I would guess deep east Beijing (Changying, Beiyuan, etc.) is some of the hardest hit areas in Beijing. It has been promised to be a new city for so many years, and they definitely have done the housing and malls part of it, but it's missing the jobs part. They are trying, but there are so many cheap and empty nice offices in Chaoyang and HaiDian that it's just hard to get companies interested in going that far out.
My place is 500m walk to Chaoyang hospital Changying Branch. Absolutely brand new hospital.
300m walk to paradise walk and 2 subway stops from joy city. And 30 minutes by taxi to Sanlitun depending on traffic. 20 minutes away from t3 and the new Chaoyang train station. It’s such a primo location.
That's a sweet location. For some reason in my head in my mind Changying was way out in the burbs, and I guess parts of it are, but you're still in dense urban where you are.
Yeah it’s literally the best part of the city.
It’s on line 6 and line 1 shuang qiao isn’t too far. Maybe like 10 minutes by car.
It’s like 5 bus stops to AIDI and Kaiwen. There’s a mosque nearby if that’s your thing.
Oh and if you wanna go to Shunyi or Wangjing it’s like 20-30 minutes away by didi.
That's funny. Every time property is discussed online folks pipe up that Shanghai hasn't lost anything or even risen during this slump. I wonder if that's the official line. I do know that my neighbor landlord (I live in the FFC) told my wife that the apartment was worth 11 million a few years ago but the current market price is more like 8.5-9. That's my one bit of anecdotal evidence to add.
That's a good question I always interpreted it as the price per square meter. Because my number of transactions is a terrible metric for something like this.
Okay but part of a market's health has to be the rate/frequency of sales. For example, unchanging prices but dropping number of sales would be a major piece of information.
That sounds like the US after the financial crisis. This is not insurmountable, so long as the government takes swift action and avoids zombie banks (like Japan in the 1990's).
I've little faith in how accurate agents data truely is. It is in their own benefit to adjust numbers either higher/lower depending on what they want to achieve.
Though since China doesn't release a ton of data anymore which is related to the economy, I reckon it's safe to say it's not in a great shape. But do people in China (and out of China) really grasp what's going on. We just observe, I have a property in the market for years myself. But I don't think anyone really understands the full extend how fucked matters are.
To give some idea how fucked things are, Kingold has a property called "bayview", it was the most luxurious, expensive property in the market for a decade. After a decade still barely half got sold the rest remained on their balance sheets. It's insane this is possible yet.. here we are. The daughter of Greenland Shanghai was a landlord of mine, she has left the country also years ago. It's kinda telling how everyone with wealth escapes and has no intend to come back.
Do you think the big Chinese banks are being propped up like Japan's back in the 1990's? It seems strange that Beijing would follow such a strategy, but with Emperor Xi it may be different. I cannot understand China's policies for the last 5-10 years. Everything before made sense, but after that nothing does.
It seems like you guys are angry because all your cope just fall flat like Qanon.
Tried tariffs, gave China 1 trillion trade surplus.
Tried blocking TikTok, more users than ever download it.
Tried promoting fake genocide, fake investigative journalist gets deported.
That's a consequence of China's overproduction, weak domestic demand, and a manipulated weak yuan.
You say it like it's a good thing when industrial profits are down, percentage of businesses losing money is at a 20 year high, and imports are down.
It's like an overweight cancer patient celebrating their weight loss. Looking at it in isolation might seem good, but the larger picture says otherwise.
Just watching economic realities emerge. When price/income ratios for real estate hit 30+ times. What else is going to happen?
With China’s collapsing population, tens of millions of unoccupied apartments and negative public sentiment I suspect real estate will be like Japan’s lost decades on steroids.
What I have observed from foreign Sinophiles is that our government can provide just a vague number and all these idiots will helpfully fill in the blanks on its behalf.
Say, for example, there have been recently these bots spamming about us having >90% home ownership rate. Ask the same cretans regurgitating that bullshit about mingong and they will give you a blank stare.
The way we "fix" problem is through number manipulation. This has been our nation's proud tradition since at least the Great Leap Forward. Home ownership really doesn't mean shit when it comes to understanding housing problems in depth. What you want is the number of people actually living in a place that they have bought.
So, here's the reality check. Taking away the mingong, a big chunk of that number instantly vanishes into thin air. Then you account for people owning a "flat" (in whatever stage of incompletion), another big chunk also disappears. I'd say even >60% seemed too generous an estimate, but I could be off.
Terms like 历史的垃圾时间) were coined by Chinese locals not the West silly..
Even 躺平 and 摆烂 are totally original borne of the times in China..
The metaphors local Chinese use on Weibo to express their frustrations of the last few years are SO CREATIVE.. If even half of this was used for REAL innovation, HuaWei would not need to use Western chips in their "innovative" goods..
Terms like 历史的垃圾时间) were coined by Chinese locals not the West silly..
Even 躺平 and 摆烂 are totally original borne of the times in China..
Nah, you see, those are just words the CIA and "external forces” whispering into our ears. It's not as if we have the mental capacity to look at our wallets or the job market and go "fuuuuucck" anyway.
