China Has Been Covertly Funding A Housing Bubble Five Times Larger Than That Of The US: 65 Million Vacant Homes Uncovered

This article is a guest contribution by ZeroHedge.com.

China just announced that its Q2 GDP came in at 10.3%, just below a consensus estimate of 10.5%. Surprisingly, for some odd reason the market seems to believe this "data." Although in retrospect, based on China's bottom-up GDP goalseeking, the number is completely irrelevant, could very easily be true, based on two just-announced stunners about the Chinese economy.

The first comes from Fitch, which in a report released today titled Informal Securitisation Increasingly Distorting Credit Data, uncovers that China has in fact been massively underrepresenting the actual amount of new loans in the first half of 2010, courtesy of precisely the kinds of securitization deals that blew up half of our own banking system: "Adjusted for informal securitisation activity, Fitch estimates that the net amount of new CNY loans extended in H110 was closer to CNY5.9trn, or 28% above the official figure of CNY4.6trn...on a flow basis the volume of credit being shifted off balance sheets in recent times has been large and rising. Activity also is largely concentrated among just a few dozen banks, and institution?specific exposure is often much higher." And some are wondering why China's AgBank was scrambling to raise $20 billion via a hurried IPO...

Yet this data pales in comparison with disclosure from a recent article in South China Morning Post, in which an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences noted estimates from electricity meter readings that there are about 64.5 million empty apartments and houses in urban areas of the country.

This number is five times larger than the roughly 12 million in total US public (3.89 million) and shadow (8 million as estimated by Morgan Stanley) home inventory available currently. Forget Stephen Roach - China is covertly funding and creating a housing bubble that is at least 5 times as big as that of the United States. We leave it up to you to imagine the consequences of that particular bubble's bursting...

The Fitch report is pretty self-explanatory (presented below) but here is a section that highlights that China's banks are increasingly becoming more opaque in data presentation, which one can assume is due to their unwillingness to reveal the true state of affairs. Of course the same tactic worked very well for our own subprime sector... until virtually every company in the space went bankrupt in the span of 3 weeks in 2007.

Already Weak Disclosure is Getting Even Worse

Data on the sale and re-packaging of loans into CWMPs has always been sparse, but, historically, observers have been able to track activity by the number of CWMPs issued each month using information collected by small third-party data providers. However, as public scrutiny of informal securitisation has risen, Fitch has observed a noticeable worsening of Chinese banks’ already poor disclosure of this activity.

Some banks very actively engaged in transactions last year are showing up in 2010 data as minimally involved, yet the bank’s own salespeople (responding to Fitch’s enquiries) state that business remains as strong as ever. Meanwhile, private placements of products to institutional investors are becoming more commonplace, most of which are never disclosed to any entity but the CBRC. Because of this worsening in disclosure, data from third-party providers is capturing less and less transaction flow, with as much as 40% of deals in H110 going uncaptured, versus less than 10% prior to end?2009.

As for actual issuance metrics, as Fitch says, the "volume of credit being re?packaged on the rise."

Data on the number of outstanding CWMPs and CTPs shows net issuance accelerating in H209 as credit conditions tightened, followed by a flattening out in H110 (Chart 3). While the recent moderation in part reflects the looser credit environment in H110, the significant worsening in disclosure in 2010 also has been a major factor distorting recent data. Indeed, when historical figures are adjusted to strip out the entity that most conspicuously dropped out of issuance figures in 2010, net product issuance swings from �’7% to +1% in H110.

There is much more in the full report, presented below.