I was in China in the 1990s and this was going on. I met some expats working for architecture companies and they said builders were selling entire floors of apartments to single buyers and no one was moving into the apartments. They also said builders were using the cheapest materials possible with zero insulation so the heating and cooling costs were enormous
Another reason for such oddity is the over-regulation of the stock market in China. Not everyone can trade stocks freely, authorities step in whenever they like, lots of scams in the market over the decade. All these contribute further to the property investment market, as it has seemed to be the "only legal and safe way" to invest for the masses in China. Just wait for this perfect storm to brew even stronger.
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"Homes are for living in, not for speculating on." - Xi Jinping I agree. The commodification & financialization of housing is an evil scourge on society.
It's just a political slogan to deceive the angry people, because price is too high and most people can't afford housing. Yet their policy is opposite. Fact: China still has ZERO property tax today. This is single most contributing factor that makes housing a perfect speculating investment. No cost to own properties. Keep buying. Rich get richer.
Indian developers were doing similar models of business, pre sales, using the money to buy to new land, not completing per sold projects. The Supreme court steps in, created the regulatory framework nationwide. Parliament passed a law to create the independent statutory regulatory authorities in all states. Thats how the Indian real estate industry saved, consumer interest is saved and china like situation is averted.
Smart move from India's Supreme Court to protect the rights of individual consumers, and buyers, or else end up with over a hundred half-finished, skeletal buildings dotting across India. That would later be demolished just like China. A total waste of materials, and resources. At least India has a high-quality demand for building standards, unlike China. Less chance of falling through the floor.
That is because it is still under the British monarchy and basically the Indian framework is the same as the UK's... people tried that with china cos the HK was meant to be the seeding. But it didn't happen that way... the stare council stated that HK remains unchanged but it has changed. Now it has gone beyond repair?....
So, I think you just about managed to scratch the surface of the problems. Next time maybe look at who sold the land parcels, why property prices in tier 1 cities are artificially prevented from falling. Who holds the mortgages on the roughly 100 million unfinished apartments bought off plan?
All true. Prices are tumbling in the secong hand market as unseen ever before in China. Some places up to 70% down from purchasing prices just a few years ago (outskirts of Beijing in bordering Hebei province) and Tianjin Binhai New Area 40% down from purchasing prices from 2017. And so on thoughout the country.
@@swingingdaniel The specific locations you pointed out are far away from the city center and are not representative. If readers are interested, you can check the relevant maps by yourself.
Not true. Beijing Wukesong secong hand apartment 2022 asking price 7.5 million, and the offer received was 7.3 million. Sellers did not agree. Now 7.0 Million will not find a buyer. Same for Chaoyang distirict villas. All down by at least 15% and that is about the officially reported number. @@WellSalt-Studio
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In the long term, more affordable prices for housing are always better. The bubble was going to pop eventually, and it's better to have it deflate now than let it balloon into an even bigger problem later on. Tough luck for all the investors though.
"In the long term, more affordable prices for housing are always better." Not for China's economy. Without a domestic consumer base, which Xi adamantly refuses to nuture, due to considering domestic credit based consumption as making people "lazy", and 80% of the typical Chinese's wealth being locked up in their home value, you are proposing China falling out of the Middle income trap into the Low-income one. "tough luck for all the investors though." Those investors are literally every single homeowner, which are all Chinese people or companies.
@@freemanol Politely, you are misinterpreting the statistic. It's not talking about % of ownership. It's saying that household wealth at the total is 70% housing. The other 30% is stocks, bonds or cash in banks.
In China there are very few ways that people are allowed to invest so they bid up house prices. You will actually get more housing through investment than if it is price controlled. In USSR there was never enough housing. Unfortunately China's government directed a lot of malinvestment and it is has been very inefficient.
Totally underselling the pain that is spread out due to the “debt” structure of developers. Generally speaking, 1/3 of debt is bonds, 1/3 is pre-payments and 1/3 is debt to suppliers. Sure banks are “protected”, but everyone else is totally f’d. Also, the magnitude of debt. Just Evergrande and Country Garden have debt of close to 3% of GDP. When Lehman folded, their debt was about 0.5% of GDP.
