Global Investing

The desperate days when Chinese property developers offered free cars as an inducement to homebuyers look to be over.

Sales and earnings figures indicate some of the gloom is lifting as developers have enjoyed a second straight month of rising sales. Vanke, China’s biggest developer by sales, said last week that March sales had risen 24 percent year on year, while  2011 profits rose 30 percent. Another firm, China Overseas Land, posted a 21.5 percent profit rise last year.

The mood is reflected in stock prices. While the Shanghai shares index has risen less than 5  percent this year,  a sub-index of Chinese property companies has risen 13 percent. Shares in Vanke and COL are up 13 percent and 22 percent respectively. A Reuters poll of fund  managers showed that investors had upped their weighting for property stocks to 10.9 percent at the end of March, the highest level in two years.

The share rally has continued even though the government has dashed hopes it will soon wind down its two-year campaign  to bring down property prices.  It has also bucked a broad housing market slowdown (home prices fell for the fifth straight month in February) amid signs that Chinese authorities are unlikely to provide the economy with any further stimulus. Analysts at Citi said in a recent note:

Developers’ comfort under current tightening (policy) and confidence in a stable outlook suggests the toughest time for China’s property sector is over.

Warren Buffett is in talks to buy GMAC's mortgage lender Residential Capital, the New York Post reports. Teamed up with Appaloosa Management and Avenue Capital, Buffett has large debt positions in the gut-shot company, according to the Post. In September, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and Leucadia National agreed to buy Capmark Financial Group's mortgage loan and servicing business for up to $490 million.

If the residential property market hasn't begun a solid recovery, it certainly established a solid bottom over the past six months. New home sales figures out yesterday were shockingly weak, but keep in mind that November and December are not particularly hot months for residential real estate, and new home sales are a much smaller chunk of the market than the existing portion. Lots of analysts were expecting the housing recovery to face a test as we get closer to the extended deadline in March for the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit.

But it's a rare investor who gets rich betting against Warren Buffett. And if he's looking to buy low, he could hardly have done better than ResCap. The lender has been flirting with dangerously low capital levels, with the Post reporting it is bouncing around the minimum required net worth of $250 million. It had a tangible net worth of $409 million at the end of the third quarter. The mortgage company has lost over $10 billion in the last three years. The number of loans delinquent rose to 13.40 percent at the end of June from 11.50 percent at the end of 2008.