| Hi,
first, I want to say that I love this thread. It's both entertaining and informative. I've been looking into buying a place in Shanghai, and the prices are just looking insane. First, I want to answer sherry's question: I hope you're talking about 200,000USD; if you're talking about RMB, you're out of luck. A few not-so-random thoughts: - yes, a lot of people come to Shanghai to find work, but these people are Chinese and poor, and cannot afford any of what we are talking about here. I don't believe that there are this many rich people in Shanghai, or that the expat community is large enough to support these price levels (from a rough calculation, about 1% of the population is expat, and I don't even believe most of them can afford to buy anything in Shanghai, at least not the ones I know). So I still don't understand who's buying! - the quality of life in Shanghai is nowhere near any other cities mentioned in this thread. The pollution level is very high (compared to US/European standards), the infrastructure is lacking, the opportunities for quality entertainment are very low (maoming lu was fun only a few times...), the education received doesn't compare to what you'd get in the US or Europe, the salaries are low, and from what I'm seeing, the expats that are here don't stay very long. In short, I don't believe foreigners buy and move to Shanghai in large quantities. - I found the following data posted by AP interesting, and I'd like to know where you found it: House purchased by foreigners: 4% House purchase by individuals from other chinese provinces:15% House purchased by Shanghainese: 81% ~75% of shanhainese owned their house. Let's say this is true, with an average salary of (about) 3,500USD/year, you'll have to explain to me how the locals can afford appartments easily going for $200,000USD. - A lot of people have compared this bubble-to-be to the one in Bay Area, and I say it can't. The bubble in the Bay Area was "justified" by salaries going up, by engineers getting rich overnight with IPOs; these people could afford to buy (until the stock market crashed, and we all know what happened): the real estate market was fueled by the stock market. Here, there is no such thing: no stock market, no locals getting rich, so I'm "speculating" that when the bubble burst, it'll go down much harder than in the Bay Area (someone compared to HK, I don't know anything so I can't compare, but apparently the situation looks similar to the one in Shanghai: speculation, and not occupation) - I just found this interesting article, I like it even more because it goes my way, answers quite a few of my questions/misunderstandings about the Shanghai real estate market, although it scares me a bit... I hope that it won't be as bad as they seem to imply: www dot financialsense dot com/editorials/arsenaultrubino/2004/1022.html - another data point that this article made me think about is the issue of mortgages... China is just a big Wild West of lending right now. I'm hearing every day of people taking up many of them to buy as many properties as they can; it just like a big pyramid scheme that'll collapse as soon as the bank realize that noone can repay the mortgages and that it (the bank) is taking on all the risk. I guess I'll rather stay on the sideline and miss out right now; the risk doesn't match the reward to me. |
Is the Real Estate Cooling Down? - Part II