It takes a bold forecaster to claim that China’s property sector is beginning to resemble that of Japan’s in the late 1980s and an even braver one to predict that this may be a good thing.
But that is exactly the thesis of Spencer Leung, an analyst with UBS in Hong Kong. He argues that as escalating price-to-income ratios for housing put it out of the reach of the middle classes – and in Beijing the ratio has already reached a stratospheric 27:1 - they will stop saving to buy homes and splash out on big-ticket consumer goods like cars and suits instead.
In Japan, the number of people in rented property who said they were saving to buy dropped from 33 per cent in 1977 to 15 per cent in 1986 as property became more unaffordable.
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