Welcome to the Netherlands house price boom 2018 version

by Shaun Richards

As many of the worlds central bankers enjoy the delights of the Jackson Hole conference it is time for us to look what might be regarded as a measuring stick of their interventions. To do so we travel across the channel and take a look at the housing market in the Netherlands which was described like this on Tuesday.

In July 2018, prices of owner-occupied houses (excluding new constructions) were on average 9.0 percent higher than in the same month last year. The price increase was slightly higher than in the preceding months. House prices were at an all-time high in July 2018, according to the price index of owner-occupied houses, a joint publication by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and the Land Registry Office (Kadaster).

So we see an acceleration as well as an all-time high in price terms and it is hard not to have a wry smile at this being the nation must famous for Tulips. Anyway for those who have not followed this particular saga it has been far from a story of up,up and away.

House prices reached a record high in August 2008 and subsequently started to decline, reaching a low in June 2013. The trend has been upward since then.

The timing of the change is a familiar one as that coincides pretty much with the turn in the UK. Although the exact policy moves were different his provokes the thought that central bankers were thinking along not only the same lines but at the same time. Of course there were differences as for example the Bank of England introducing the house price friendly Funding for Lending Scheme and Mario Draghi announcing “Whatever it takes ( to save the Euro) in the summer of 2012, followed by a cut in the deposit rate to 0% at the July meeting. As to synchronicity it was raised at the ECB press conference.

And my second question is: China also cut rates today and we had further stimulus from the Bank of England. We were just kind of wondering about, you know, how much coordination was involved. Was there any sort of contact between you and the People’s Bank of China and the Bank of England?

Actually the ECB move was more similar to the Bank of England’s actions than in may have first appeared as it too was subsiding the “precious”

 One is the immediate effect on the pricing of the €1 trillion already allotted in LTROs.

That sort of thing tends to lead to lower mortgage interest-rates so let us move onto the research arm of the Dutch central bank the DNB.

Average mortgage interest rates charged by Dutch banks have been declining for some time. Between January 2012 and May 2018, average rates fell by around two percentage points.

Actually the fall was pretty much complete by the autumn of 2016 and since then Dutch mortgage rates have been ~2.4%. That pattern was repeated in general across the Euro area so we see like in the UK mortgage rates were affected much more by what we would call credit easing ( LTROs etc in the Euro area) than by QE which inverts the emphasis placed on the two by the media. Also slightly surprisingly Dutch mortgage rates are higher than the Euro area average which according to the DNB are topped and tailed like this.

Rates vary widely across the euro area, however, with the lowest average rates currently being charged in Finland (0.87%) and the highest in Ireland (3.11%).

In case you are wondering why we also get an explanation which will set off at least some chuntering amongst Irish readers.

Households in Finland tend to opt for mortgages with a short fixed interest period, in which the rates are linked to Euribor. Irish banks charge relatively high margins when setting mortgage interest rates.

 

Saving the Dutch banks?

You may wonder at the mimicking of Mario Draghi’s words but if we step back in time there were plenty of concerns as house prices fell from 120.9 for the official index in August 2008 to 95 in June 2013. Consider the impact on the asset base of the Dutch banking sector is we add in this from the DNB.

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Almost 55% of the aggregate Dutch mortgage debt consists of interest-only and investment-based mortgage loans, which do not involve any contractual repayments during the loan term. They must still be repaid when they expire, however.  ( October 2017).

Actually it was worse back then.

. Since 2013, the aggregate interest-only debt has decreased by over EUR 30 billion, and it currently stands at some
EUR 340 billion………. Between 1995 and 2012, virtually none of the mortgage loans taken out involved any contractual repayments during the loan term.

Also back then it was permitted to have loans of more than 100% of the value of the property so the banks faced lower house prices with an interest-only mortgage book some of which had loans larger than the purchase price. What could go wrong?

Several years ago, the economic
slowdown and the housing market correction were mutually reinforcing.

As to the level of debt well that is high for the Dutch private sector according to the DNB.

 In the third quarter of 2017, household and corporate debt came to 106% and 120% of GDP respectively, which is high from an international perspective.

Comment

The “Whatever it takes” saga is usually represented as a move to bail and indeed bale out places like Greece,Ireland, Portugal and Spain and that was true. But it is not the full story because some northern European countries had previously behaved in what they would call a southern European manner and the Netherlands was on that list. We have seen already how the central bank described the housing markets troubles as being in a downwards spiral with the overall economy so let us see if that is true on the other side of the coin. Now house prices are booming what is going on in the economy?

According to the first estimate conducted by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) based on currently available data, gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by 0.7 percent in Q2 2018 relative to the previous quarter…….According to the first estimate, GDP was 2.9 percent up on the same quarter in 2017.  ( Statistics Netherlands )

How very British one might say. If you were thinking of areas in the economy affected by the housing market well……

Output by construction companies showed the strongest growth in Q2 2018………Investments in residential property, commercial buildings, infrastructure and machinery increased in particular.

Also higher house prices and possible wealth effects?

In Q2, consumers spent well over 2 percent more than in Q2 one year previously. For 17 quarters in a row, consumer spending has shown a year-on-year increase.

So the housing market turned and then consumption rose. Of course correlation does not prove causation and other factors will be at play but should Mario Draghi read such numbers his refreshing glass of Chianti will taste even better.

Is this an economic miracle? The other side of the coin is represented by Dutch first time buyers who will be increasingly squeezed out especially in the major cities. There we see something familiar as international investors snap up property ahead of indigenous buyers just like London and so many other cities have seen. The official story is familiar too as they are told because of lower mortgage rates affordability is fine but of course the capital burden relative to income rises and that matters more in a country where interest-rate only mortgages are still 40% of new borrowing. At least most borrowing seems to be fixed-rate now but more fundamentally as we look at this we see a familiar refrain which is can any meaningful rise in interest-rates be afforded now? On that road we see why Mario Draghi has kicked any such discussion into the lap of his successor.

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