Hell, I pulled out the bedsheets this morning, and there he was: a CIA agent sitting right under the bed frame with an ear trumpet still in his hand! So I reported that menace to our great nation to the authorities and got a big-arse fancy medal right afterwards. True story.
You know, I would be extremely impressed if the CIA somehow possesses the linguistic talent to create memes like 历史的垃圾时间 and make it popular in a nation of 1.4b.
Like, really impressed. They would have clearly missed their calling as linguists.
Impossible to keep something to central to the economy secret. Not only is the ongoing crash obvious to everyone, but the bubble that led to it had been growing for years, with unprecedented amounts of surplus apartments, of debt tied to it that will never be repaid. Such a bubble always ends with a crash, the only question is when – what triggers it. We now know of course it was the government and its 三条红线.
The biggest problem isn't the crash, it's the government trying to pretend there isn't one. But they can't prevent it, no more than they can stop the sun rising every day. Their attempts to deny it only make matters worse by prolonging the adjustment. They really need to let the market sort itself out. In particular allow assets of bankrupt firms to be sold off to the highest bidder(s). That will restart the market, and boost confidence, as suddenly very affordable properties stream onto the market.
The government is trying to crash slowly be pretending the market isn't imploding while fully knowing it Will. Essentially they want to trick people thinking the market isn't going to crash to prevent an immediate sell of only prolonging the actual sell off. The people rich or smart to realize the market is cooked are selling out and taking the hit. The dumb, or desperate hold on while they are the bag holders.
Probably they think given time they can save the housing market but they can't. It's much too far gone for it to be saved. Plus the way they could in theory save it, by shovelling RMB at it, is the reason it got in trouble in the first place. Mindlessly lending money to zombie firms doesn't fix them, it just creates yet more debt, more wasted investment.
Every month they delay a proper recovery is a month extra of pain. But, even worse, the pain is not shared around evenly. The rich and well connected will move their assets overseas, if they haven't already, to insulate themselves from this. Middle income people who've invested in Chinese property will have their wealth wiped out. The poor who could not afford new apartments still won't be able to, while the government props up valuations.
The government is trying to crash slowly be pretending the market isn't imploding while fully knowing it
You're being too generous.
Consider memecoins. Memecoins are all about finding the next sucker to offload your current holdings onto before the whole market implodes.
In the same way, I say this strategy of keeping the numbers hush-hush is not really about staving off the implosion one day at a time, which is almost certainly inevitable, but rather giving enough time for those running the show to restructure their portfolios before the "rugpull".
The government wants to deleverage. Essentially if half the states or provinces aka the elite are bankrupt due to the collapse of the housing bubble that's bad. If it's only a few China wouldn't be worried. The issue I suspect is government was expecting to see the finances to be not that bad. Then realized no they're leveraged beyond the Max so the government wants to bail water out of a sinking ship just enough so it can get the people it wants out of the market.
A sudden crash will cause significant problems in the economy quickly and they don't want to repeat like what happen in the 2008 housing crisis in the US.
I would disagree what others say that they call this a housing crash in China. The government is trying to deflate the bubble and it is working and they did that by the local government buying off the excess properties and renting them off. Evergrande is already gone and now Vanke is up next to see if will stand on its own without government help.
When 70% of household wealth is tied up into an asset, it is bad.
The key takeaway is not to allow a single asset class make up 70% of your household wealth. Particularly when that asset class just parks capital in unproductive assets.
It has a big effect on spending too, people save more when they feel they are losing money. This will have a huge effect on the economy in China and its really too big to bail.
It's not collapsing, but economy and market are really in the shitter. It's not only silly doom talk this time. Speak with average Chinese people, and you will find almost none with a positive sentiment about the economy. First 2 years of Covid I had friends gloating about how much better China was doing than the rest of the world, economically- and pandemic-wise.
Now: Nobody wants to spend more than absolutely necessary on daily things. Job market for people without education but hands on experience in their 50s was very easy to navigate until 2019, now I hear a lot of stories of people being jobless and underwater, be it due to medical debt or house loans.
And thanks to the housing market on a downward trajectory for so long, even the older generations with traditional ideas about property ownership before marriage finally understand that it's not always a no brainer to put the family funds into real estate. So one of the markets long-term demand driver is currently on pause.
For a lot of them this is their wake up call that their government will not be able to just "not allow" property prices to drop. And when their wealth building strategy, as naive as it may seem to outsiders, solely rested on that idea, it's quite dramatic for them.
More than five years later, the subsequent bust shows no sign of easing. According to Barclays, a British bank, more than $18 trillion (€15.38 trillion) in household wealth has evaporated as home values collapse.
It’s really insane how they attack you for pointing out that China doesn’t make housing a commodity AND SUGGESTING THEY SHOULD ACTUALLY OWN THEIR HOMES INSTEAD OF BEING IN DEBT SLAVERY. If you’re looking to buy real estate in country run by COMMIES than you deserve the Darwin Award.
To anyone with a brain stop suggesting things. If people want to live in debt slavery and make the country worse let them do it. Like in tough parenting the saying is, they only learn when they actually touch the hot stove.
