对自有住房的补贴就是这样加大经济波动度的。它们刺激了消费，因房主可将其房屋用作附属担保品以支持消费和投资。美国在1997至2006年间资产增值抵押借款额达9万亿美元——相当于2006年可支配收入的90%以上。这样在经济繁荣时房主就有更多的钱可花，而在经济萧条时就捉襟见肘。英国2007年第四季度资产增值抵押借款增值相当于家庭税后收入的3%，但一年后却缩减了3%。因此房价的变动使经济周期恶化。国际货币基金组织的最新调查发现，自1960年以来的100多次衰退中有15%与房产泡沫有关，且缩水程度要比其它衰退严重而长久。对自有住房的补贴还削弱了金融服务业。他们鼓励更多的人购房(这就是重点)，而且在逻辑上足以鼓励贷方为这些住宅承担更大的风险。房价上涨时此举还好，但房价下跌时就会暴露银行的收支平衡会变得多么不堪一击。 此外，如果国家政策意在增加财富，还可有其它可行之策。如，人们将其存款投资于股市及把房屋出租。如果过去两年他们这么做的话，处境要比拥有自有住房差。但如果在三十年前，股票价格会轻易的超过房产价格，因此从长远来看，股票相较房屋是个更好的赌注。(诚然，这剔除了股票股息和估算租金资产，这对资产有利。)房屋作为一项投资受困于两大弱点。它吸收了不成比例的巨额资金，与多样化的投资理念不符:在美国，房屋占用的资本净值占房主平均资本净值的45%。而且它还不能兑现。如果你需要筹集资金的话，你不能卖掉一两间屋子，而你却能随时抛掉一些股票。真是难以论证房屋是最佳财富累积的资产。 南卡来罗纳大学的理查德?格林表示，“房屋作为一种财富积累手段最令人注目的论点或许是，它为家庭提供了一个默认存款机制。”因为人们必须偿付抵押借款，这样就增加了他们的家庭资本净值，并较其它所为可存更多的钱。这确 实是一个有力的论点:社会科学研究发现，如果他们按此自觉行事，而非每月必须选择为某事留有余款，他们会存更多的钱。然而还有其它方式产生“默认存款”，如公司提供的养老金自动扣缴 方案 气瓶 现场处置方案 .pdf气瓶 现场处置方案 .doc见习基地管理方案.doc关于群访事件的化解方案建筑工地扬尘治理专项方案下载 。无论如何，在房产泡沫高点兜售的某些骗人的金融方式则不利于储蓄。次级、付息及其它抵押借款工具允许人们在不预付定金和资本净值未不断增值的情况下购买房屋。“负分期付款”抵押借款甚至可允许人们每月仅付部分利息，并将剩余部分加到贷款本金中，增加的是其贷款额，并不是存款额。房屋净值贷款有着相同的效果。 重心何在 对自有住房的主要争议，尽管，不仅有主要的经济层面，还有社会层面。那些想扩大自有住房的人认为，自有住房可让社会受益，因为其促进社会安定，会有更多的遵纪守法社区;它使人们更愿意参与地区选举并加入社团;还可使未来的几代人受益，因为事实证明，相较租房者的子女，自有住房房主的子女在校表现良好，几无行为问题。 表面上来看，证明这些论点的论据很充分。在美国，自有住房者相较租房者更不愿搬家，因此有大量自有住房者的地区更安定。据2007年美国住房调查显示，自有住房者可在其居住地约住九年，而租房者每两年就搬一次家。更稳定的地区，其居民更守法。据纽约的一项研究显示，作为不同犯罪率的说明，自有住房率仅次于收入排在第二位。自有住房与政治参与间也有着很强的关联性。美国早在20世纪90年代初期，就有69%的自有住房者参与选举，而租房者与之相比仅为44%。自有住房者更想知道谁是他们的代表;更愿支持当地事业或教师家长会并(这里指美国)更愿去教堂。 或许最令人惊讶的关联要数房主与其子女间。美国的一项研究发现，在2000年，自有住房者孩子的数学成绩要比租房者孩子高出9个百分点;阅读水平要高7%。这与收入无关:该研究对此做了控制。另一项研究显示，自有住房者的孩子愿意从高等学府毕业的比率较租房者孩子高25%，而且想上大学的比率更是超过两倍。而其处于青春期的女儿们似乎也更不愿成为孕妇。 这些研究，虽然，并不是最后的定论。但他们发现了孩子教育与自有住房间的关系。