No matter how hot they get, property markets tend to cool in the same ways. Attention starts to shift from year-on-year price changes to month-on-month comparisons. Transactions dry up. The shares of listed developers suffer, as they offer incentives to shift inventory. Analysts start to talk about “froth” being “skimmed.” All this is happening now in China, where prices in more than half of the 70 biggest cities were flat, or fell, between July and August.

　　不管一個地方的房地產市場曾有多熱，他們最終都傾向于以相同方式降溫。市場注意力開始從年度價格變化，轉移至月度價格變化。交易量趨向枯竭。上市房地產開發商通過促銷來出售庫存，牽連其股價遭受打擊。分析人士開始談論市場的“去泡沫”化。所有這一切目前正在中國發生，全國70個最大的城市中，有半數以上城市在今年7月至8月期間房產價格下降或持平。

　　There are few reasons to suspect a crash is imminent. Households are generally not buying properties they cannot afford with money they do not have – the proximate cause of the collapse in the US and elsewhere. There are still very powerful incentives for buyers to load up on property: low interest rates on both deposits and loans, and a very shortlist of alternative outlets for savings. Local governments, which depended on land sales for about a third of their revenues last year, also have a strong interest in keeping prices high. Only two cities responded to the government’s July call for added restrictions on housing purchases, for example.

　　 沒有什么理由推測中國樓市即將崩盤。中國的家庭一般不會用自己還沒有的錢，去購買自己無法承擔的物業——而這是美國和其他國家出現房地產危機的直接原因。市場仍為購房者置業提供著強大動力：貸款和存款的利率都比較低，儲蓄投資的其它渠道也相當有限。地方政府也有強大利益保持房價高企，去年其財政收入的大約三分之一都依賴土地交易。例如，7月份只有兩個城市響應了政府要求收緊購房限制的呼吁。

　　Still, some sense of a cycle would be welcome. In the 17 years since the State Council abolished the allocation system of housing, allowing apartments to become privately-traded commodities, the market has never experienced anything close to a slump. That has led investors to believe that prices can only go one way. Demonstrating otherwise is fraught with risk, given that the property sector accounts for more than a quarter of final domestic demand in China, according to UBS estimates. Yet policymakers should take their cue from the 76 per cent of respondents to a central bank survey last week who complained that prices were too high – the highest level since real estate data were first included in the quarterly poll in 2009. If social stability is policymakers’ overarching aim – and it is – a slowdown is more than just desirable.

　　但話說回來，有一點周期的感覺將是可喜的。自中國國務院取消住房分配制度、允許公寓房成為私人交易商品的17年以來，中國樓市從來沒有經歷過任何大幅下滑。這讓投資者相信房價只會朝著一個方向走。展示其它情形是充滿風險的，據瑞銀(UBS)估計，中國房地產行業占國內最終需求逾四分之一。盡管如此，政策制定者仍應從央行上周一份調查結果得到一些啟發，76%的受訪者抱怨房價過高——這是該民意調查2009年首次將房地產數據納入問卷以來，人數比例最高的一次。如果說維持社會穩定是政策制定者的首要目標——事實也正是如此——那么樓市減速就不僅僅只是可取而已。