Make housing impossible no problem, 50 year mortgages no problem, $60,000 economy cars no problem. Stagnant wages for 20 years no problem.
Enjoy what you vote for.
Considering China’s population can up to halve by end of century it makes sense real-estate may not end up being the investment it is elsewhere. Over abundance in hot areas may be nearly as bad as current supply constraints.
I still cannot understand why they do not simply force bankruptcies and sell off all the sieved assets at a market-clearing price. This is not an unusual strategy. They could easily set up a good bank and a bad bank, dump all the bad yet unsaleable assets into the bad bank, and send the proceeds of the liquidated assets to the good bank.
It does not make sense to me why they avoid doing this, unless it is a political thing (too many Red Princes would get burned). The country could certainly use more and cheaper housing, and a good bank/bad bank strategy would offer precisely that.
I am still getting endless light shows and bullet trains to nowhere on X as proof that you are an american imperialist running dog who is low IQ, works for the CIA, automatically votes Trump and loves to have a shootout every 20 minutes.
This has to be China's worst kept secret because I've been hearing about it for the last year or so. Also, if you are a young person, affordable housing isn't a bad thing. Where I live in the States, houses have gone 3X in value in a decade
The recent drop in real estate prices in China is actually a deliberate move by the government to squeeze out market bubbles and guide the sector toward a healthier path. Over the past few years, through steady and measured regulation, the overheated market has been gently cooled down, avoiding a sudden crash.
Money that once flooded into property is now gradually flowing into more essential areas—like semiconductors, new energy, and tech innovation—sectors that truly need support for long-term growth. This shift has also made homes more affordable for younger generations, easing some of the pressure to own a place. After all, housing is for living in, not for speculation.
So, the era of breakneck growth in real estate is over. The market is now entering a new phase—one focused on quality, sustainability, and meeting real needs. It’s a transition that feels more stable and balanced, and honestly, it’s better for everyone in the long run.
Because people love to spread rumors, and fear mongering will cause panics that destabilizes the society. And in China 乱 is the biggest No No. Is the government stopping all housing sales reporting?
Yes - but no.
The problem is, that china has compared to outher countrys an extreme high rate of ownership on appartments.
And a lot of people took a loan from the bank to pay for it.
If you buy an appartment for 1.000.000 and its only worth 750.000 now, you can not move or sell it without loosing money.
Because of the population curve, there are more people loosing money, that new buyers, that are happy over affordable appartments... and those who normaly would buy now say: maybe if i wait for one or two more years, the appartments will be cheaper.
No, because the chinese marked works different. Its not like US or EU, where the maiority cant affort houses or appartments.
China had a very long period of rising income, so most of the people bought "to expensive" in trust, that income and value of the appartment would rise.
So in the same time appartmemts lose value and sallery increases slower than "usualy".
About 90% of China's population own their homes - it's one of the highest rates in the world. 80% of those are owned without a mortgage. The problem is that a huge amount of that 90% owned multiple properties, and those extra properties were their main investment / store of wealth. So the house prices going down erodes their wealth . . . and honestly, maybe even has a bigger effect as you need to sell the apartments to take wealth out and the market is so bad and the quality of many apartments so poor that it may be hard to find ANYONE to buy them. In a bubble economy even unfinished concrete towers on the outskirts of tier 5 look good, but who will pay money for that now?
Not a great situation, because housing is still very expensive, even after how far it has fallen. It has to fall a lot more to be a 'great opportunity'. But the larger point is that Chinese who don't own their homes already is a realtively small percentage of the population. As I stated, 90% already own their own homes. They bought extra properties as investments / way to park wealth and now those investments are underwater (if they took out mortgages) or just worth a lot less than they were 5 years ago.
No, for two reasons:
1) even if you are in need, you try to avoid buying, because next year the same appartment might be cheaper.
2) most people are already owning appartments. So in general its a loose for the overwelming maiority of people, not just for investors spending their "pocket money".
There was a 15% down payment rule in place so if they bought the property in 2022 then yes they are under water. But also pretty daft for buying a property in a declining market. Renting would have been the logical choice.
If they bought the property in 2020...they already paid off some of it so they should be about the water line.
If they bought earlier then they are still fine.
Of course the market can go lower. Prices could fall another 20%....
Definitly, outherwise this realy would become a crisis like US-Crisis from 2008, with collapsing banks, and massive property loose.
The high rate of ownership giving China the chance of a "soft landing".
This is six months late. It’s amazing how western media is just picking this up. They just write fanfiction about China instead of actually asking people who live there.
In a sign of just how sensitive the downturn has become, Chinese officials last month told private data providers to stop publishing home sales figures, cutting off one of the few independent windows into the current woes in the real estate market.
I mean people have high expectations of the West, but being able to see 6 months into the future is a bit much!
No, more like the CCP doesn't want people to know what's going on including Western media. We've been telling you this for 20 years but I guess it takes time to sink in.
The problem is you people don’t touch grass and have never been to China. If you actually had real friends in China then they would’ve told you back in July real estate was in the toilet. (Forced economic intervention). But no, let’s just sit on Reddit thinking we know everything because we watched videos from dudes that went to China in 2005.
