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

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

#141

Post by imtringued »

jonathankoren wrote: post #37
droopyEyelids wrote: post #23

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.

Probably because china has 50 million empty apartments. 3 People per apartment should be enough to let all of Bangladesh escape (they'll need it).

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

#143

Post by seanmcdirmid »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #95
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. There are empty homes in 10 year old complexes in Beijing and Shanghai. 3. Many of the ghost districts never fill up before they are torn down as eye sores. Kangbashi will only fill up if coal makes a big come back, which is highly unlikely. Tianjin financial district is mostly a bust so far, but a derelict building or two for a decade is not abnormal. The problem is really simple: China lacks a property tax, so h…

Houses are seen as speculative investments for the vast majority of US home owners also.

Not really in the same way. High property taxes mean you usually can’t sit on a property and wait to flip it, it has to be put to productive use because deprecation (through taxes) happens right away. No one can really afford to buy an apartment building, decide that renting the units isn’t worth it and just sit on the empty unrenovated apartments until buyers come along.

In China, you can buy property and just sit on it. Many apartments are never even renovated because market level rents are too low to justify that. Yes, they apartment costs 7m yuan to buy, but only rents out for 10k yuan/month that doesn’t even cover interest. Keep in mind that renovation actually decreases an apartment’s value because new owners have to unrenovate it first.

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

#144

Post by vorg »

azurezyq wrote: post #77
james_s_tayler wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is also a developing country. It's not like anywhere is ever finished developing.

Let's replace "developing" with "in the progress of rapid urbanization". According to wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization#/media/File:2015_... ), US is already highly urbanized but China's not. As long as we agree that high rate of urbanization is the future, China basically has more room to grow in this aspect.

China's government might not want to continue with their high urbanization policy in the future. Perhaps they want to keep, say, 20% of the population in a poorer rural environment so their country won't have to bring in migrants to do the work migrants traditionally do in richer countries and territories like the U.S., Hong Kong, and the UAE.

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

#145

Post by barry-cotter »

dragonsh wrote: post #126
ksec wrote: 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…

I don't know where you got your statistics most are false, half complete or misleading. Even in place like Shanghai, its been around 15 years they built Lingang City is still empty, now waiting for Tesla factory to populate, govt spend over 38 billion dollars to build it, people bought apartment blocks seating empty or acting as construction workers living quarters. Go to a mall right next to Huangpu river near Lupu…

Can you give me the address? I’ve seen plenty of new malls that are half empty but they’ve all filled up so far. In the six years I’ve lived in Shanghai the “cool” areas where foreigners live have expanded markedly. Then again I’d never even heard of the Lupu Bridge until I looked it just now. The Fabric Market is near there, unless they’re just refusing to let lie class tenants rent there any mall should be full like the old fake market at Qipu lu.

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

#146

Post by lotsofpulp »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #129
setgree wrote: post #123

In 2012, I traveled for about 6 weeks in China. I saw a lot of large cities -- not the megalopolises of Beijing and Shanghai but Guangzhou, Xi'an, Kunming -- with unreal amounts of what looked like high-end real estate going up. if you moved to the countryside, things got a lot poorer, so there was a pretty clear disconnect. But the weirder thing was endlessly empty malls. For whatever reason, high-end luxury malls h…

For claiming to be high-end brands, the amount of Gucci, Swarovski, Prada et al shops really cheapen them as a brand. I've seen similar stuff in vacation destinations in Turkey and Greece; poorly developed areas next to a road (think just bare rock and shrubs) with a super fancy looking fur coat shop. Fur coat shops, in 35+ degree C weather. I want to believe they get the odd rich Russian coming over from time to tim…

They're not "high end" brands anymore. The companies that own the brands have it down to a science, every few years they start lowering one of the more expensive brands down, and the masses start using it as a status symbol, until too many of the masses have it, then rinse repeat with another more expensive brand. See Fendi, Gucci, Swarovski, Michael Kors, etc. The most recent one I noticed was Yves Sant Lauren, with their items badged with an ugly YSL logo.

Basically, if you see middle income people start carrying around products badged (having logos on it is itself a signal that it's not high end) with the brand and sold in Macys, it's being stripped of it's high end status. And then even the middle income people start noticing everyone has it, so it devalues it for them, so the fashion brands need a new company to present as "high-end".

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

#147

Post by barry-cotter »

baxtr wrote: post #110
BurningFrog wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you make minimum wage in the US and work 40 hours a week, you’re in the global top 10%.

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

#148

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Arn_Thor wrote: post #114
paulie_a wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did that change? They were incredibly trying to cultivate and outright force mega cities. Leaving behind mega cities that are empty. Hell if you want to play out a pretend version of "I am legend" you could get pretty close. (Minus the zombies)

This animation by McKinsey shows a number of different paths for urbanization. There are many neuanced models, but they commonly divide into "supercities", "hub and spoke" and "distributed growth". https://www.mckinsey.com/tools/Wrappers/Redesign/Interactive... Quote from a related 2009 report called "Preparing for China's Urban Billion": "China's current urbanization path will show a pronounced expansion in the numb…

No one significant has ever said China has empty mega cities, or even empty cities, they are more like empty districts of existing cities (eg Kangbashi of Ordos, Tianjin Financial district, etc...). The western press latches onto “ghost cities” because Chinese city/town administration units are weird to westerners.

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

#149

Post by frostburg »

foldr wrote: post #139
est31 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, probably the biggest advantage that our societies have to the rich elite of repressive countries is the justice and governance system. The problem with being rich in one of those oppresive regimes is that you can get rich. But staying rich is much harder, because the moment you fall out of favor you will be disowned. This can change simply through a new clan taking over power and kicking out the old clan. In…

>So they all moved to the middle east This is an interesting historical claim. Which intellectuals are you thinking of that moved from Europe to the Middle East in the early Medieval period?

It's more accurate (somewhat) to say that a lot of intellectual activity moved. The issue is historiographically complex but the traditional view of early medieval Europe not doing a lot to advance human knowledge except in some specific (and not very abstract) fields is mostly true.

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

#150

Post by barry-cotter »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #94
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. There are empty homes in 10 year old complexes in Beijing and Shanghai. 3. Many of the ghost districts never fill up before they are torn down as eye sores. Kangbashi will only fill up if coal makes a big come back, which is highly unlikely. Tianjin financial district is mostly a bust so far, but a derelict building or two for a decade is not abnormal. The problem is really simple: China lacks a property tax, so h…

Why is it seen as a better speculative investment than other opportunities. After all, someone is left holding the bag when the investment is found to be unused -- which is a cost just as much as a tax would be. What other considerations are outweighing that cost?

http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2014/08/passages-i-highli...

The entire Chinese economy is as rigged as the government can make it. The stock and bond markets are fake, the state owned enterprises are run as fiefs of the Party-State, not for profit, all the major banks included. Nothing is trustworthy. Combine that with a property market that’s been going up for decades and a ruling class that would not be happy if the middle class that started rioting if their savings in property went up in smoke and you have a fake property market too.

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