但正如有些人所表示，这是否是因为自有住房要求父母拥有传达给其子女的管理或理财才能,或是因为拥有这些才能的人有助于其子女求学及助他们 买房子,没人知道 答案 八年级地理上册填图题岩土工程勘察试题省略号的作用及举例应急救援安全知识车间5s试题及答案 。肯定也不是自有住房者通常比租房者更加爱护所住地区。某些研究表明，实际效果取决于那些愿意以身作则具有公益精神的人。租房者也是有公益精神的。在美国，有大量租房者的地区趋于不稳定，因其租期典型的短暂。在德国，尽管，人们租期达数年之久。而稳定的地区与广大自有住房可以共存，但却没有这样做的必要。如北卡罗来纳大学查普希尔分校的Bill Rohe所述“关于自有住房带来社会利益的证据具有高度推测性。” 总的来说，在人们所处的周围环境中，自有住房还给予了他们一个重大利益。繁华的街区使房产增值，房主就有了进一步改善环境的动力。租房者却一无益处;如果周围环境改善的话，他们或许甚至要多花钱。 然而在经济低迷时期稳定是否是件好事，这要另当别论。十年前华威大学的安德鲁?奥斯瓦德表示，拥有住房的人更不愿搬家，因此当自有住房增加时劳动力市场倾向于变得更没有弹性。他声称，自有住房量的提高(虽然量本身并不是必要的)与失业率增加是有关联的。爱尔兰、希腊和西班牙在20世纪80和90年代自有住房大幅增加，相应地失业率也攀升。美国和瑞典自有住房率保持稳定，也就避免了长期以来失业人数的增加。他的论点仍存争议。批评家指出除了自有住房还有许多事情可阻止人们搬家(子女的学校、朋友等等)。不管怎样，只要人们想，房产市场的流动性就可使他们搬家成为可能。还有另一种可能:即使人们受困于失业人口比率高的地区，利用那些愿意接受较低工资的房主，工作可能会向这些地区变迁。 如上所言，奥斯瓦德先生的论点目前似乎尤为强势。美国经济的衰退正使两类州受创最为严重:一类是在20世纪90年代有着最大规模房屋建筑高峰的佛罗里达州、加利福尼亚州和内华达州;另一类是拥有最高自有住房率的密歇根州、新罕布什尔州、特拉华州、西费吉尼亚州和密西西比州。实际上人们并不如以往那样频繁搬家:2007至2008年间搬家人的比例——占人口的11.9%——是有记录以来的最低位。因此劳动力市场不如以往有弹性。“负资产”恶化了这种不动性，因为如果搬家意味着赔本出售的话，人们是不愿意搬的。沃顿商学院的研究人员认为，陷于“负资产”的人们搬家的意愿仅为不背负“负资产”人的一半。如此这般，高自有住房率或许会延长并加深衰退。存在的问题是如何权衡对自有住房带来社会利益的经济成本。对此进行评判可能不易，但近期房价的涨跌表明， 这两种情况下的经济成本要比预想的高，而利益则要小。如果自有住房真有益处的话，你就会预料在经济繁荣时期，那些拥有大量自有住房的地区比有大量租房者的地区要繁荣。这种现象似乎并未发生。然而所发生的是，在经济萧条期，丧失抵押品赎回权在高于某一水平的情况下造成了大量损失。纽约和克利夫兰的最新研究发现，如果某一地区的贷方取消3至4%的房产赎回权，那么当地房价下滑态势甚至较平常更快的进一步走软。英国成排房屋待售的景像几乎就是同样的结果。换句话说，自有住房有时会比租房对一地区不利。 钱包的避难所 最后，且是反常地，十年来对扩大自有住房的执着实际上或许已降低了地区安定。哈佛大学住宅联合研究中心主任尼古拉斯?雷特西纳斯表示，在2008年美国经济衰退之前，美国人将其房屋视为金融投资而非住宅。其它国家确实将其视为住宅的。美国的负摊还和英国的为租而买都是基于房屋是主要投资项目的认知。结果，人们似乎就开始更频繁地买卖房屋。在20世纪90年代中期至21世纪初期中叶，美国新屋销售量从仅60多万套到2006年超过120多万套，几乎翻番。或许这会使劳动力市场更有活力，但这确实不是决策者在制定提高自有住房策略时的初衷。过去几年里他们所做的努力似乎已削弱了，虽然未摧毁，认为自有住房可鼓励行之的最佳论点，即它可提高人们的存款及为大家创建更好的地区环境。但或许不应对此感到惊奇。正如200年前亚当?斯密在《国富论》中所写，“此类居所对居民收入一无所助。”