Home-buying speculation is rampant in China. Over a fifth of China’s homes are empty. That’s 50 Million Empty Apartments.
Soon-to-be-published research will show roughly 22 percent of China’s urban housing stock is unoccupied, according to Professor Gan Li, who runs the main nationwide study. That adds up to more than 50 million empty homes, he said.
The nightmare scenario for policy makers is that owners of unoccupied dwellings rush to sell if cracks start appearing in the property market, causing prices to spiral. The latest data, from a survey in 2017, also suggests Beijing’s efforts to curb property speculation — considered by leaders a key threat to financial and social stability — are coming up short.
Shop Till You Drop
Pure Speculation
An amazing 69% of recent home purchases have been second or third homes.
A housing bust is coming and it will hit China hard.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
I know someone who owns a couple of them and leaves them empty. They don’t even live in China, they live in the U.S. because they found sugar. They don’t pay property taxes?, and would rather not rent for many reasons, protecting the investment, dealing with rental tax, bad renters, who knows, I’m sure the reasons are good to want to buy apartment but leave it empty vs. trying to get an income from it. I know this person is a clean freak, they would not risk someone unclean going into their apartments.
“Grossly insensitive”? Please let’s have more gross insensitivity, aka truth. And if some snowflakes can’t handle the truth, let them suffer the consequences.
President Trump said nothing about the competence of the response to the fires. He focused “like a laser” (as Billie Clinton used to say) on the conditions which created the need for a response.
Forest specialists have been talking for years about mis-management of forests — mismanagement mainly driven by idiot urban “environmentalists” who know not of what they speak. The deaths & destruction in these fires can be laid directly at the door of foolish “environmentalists”. Maybe once the snowflakes have finished melting, we can finally get serious about how to manage forests, especially in the wildland/urban interface.
Strange! This comment suddenly showed up in the wrong thread.
I think this is really a very big big risk for China economy, especilly under trade war. Hah
What do you mean by “poppeti vaijues”? Also tinpotentate? Nice write up!
Note that in China most apartments are sold by the developer at the “roughed in” stage with no interior. The importance of the housing market in China’s economy should not be underestimated, this is where almost 75% of the country’s household wealth is stored and it is deeply interwoven with shadow banking.
A close look at housing in China and the customs under which deals are completed will give Americans some real surprises. After reading the article below you may question both the quality of how well these housing units have been finished and how many may never get “finished” or occupied.
I’m certain that a lot of these empty units are in areas that are primarily unoccupied already. Urban zones in cities are leveling and rebuilding rapidly, and the cities themselves are picking up population through rural migration. Prporty prices are stable while rent is increasing must faster lately. Inflation is driving fast and never talked about, lest found critical of government and found out about through social circles.
Meltdown in China is quite probable within a couple years, real estate could very well be the lightning rod!
Second & third homes? I can’t help wondering if we are getting confused by cultural differences?
Pure anecdote — some Chinese friends say that many Chinese people do not like the idea of a mortgage. Instead, they borrow money within the family, rather than from a bank. Perhaps those apartment purchases for sons & daughters are being classified as second & third homes? After all, if someone in the family has cash, all this practice does is cut out the banker middleman.
While I agree with much of what you say, I really like how you said it…well written
More than nuclear explosions, aids, wars, plagues, Scary Muslim Virgins and any other supposed ills; the banksters getting the average idiot to fall for the childish drivel that a roof over ones head is some sort of “investment,” is the single greatest calamity to ever befall humankind.
Resulting in a virtually endless supply of zero value add, utterly incompetent at anything productive nor valuable whatsoever idiots; lining up to pump their fists in illiterate support of whichever pathetic tinpotentate-wannabe promises to harass, rob and steal from their neighbors, in order to increase the idiots’ poppeti vaijues. While also promising to do all he can to keep as many as possible homeless, hence desperate enough to accept grossly overpaying for the cheering, incompetent idiots’ cheaply constructed, trashy, roach infested shacks. All while the idiots themselves run around flaunting their complete, undifferentiated idiocy; by genuinely believing this has anything whatsoever, even in the slightest, to do with what they are told is called “capitalism,” “freedom” and “markets.”
They sure do like to gamble.