It’s actually hilarious, it’s the same delusional idiots that push for the tariffs meanwhile China’s trade surplus increases. Then again western news capitalist system so it benefits them to keep you missing informed and coming back for more slop.
For those who are genuinely interested in how China's Real Estate Bust Fueled Its Technological Progress, here is an opinion piece on YouTube with some interesting insights from Louis Vincent Gave (a French financial and geopolitical analyst).
A soft landing for the real estate market is a consensus among Chinese people. The government is allowing housing prices to fall discreetly to prevent it from impacting confidence in other sectors.
Is labor price their actual advantage though? In some sectors maybe but not generally. They could increase wages especially at the bottom but that would raise prices and redistribute money from the top. I think they just don’t want to do that.
Raising prices would make their exports less competitive. Involution has driven profit out of many sectors. There's no room to sell what they have at a higher price.
True but they’re often competing with other Chinese firms by the very nature of involution. If they raised wages and then prices they could probably still retain most of their market share, potentially even make more profit. The incentives are clearly mismatched even with distributed domestic growth.
If they raised wages and then prices they could probably still retain most of their market share
You're going to have to walk me through this. In an extremely competitive market where there's already too much supply, how does one raise prices and not get wiped out?
The Chinese domestic market is extremely price sensitive. That's why it's been a race to the bottom. Nature of the beast.
If they could raise prices and maintain market share, they would have. I mean, everyone would love to do that! But that's not how (most) industries work.
I see now where we have the mismatch. Since the parent comment was about the export economy I was focused on market share outside China which is still price sensitive but often less so than the internal market.
While the internal market is huge and the easiest to access competing aggressively in it can burn through investment. I’m suggesting it’s still possible to scale while focusing on the external market.
In the bigger picture the dynamics of the internal market are, I think at least, partly a result of outdated expectations from when the internal and external market had different relative scale, dynamics, and links. Historical literature suggests involution can become self sustaining, but in principle firms should be able to step outside of it if they have access to other markets.
I mean, even for the export market I don't see how they can raise prices and not be destroyed by the competition. It's supply and demand. There's more supply for Chinese goods both domestically and overseas than can be currently served at current prices. If they raise prices, demand drops even more.
We're talking about housing prices, aren't we? Four years ago, the Chinese government instructed state-owned banks to raise the loan threshold for real estate companies, causing many real estate companies to collapse, and the remaining ones are facing the risk of broken capital chains. This is the result the Chinese government wanted to see.
Okay, China is on the verge of collapse, its economy is sluggish, people's living standards are declining, exports are weak, and it's falling into the middle-income trap. 🤭
LianJia is showing Shanghai down about 11% for the year, about 20% down for the past 2.
The crazier ones are when you look at Suzhou or Nanjing. Nanjing shows between 25% and 35% down depending on the district.
Chengsha shows about a 30% drop over the past year.
This is all in the market explorer feature in LianJia. I suspect that feature will be shut down in the next few weeks in the interests of harmony.
I'm trying not to cherry pick, I'm trying to get a representative sample https://imgur.com/a/dAgSLOS
This feature just got shut down last week on beike in suzhou
Mine is probably down 50% in Beijing.
I haven’t checked for a few months.
Which ring are you out in? 50% is nuts.
East 5th changying
I would guess deep east Beijing (Changying, Beiyuan, etc.) is some of the hardest hit areas in Beijing. It has been promised to be a new city for so many years, and they definitely have done the housing and malls part of it, but it's missing the jobs part. They are trying, but there are so many cheap and empty nice offices in Chaoyang and HaiDian that it's just hard to get companies interested in going that far out.
That’s the thing I don’t get.
My place is 500m walk to Chaoyang hospital Changying Branch. Absolutely brand new hospital. 300m walk to paradise walk and 2 subway stops from joy city. And 30 minutes by taxi to Sanlitun depending on traffic. 20 minutes away from t3 and the new Chaoyang train station. It’s such a primo location.
That's a sweet location. For some reason in my head in my mind Changying was way out in the burbs, and I guess parts of it are, but you're still in dense urban where you are.
Yeah it’s literally the best part of the city. It’s on line 6 and line 1 shuang qiao isn’t too far. Maybe like 10 minutes by car. It’s like 5 bus stops to AIDI and Kaiwen. There’s a mosque nearby if that’s your thing.
Oh and if you wanna go to Shunyi or Wangjing it’s like 20-30 minutes away by didi.
Wild! Thanks for sharing.
50%. That's even worse than I've heard. Why was your area hit so hard?
Oops. I commented one level higher.
Ah. I read it. Informative. Thank you!
How much you paid?
3.3 million rmb in 2016
That's funny. Every time property is discussed online folks pipe up that Shanghai hasn't lost anything or even risen during this slump. I wonder if that's the official line. I do know that my neighbor landlord (I live in the FFC) told my wife that the apartment was worth 11 million a few years ago but the current market price is more like 8.5-9. That's my one bit of anecdotal evidence to add.
They coping.
It's official numbers vs reality on the ground.
So depends which numbers you're referencing. CCP fantasy or reality.
I wasn't clear. Are these measurements in value of transactions or number of sales?
