Future real estate bubble in China?
21 May, 2010 No Comments
This year 2010 is very complicated for the Chinese economy, due to issues related to the appreciation of the Yuan, inflation and the growth of house prices , as discussed in the article on BBC news.
To stop the current speculation in the Chinese real estate sector, the Government has taken several measures to avoid the rise in housing prices, including:
- Increase the first payment from buyers of second homes to a minimum of 50%.
- The State Council called on banks to stop lending money to buyers of residential properties for third properties and do not grant loans to buyers who do not show evidence of at least 1 year of residence in China.
- Increase the provision of land for development.
- Strengthen controls on financing real estate companies.
- Instruct the developers to not monopolize properties in order to drive up prices (Beijing has been limited to a purchase of new construction homes to its residents).
Given these measures to suppress the increases in housing prices,some investors are rushing to sell their property while prices remain high. Many real estate speculators who invested in Shanghai and Beijing began to sell their homes since March 2010, so that the number of properties for sale increased significantly.
Today, although China’s society is very conservative, have also introduced measures to regulate the granting of mortgages, because the new generation, western-minded, have no problem asking credit cards and mortgages (previous generations requested financial support to the family and there was not much demand for banking products).
Another issue that has helped the growth of demand and therefore prices to remain higher, is that Chinese society in matters of family is very traditional and many marriages can not be held if the couple has no home ownership . This has led to the problem of the relationship between salaries and house prices in major cities is increasing. The solution given by government is to create public housing parks to facilitate access to citizens with lower purchasing power.
