Monday, October 1, 2012

Financial deregulation and Housing Bubble

From 2007, the outstanding performance of the financial institutions gave way to the bursting of the housing bubble. Real estate whose fees have a permanent character and recurring such as rental management and property administration resisted but the pace of transactions and starts declined sharply. This has caused an awareness on the part of banks reacted in: Stopping the acquisitions or investments in the real estate sector; Closing some real estate agencies; Restructuring their activities to promote consistency and readability of various trades; In addition, buyers found that they could not (for regulatory or governance) or failed to make the synergies that were announced and anticipated between the Bank's businesses and real estate. The real estate crisis has significantly slowed the enthusiasm of Banks. However, they must adapt their distribution model to the development of brokers. Indeed, the market share of the brokerage has grown steadily in recent years at the expense of traditional banking channels to locate currently around 22% of loans in Europe. This reflects an underlying trend as evidenced by other European markets where brokers capture 30% market share in Germany, 55% in Spain, 60% in the Benelux and even 66% in Britain. This figure reaches 70% loan in the United States. Brokers will therefore still snatch market share to banks pocketing pass finder's fees and thereby reducing margins to bankers. The temptation to control the upstream chain is always present. For this purpose, banks may acquire brokers. However, this strategy undermines the necessary independence of brokers and therefore generates a significant commercial risk (which could partly explain the current difficulties in the online broker). The alternative lies in the implementation of partnerships as do several networks developing funding in areas such as real estate agencies. Some banks even completely integrate the entire chain, from start to finish, offering new "space property" bringing together in one place all relevant interlocutors customers for their real estate projects. These "megastores estate" virtual or physical, may well be the response of banks to prevent erosion.

Financial Deregulation and Mortgage

Since the 1990s, as a result of financial deregulation (elimination of many forms of credit given) and increased competitive pressure, banks have a policy of proactive moderation tariff to maintain their market share and attract customers. The mortgage has become one of the main instruments of conquest and customer loyalty. To compensate for the low profitability of this product appeal, banks have created packages for project acquisition or rental investment. The formulas include, in addition to financing, more profitable products such as insurance homeowners, a guarantee of unpaid rent, a consumer credit to finance the cost of installation or, more recently, and technical diagnostics. However, the innovation supply is not differentiating between institutions as products and services are easily transferable. Banks have sought to decide the level of integration of certain banking and non-banking in the real estate value chain. Encouraged by economic growth, the most major banking networks have invested or increased their presence in the real estate industry since 1999 in search of new growth. The competition has essentially moved upstream of the value chain: developers and real estate services companies have become prime targets for banks. Most banks have adopted a strategy of external growth by making acquisitions in the field of promotion and taking position in real estate transactions as well as property management. In fact: The development sector is supported by a structurally strong demand in contrast to the saturation of the market for retail banking. In a context of rising property prices, the transaction sector has opportunities high income related to the amount of transactions and the sector can also monetize the distribution system through cross-selling. The field of property management has the advantage of generating recurring revenues relatively insensitive to potential downturns because of the captive nature of the clientele. Mapping below shows the result of this current wave of purchase. One can see those mutual banks and especially the largely integrated upstream activities of the value chain.