That's a good question I always interpreted it as the price per square meter. Because my number of transactions is a terrible metric for something like this.
Okay but part of a market's health has to be the rate/frequency of sales. For example, unchanging prices but dropping number of sales would be a major piece of information.
12000/m^2 is still crazy expensive.
That sounds like the US after the financial crisis. This is not insurmountable, so long as the government takes swift action and avoids zombie banks (like Japan in the 1990's).
Pretty hard to keep it hush when you have the lianjia app and it shows the previous sales prices and the current sale prices
Those of us outside China don't have a lianjia app though.
I've little faith in how accurate agents data truely is. It is in their own benefit to adjust numbers either higher/lower depending on what they want to achieve.
Though since China doesn't release a ton of data anymore which is related to the economy, I reckon it's safe to say it's not in a great shape. But do people in China (and out of China) really grasp what's going on. We just observe, I have a property in the market for years myself. But I don't think anyone really understands the full extend how fucked matters are.
To give some idea how fucked things are, Kingold has a property called "bayview", it was the most luxurious, expensive property in the market for a decade. After a decade still barely half got sold the rest remained on their balance sheets. It's insane this is possible yet.. here we are. The daughter of Greenland Shanghai was a landlord of mine, she has left the country also years ago. It's kinda telling how everyone with wealth escapes and has no intend to come back.
Do you think the big Chinese banks are being propped up like Japan's back in the 1990's? It seems strange that Beijing would follow such a strategy, but with Emperor Xi it may be different. I cannot understand China's policies for the last 5-10 years. Everything before made sense, but after that nothing does.
Nah let it crash more
Stop "badmouthing" the Chinese real estate market, you are just being "racist", and "keeping China down"... Stop being an "imperialist"...
LOL
You forgot a few more the sino-bots in this sub likes to parrot:
I must be a CIA troll after U.S. Aid was shut, and I'm still going.. LOL
I ran into "deflation is good, more affordable" the other day, it was hilarious.
It seems like you guys are angry because all your cope just fall flat like Qanon.
Tried tariffs, gave China 1 trillion trade surplus. Tried blocking TikTok, more users than ever download it. Tried promoting fake genocide, fake investigative journalist gets deported.
What’s next?
That's a consequence of China's overproduction, weak domestic demand, and a manipulated weak yuan.
You say it like it's a good thing when industrial profits are down, percentage of businesses losing money is at a 20 year high, and imports are down.
It's like an overweight cancer patient celebrating their weight loss. Looking at it in isolation might seem good, but the larger picture says otherwise.
Personally, I’m not “trying” anything.
Just watching economic realities emerge. When price/income ratios for real estate hit 30+ times. What else is going to happen?
With China’s collapsing population, tens of millions of unoccupied apartments and negative public sentiment I suspect real estate will be like Japan’s lost decades on steroids.
What I have observed from foreign Sinophiles is that our government can provide just a vague number and all these idiots will helpfully fill in the blanks on its behalf.
Say, for example, there have been recently these bots spamming about us having >90% home ownership rate. Ask the same cretans regurgitating that bullshit about mingong and they will give you a blank stare.
The way we "fix" problem is through number manipulation. This has been our nation's proud tradition since at least the Great Leap Forward. Home ownership really doesn't mean shit when it comes to understanding housing problems in depth. What you want is the number of people actually living in a place that they have bought.
So, here's the reality check. Taking away the mingong, a big chunk of that number instantly vanishes into thin air. Then you account for people owning a "flat" (in whatever stage of incompletion), another big chunk also disappears. I'd say even >60% seemed too generous an estimate, but I could be off.
Terms like 历史的垃圾时间) were coined by Chinese locals not the West silly..
Even 躺平 and 摆烂 are totally original borne of the times in China..
The metaphors local Chinese use on Weibo to express their frustrations of the last few years are SO CREATIVE.. If even half of this was used for REAL innovation, HuaWei would not need to use Western chips in their "innovative" goods..
From HK SCMP... China issues 11-point policy package to boost consumer spending amid slowing retail sales | South China Morning Post
From Caixin media... China’s Economic Momentum Falters
The positive sentiment in China tech stocks... Alibaba Stock, JD And Baidu Fall. Here's What To Know. | Investor's Business Daily
The Wall St Journal... China’s economy is deteriorating on several fronts
ON and ON the CCP Shell Game Goes... DO NOT WORRY.. CCP and Elites have their wealth well vested and hidden in America..
Nah, you see, those are just words the CIA and "external forces” whispering into our ears. It's not as if we have the mental capacity to look at our wallets or the job market and go "fuuuuucck" anyway.
Hell, I pulled out the bedsheets this morning, and there he was: a CIA agent sitting right under the bed frame with an ear trumpet still in his hand! So I reported that menace to our great nation to the authorities and got a big-arse fancy medal right afterwards. True story.
CIA ? They still funded despite Trump cutbacks ??
Better tell CCP to censor news from Hong Kong..
China’s growth engines sputter as retail and investment hit in November | South China Morning Post
China’s home prices slide further in November as authorities vow to stabilise sector | South China Morning Post
You know, I would be extremely impressed if the CIA somehow possesses the linguistic talent to create memes like 历史的垃圾时间 and make it popular in a nation of 1.4b.
