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A Fifth of China’s Homes Are Empty (2018)

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101–110 of 191 posts

Re: A Fifth of China’s Homes Are Empty (2018)

#101

I’ve heard the best housing “hack” for the Bay Area is to live in a houseboat. Anyone doing this or calculated how much you’d save?

In some european countries docking is super cheap and you can buy a used sailboat for 2000euros. 4g mobile net is great. Croatia, greece, spain, italy. Of course not the best ports. I know it doesnt answer the question but wanted to chime in about our situation. Currently thinking about a live in sailboat in the canary islands. I work remotely.

Re: A Fifth of China’s Homes Are Empty (2018)

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First three rules of real estate: location, location, location. Would you be interested in renting a 400 sf dilapidated teardown shack in western Kansas, no utilities, five hours from the nearest big city, no local jobs, and not near anything of consequence? As young Chinese flock to the large cities, they might have grown up in something similar to the above, but just because they're leaving it behind doesn't take i…

What's the Fourth rule?

[deleted]

Re: A Fifth of China’s Homes Are Empty (2018)

#103
post #41

There are also ~600M people living in relative poverty in the country side, who would love to move to the cities. How is this not a good thing?

By what mechanism do you think poor people in the country will benefit from this?

By the same way that building luxury apartments in San Francisco will, allegedly, make housing more affordable for poorer people.

Re: A Fifth of China’s Homes Are Empty (2018)

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Articles about ghost cities are a fascinating read - sometimes exploring un-intuitive facts, like having 50m empty homes in China, yields a surprising discovery of the underlying systems. In this case, I think the system perfectly justifies having 50m homes empty. If you look at it another way, if San Francisco (arguably another booming localized economy) had the same initiative to build a 20% buffer for housing, it…

SF residents are nowhere near rich enough to afford the struggles. Even people in the top 2-5% struggle desperately to afford housing, renting out every bedroom in the house just to afford to stay there.

SF residents are among the richest in the world.

SF housing is made extremely expensive by multi decade long anti housing policies, but that's completely artificial.

If the Chinese ran housing in SF, there would be housing for 5 million people there.

Re: A Fifth of China’s Homes Are Empty (2018)

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF residents are nowhere near rich enough to afford the struggles. Even people in the top 2-5% struggle desperately to afford housing, renting out every bedroom in the house just to afford to stay there.

SF is not going to implode any time soon though, which is why I say it can 'afford' it. China is a different story.

i'd say a decade is pretty "soon" for a city.

Re: A Fifth of China’s Homes Are Empty (2018)

#106
post #88
post #19

While problematic in the short term, the scale of urbanization and decreasing domicile density alongside rising GDP/capita will allow China to eat through the slack inventory in the coming years. They are adding about 1 NY metropolitan area worth of urban dwellers per yr: https://www.statista.com/statistics/278566/urban-and-rural-p... Urban region Rural regions 2017 813.47 576.61 2016 792.98 589.73 2015 771.16 603.46…

There must be a lot of vacant/abandoned homes in the countryside with such a rapid shift.

I'm guessing they're quite modest third world dwellings.

Re: A Fifth of China’s Homes Are Empty (2018)

#107
post #66

To put things into context. 1. These are Urban Homes. 2. There are roughly 20M people jumping to new cities and Urban areas every year. For years China has keep a roughly two years buffer zone, I think the rate of new housing is the same and rate of people going into Urban has declined, so a slight increase in terms of buffer ( closer to three years now ). 3. Most of the "Ghost Cities" do get fill up quickly, once th…

Well some people are going to always stay in rural areas right? China will still have some agriculture.

Re: A Fifth of China’s Homes Are Empty (2018)

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont forget there are nearly a billion people who will have to migrate out of low-lying areas on the east of India/bangladesh over the next few decades as sea levels continue to rise. China is wise to have extra housing capacity. Even if they are 'nail houses' ... they only have to beat sleeping in the streets.

It’s unclear to me why Bangladeshis would migrate to China as opposed to India or Pakistan.

They've already tried to annex a part of Myanmar...

Re: A Fifth of China’s Homes Are Empty (2018)

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF residents are nowhere near rich enough to afford the struggles. Even people in the top 2-5% struggle desperately to afford housing, renting out every bedroom in the house just to afford to stay there.

SF residents are among the richest in the world. SF housing is made extremely expensive by multi decade long anti housing policies, but that's completely artificial. If the Chinese ran housing in SF, there would be housing for 5 million people there.

In fact, the earliest anti-housing policies were designed to harm Chinese residents of the city: https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/demolishing-the-ca...

Re: A Fifth of China’s Homes Are Empty (2018)

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF residents are nowhere near rich enough to afford the struggles. Even people in the top 2-5% struggle desperately to afford housing, renting out every bedroom in the house just to afford to stay there.

SF residents are among the richest in the world. SF housing is made extremely expensive by multi decade long anti housing policies, but that's completely artificial. If the Chinese ran housing in SF, there would be housing for 5 million people there.

Rich is relative, depending on the cost of living. Right?
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