• Kaplya
    ·
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    All of the information I have posted came primarily from Wen Tiejun’s video series on the topic (Part 1, 2 and 3). If you can understand Chinese you should check them out yourself, since it is a very educational and informative series. I’ve been meaning to translate all of them but never found the time.

    There are more than 800 million property units in the urban area as we speak - that’s more housing than there are people in the entire urbanized population of China, even if we give every single person their own individual housing unit! And that’s not counting the large amount of completed commercial properties in the rural area over the last few years that totaled about 900 million square meters. That’s a huge amount of real estate properties.

    And I’m sorry I trust a Chinese Marxist economist who is actually an expert on land reform and land enclosure in China more than any Western sources.

    • geikei [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      800 million property units

      First of all what classifies as a "property unit" ? 800M property units doesnt equal 800M housing units. Offices, stores, garages, hotels. Its anything really. The numbers im seeing are 400 million Housing Units in Urban ereas, less than half of the urban population, with 60 Million Empty/vaccant/mid construction, which lines up both with the vaccancy rates i mentioned and with 800M total property units. How many "housing units" does the proffessor claim there are in urban China and what is the vaccancy rate on them, and what if any chinese survey or source there is on those numbers if he actualy claims them ?

      Im trying to use Chinese sources at best i can but nothing seems to agree with anything close to 800 M urban housing units at 30+% Vacancy rates . Survey and Research Center for China Household Finance has total urban vacancy rates plateuing at ~20% of 300+M housing units in 2017. More recent surveys like this point out at decreasing vaccancy rates that now sit more in line with the numbers i mentioned. This includes housing units that are vacant for more than 3 months and excludes unfinished units. The numbers should be 2-3% higher than this but still that puts it comfortably bellow 20% overall as of now.

      Show

      At worst urban overbuilding doesnt seem to go above 10% of tottal units build compared to most mature economies