Like, really impressed. They would have clearly missed their calling as linguists.
Impossible to keep something to central to the economy secret. Not only is the ongoing crash obvious to everyone, but the bubble that led to it had been growing for years, with unprecedented amounts of surplus apartments, of debt tied to it that will never be repaid. Such a bubble always ends with a crash, the only question is when – what triggers it. We now know of course it was the government and its 三条红线.
The biggest problem isn't the crash, it's the government trying to pretend there isn't one. But they can't prevent it, no more than they can stop the sun rising every day. Their attempts to deny it only make matters worse by prolonging the adjustment. They really need to let the market sort itself out. In particular allow assets of bankrupt firms to be sold off to the highest bidder(s). That will restart the market, and boost confidence, as suddenly very affordable properties stream onto the market.
The government is trying to crash slowly be pretending the market isn't imploding while fully knowing it Will. Essentially they want to trick people thinking the market isn't going to crash to prevent an immediate sell of only prolonging the actual sell off. The people rich or smart to realize the market is cooked are selling out and taking the hit. The dumb, or desperate hold on while they are the bag holders.
I am trying to fart in small bursts, not let fart rip.
But a fart remains a fart.
A small fart dissipates more rapidly in your vincinity and transfers to others, vs. a large fart is inhaled mostly by yourself.
Have you seen the video of the best way to escape a fart? Highly recommend.
lmao the CCP crop dusting strategy of popping a property bubble.
This analogy is amazing.
Probably they think given time they can save the housing market but they can't. It's much too far gone for it to be saved. Plus the way they could in theory save it, by shovelling RMB at it, is the reason it got in trouble in the first place. Mindlessly lending money to zombie firms doesn't fix them, it just creates yet more debt, more wasted investment.
Every month they delay a proper recovery is a month extra of pain. But, even worse, the pain is not shared around evenly. The rich and well connected will move their assets overseas, if they haven't already, to insulate themselves from this. Middle income people who've invested in Chinese property will have their wealth wiped out. The poor who could not afford new apartments still won't be able to, while the government props up valuations.
You're being too generous.
Consider memecoins. Memecoins are all about finding the next sucker to offload your current holdings onto before the whole market implodes.
In the same way, I say this strategy of keeping the numbers hush-hush is not really about staving off the implosion one day at a time, which is almost certainly inevitable, but rather giving enough time for those running the show to restructure their portfolios before the "rugpull".
It's a perfect crime, I tell ya.
The government wants to deleverage. Essentially if half the states or provinces aka the elite are bankrupt due to the collapse of the housing bubble that's bad. If it's only a few China wouldn't be worried. The issue I suspect is government was expecting to see the finances to be not that bad. Then realized no they're leveraged beyond the Max so the government wants to bail water out of a sinking ship just enough so it can get the people it wants out of the market.
Correct. They aren't hiding it. They are diverting your attention elsewhere.
A sudden crash will cause significant problems in the economy quickly and they don't want to repeat like what happen in the 2008 housing crisis in the US.
I would disagree what others say that they call this a housing crash in China. The government is trying to deflate the bubble and it is working and they did that by the local government buying off the excess properties and renting them off. Evergrande is already gone and now Vanke is up next to see if will stand on its own without government help.
China, the economic investment ponzi scheme :D
Yeah.... no, not gonna be kept a secret..
Top secret ? Slow day huh DW. Like didn't the entire world hear about Evergrande crashing in 2021. So much for hush hush shhhh 🤫
Someone didn't get 30 seconds into the article, and it shows.
at what cost
At the cost of the middle class getting their wealth wiped?
Lol cope. Chinas middle class is thriving right now. More people own their own homes than in any western country
Def not a secret at all
but i thought china was in the future and us has been crumbling lol
The problem isn't just the housing market, it's that every other investment opportunity for the lay man there is also a freaking ponzi scheme.
Yeah its a shame China doesn't have overpriced houses that you have to work almost your entire life to own.
When 70% of household wealth is tied up into an asset, it is bad.
The key takeaway is not to allow a single asset class make up 70% of your household wealth. Particularly when that asset class just parks capital in unproductive assets.
It has a big effect on spending too, people save more when they feel they are losing money. This will have a huge effect on the economy in China and its really too big to bail.
That just means a lot of Chinese own their own homes. How awful that they're not renting and enriching landlords. What a tragedy!
A lot of people are underwater. They lost their lifesavings. And often times their parents', too.
Seems weird to be celebrating that, but I guess you do you.
Yes yes China is collapsing. 2 more weeks. Keep me posted. Oh thats right I don't even have to do that because you're here 24/7 saying that lmao.
It's not collapsing, but economy and market are really in the shitter. It's not only silly doom talk this time. Speak with average Chinese people, and you will find almost none with a positive sentiment about the economy. First 2 years of Covid I had friends gloating about how much better China was doing than the rest of the world, economically- and pandemic-wise.
Now: Nobody wants to spend more than absolutely necessary on daily things. Job market for people without education but hands on experience in their 50s was very easy to navigate until 2019, now I hear a lot of stories of people being jobless and underwater, be it due to medical debt or house loans.
And thanks to the housing market on a downward trajectory for so long, even the older generations with traditional ideas about property ownership before marriage finally understand that it's not always a no brainer to put the family funds into real estate. So one of the markets long-term demand driver is currently on pause.
For a lot of them this is their wake up call that their government will not be able to just "not allow" property prices to drop. And when their wealth building strategy, as naive as it may seem to outsiders, solely rested on that idea, it's quite dramatic for them.
Same tired lines. No actual substance.
Typical.
People are suffering and you couldn't care less.
From the article:
“According to a British bank”
People need to stop with biased sources
It’s really insane how they attack you for pointing out that China doesn’t make housing a commodity AND SUGGESTING THEY SHOULD ACTUALLY OWN THEIR HOMES INSTEAD OF BEING IN DEBT SLAVERY. If you’re looking to buy real estate in country run by COMMIES than you deserve the Darwin Award.
To anyone with a brain stop suggesting things. If people want to live in debt slavery and make the country worse let them do it. Like in tough parenting the saying is, they only learn when they actually touch the hot stove. Make housing impossible no problem, 50 year mortgages no problem, $60,000 economy cars no problem. Stagnant wages for 20 years no problem. Enjoy what you vote for.
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Considering China’s population can up to halve by end of century it makes sense real-estate may not end up being the investment it is elsewhere. Over abundance in hot areas may be nearly as bad as current supply constraints.
From the architect of “at what cost”
I still cannot understand why they do not simply force bankruptcies and sell off all the sieved assets at a market-clearing price. This is not an unusual strategy. They could easily set up a good bank and a bad bank, dump all the bad yet unsaleable assets into the bad bank, and send the proceeds of the liquidated assets to the good bank.
It does not make sense to me why they avoid doing this, unless it is a political thing (too many Red Princes would get burned). The country could certainly use more and cheaper housing, and a good bank/bad bank strategy would offer precisely that.
I am still getting endless light shows and bullet trains to nowhere on X as proof that you are an american imperialist running dog who is low IQ, works for the CIA, automatically votes Trump and loves to have a shootout every 20 minutes.
This has to be China's worst kept secret because I've been hearing about it for the last year or so. Also, if you are a young person, affordable housing isn't a bad thing. Where I live in the States, houses have gone 3X in value in a decade
The recent drop in real estate prices in China is actually a deliberate move by the government to squeeze out market bubbles and guide the sector toward a healthier path. Over the past few years, through steady and measured regulation, the overheated market has been gently cooled down, avoiding a sudden crash.
Money that once flooded into property is now gradually flowing into more essential areas—like semiconductors, new energy, and tech innovation—sectors that truly need support for long-term growth. This shift has also made homes more affordable for younger generations, easing some of the pressure to own a place. After all, housing is for living in, not for speculation.
So, the era of breakneck growth in real estate is over. The market is now entering a new phase—one focused on quality, sustainability, and meeting real needs. It’s a transition that feels more stable and balanced, and honestly, it’s better for everyone in the long run.
I was just thinking I should move into a three bedroom semiconductor.
You have a great insight of Chinese economy, while many others still believe China's housing market will collapse.
Because people love to spread rumors, and fear mongering will cause panics that destabilizes the society. And in China 乱 is the biggest No No. Is the government stopping all housing sales reporting?
Wait, if I understand correctly is that the complaint is that prices are going down and Housing is becoming affordable?
This reads like "China is fixing the housing inflation bubble, but at what cost" narrative.
Yes - but no. The problem is, that china has compared to outher countrys an extreme high rate of ownership on appartments. And a lot of people took a loan from the bank to pay for it. If you buy an appartment for 1.000.000 and its only worth 750.000 now, you can not move or sell it without loosing money.
Because of the population curve, there are more people loosing money, that new buyers, that are happy over affordable appartments... and those who normaly would buy now say: maybe if i wait for one or two more years, the appartments will be cheaper.
That sounds great for anyone who doesn't own property, which is a much more important than people who treat property as an investment.
No, because the chinese marked works different. Its not like US or EU, where the maiority cant affort houses or appartments. China had a very long period of rising income, so most of the people bought "to expensive" in trust, that income and value of the appartment would rise. So in the same time appartmemts lose value and sallery increases slower than "usualy".
About 90% of China's population own their homes - it's one of the highest rates in the world. 80% of those are owned without a mortgage. The problem is that a huge amount of that 90% owned multiple properties, and those extra properties were their main investment / store of wealth. So the house prices going down erodes their wealth . . . and honestly, maybe even has a bigger effect as you need to sell the apartments to take wealth out and the market is so bad and the quality of many apartments so poor that it may be hard to find ANYONE to buy them. In a bubble economy even unfinished concrete towers on the outskirts of tier 5 look good, but who will pay money for that now?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes/
Yes, so what you're saying it's a bad financial situation for investment, great opportunity for those who need housing, correct?
Not a great situation, because housing is still very expensive, even after how far it has fallen. It has to fall a lot more to be a 'great opportunity'. But the larger point is that Chinese who don't own their homes already is a realtively small percentage of the population. As I stated, 90% already own their own homes. They bought extra properties as investments / way to park wealth and now those investments are underwater (if they took out mortgages) or just worth a lot less than they were 5 years ago.
No, for two reasons: 1) even if you are in need, you try to avoid buying, because next year the same appartment might be cheaper. 2) most people are already owning appartments. So in general its a loose for the overwelming maiority of people, not just for investors spending their "pocket money".
There was a 15% down payment rule in place so if they bought the property in 2022 then yes they are under water. But also pretty daft for buying a property in a declining market. Renting would have been the logical choice.
If they bought the property in 2020...they already paid off some of it so they should be about the water line.
If they bought earlier then they are still fine.
Of course the market can go lower. Prices could fall another 20%....
Cost to build apartment m^2 is about 3-4k yuan. Prices can go 50% down and it will be still profitable to build.
Yes and they don't even need to build anything. There are probably 100 millions of empty units and the population is declining.
Of course people will stop living together if prices go down but there is enough spare capacity for decades to come...
Good thing that 80% of homeowners in China don't have a mortgage to pay back then.
Definitly, outherwise this realy would become a crisis like US-Crisis from 2008, with collapsing banks, and massive property loose. The high rate of ownership giving China the chance of a "soft landing".
This is six months late. It’s amazing how western media is just picking this up. They just write fanfiction about China instead of actually asking people who live there.
I mean people have high expectations of the West, but being able to see 6 months into the future is a bit much!
No, more like the CCP doesn't want people to know what's going on including Western media. We've been telling you this for 20 years but I guess it takes time to sink in.
The problem is you people don’t touch grass and have never been to China. If you actually had real friends in China then they would’ve told you back in July real estate was in the toilet. (Forced economic intervention). But no, let’s just sit on Reddit thinking we know everything because we watched videos from dudes that went to China in 2005. It’s actually hilarious, it’s the same delusional idiots that push for the tariffs meanwhile China’s trade surplus increases. Then again western news capitalist system so it benefits them to keep you missing informed and coming back for more slop.
For those who are genuinely interested in how China's Real Estate Bust Fueled Its Technological Progress, here is an opinion piece on YouTube with some interesting insights from Louis Vincent Gave (a French financial and geopolitical analyst).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBMDICxYAxQ
I found it quite interesting to consider the possibilities from Louis POV.
A soft landing for the real estate market is a consensus among Chinese people. The government is allowing housing prices to fall discreetly to prevent it from impacting confidence in other sectors.
Falling house prices would crush (is crushing) consumer confidence.
Logically they'd have salaries catch up up to housing prices, but they can't because it'd crush their export-led growth model.
They're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Is labor price their actual advantage though? In some sectors maybe but not generally. They could increase wages especially at the bottom but that would raise prices and redistribute money from the top. I think they just don’t want to do that.
Raising prices would make their exports less competitive. Involution has driven profit out of many sectors. There's no room to sell what they have at a higher price.
True but they’re often competing with other Chinese firms by the very nature of involution. If they raised wages and then prices they could probably still retain most of their market share, potentially even make more profit. The incentives are clearly mismatched even with distributed domestic growth.
You're going to have to walk me through this. In an extremely competitive market where there's already too much supply, how does one raise prices and not get wiped out?
The Chinese domestic market is extremely price sensitive. That's why it's been a race to the bottom. Nature of the beast.
If they could raise prices and maintain market share, they would have. I mean, everyone would love to do that! But that's not how (most) industries work.
I see now where we have the mismatch. Since the parent comment was about the export economy I was focused on market share outside China which is still price sensitive but often less so than the internal market.
While the internal market is huge and the easiest to access competing aggressively in it can burn through investment. I’m suggesting it’s still possible to scale while focusing on the external market.
In the bigger picture the dynamics of the internal market are, I think at least, partly a result of outdated expectations from when the internal and external market had different relative scale, dynamics, and links. Historical literature suggests involution can become self sustaining, but in principle firms should be able to step outside of it if they have access to other markets.
I mean, even for the export market I don't see how they can raise prices and not be destroyed by the competition. It's supply and demand. There's more supply for Chinese goods both domestically and overseas than can be currently served at current prices. If they raise prices, demand drops even more.
I’ve seen this take at least several times on this sub. This poor grasp of economics must be rectified:
Deflation is not policy but disease symptom.
We're talking about housing prices, aren't we? Four years ago, the Chinese government instructed state-owned banks to raise the loan threshold for real estate companies, causing many real estate companies to collapse, and the remaining ones are facing the risk of broken capital chains. This is the result the Chinese government wanted to see.
It’s not the result they want to see so much as a problem they should have dealt with long ago. This is damage control, not deliberate policy.
Okay, China is on the verge of collapse, its economy is sluggish, people's living standards are declining, exports are weak, and it's falling into the middle-income trap. 🤭
Your words, not mine.
The same applies for the crisis in commercial real Estate, especially offices and shopping centers in America.
Whatabout?
Ok. Go post about it on the USA sub then. You will blow people away with your revelation!