@@robbrand922 lol, this dude never heard of mark-to-market. Lehman had $600B in assets on the books. It wasn't an accounting scandal. YOU'VE NEVER TAKEN AN ACCOUNTING CLASS HAVE YOU?
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BUT SIR MY INDIA IS THE REAL SUPERPOWER 🤗🇮🇳 WE HAVE THE BEST INFRASTRUCTURE AND HIGHSPEED RAIL 🤗🇮🇳 MEANWHILE IN CHINA PEOPLE STILL RIDE RICKSHAW EVERYWHERE AND THEY ALSO POOR DONT HAVE CAR . THIS WHY IM SO LUCKY LIVE IN SUPER INDIA THE CLEANEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD 🇮🇳🤗 , WE NEVER SCAM! WE GIVE RESPECT TO ALL WOMEN THEY CAN WALK SAFELY ALONE AT NIGHT AND WE HAVE CLEAN FOOD AND TOILET EVERYWHERE 🇮🇳🤗🚽, I KNOW MANY POOR PEOPLE JEALOUS WITH SUPER RICH INDIA 🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳
@@indiasuperclean6969 its obviously a satire comment but i would still rather live in india than in big brother dictatorship like china especially as a citizen so the joke is on you buddy
The scary thing is that China's real estate investment cycling has been going on for several years now, and the debt continues to grow every time the debt is paid off with debt. And the sky is the limit. It's not just a limited number of real estate developers. Sixty-four major real estate developers, counting those in China, have such insolvencies. Other bright spots in China are not to be found, such as the high-speed rail system, which continues to swell with regular losses, and the semiconductor companies, more than 5,700 of which have gone out of business.
There should be more emphasis on the differences between 2008 and this crisis. The huge difference being Chinese banks seem to have much less exposure to the Chinese realestate market compared to the US banks in 2008. US banks made bad investments in derivatives of subprime loans, which led to the first bankruptcies, then panic and bank runs. And these financial instruments were sold to many foreign investors as well, which is what made the recession so global. The current situation in China, while bad, looks nothing like the 2008 crisis. These are defaults of DEVELOPERS, not financial institutions. The major concern would be a panic and bank runs, but even then the effects would probably be mostly domestic, since foreign exposure to Chinese realestate is nowhere near that of international exposure to US realestate in 2008.
@@popcorn6931 Perhaps you could read deeper and tell us how the Americans gave the world the GFC back in 2008? Allow me to drop you a hint, non existent lending controls and CDOs. now get educated.
1:37 Look at that archival footage from Beijing 1995: New apartment projects selling for 1,600/sqm. 25 years later, those same apartments would likely go for 90,000/sqm; a 5,500% increase. Real estate used to be one of the best, if not the best, investments you could make.
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47 industries are upstream and downstream of the real estate industry. It’s affecting everything and everyone there directly or not . Local governments have been cutting salaries to civil servants from office employees, teachers , bus drivers and on and on . 125 thousands teachers have lost their jobs due to demographic downturn and the dominos haven’t all failed yet … One thing very important not mentioned is that the house buyers have no way out as walking away from their house investments isn’t possible because even if they walk away from their houses they are still liable for the rest of the original loan hence ending up with no house and still a mortgage to pay ! And same with unconstructed houses . The first payment comes when you buy the house NOT when you move in therefore they are stuck paying for a house that might never be built and best case scenario is worth 30 to 50 percent less then they paid for .
At the time of the global financial crisis, property development and construction was 10% of gdp. In 2020 China, property development and construction was 25% of gdp. China’s potential bubble burst is much bigger than the US.
Chinese economy is very sick. There's no cure. - Only regime change to something like Taiwan 🇹🇼 can help. It's a win-win solution for both China and the world.
I feel like speculation has gotten so bad over here that developers and building homes that are more and more inhospitable - they're smaller, uglier, and more poorly built
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Their demographics are collapsing, their cost of production has gone up 14x, mexico is much cheaper. They also are going to half their population by 2050 to 2070
It wasn't a mortgage product then, do you see? It was a form of credit card company that was being used for investment banking and the offshore locations for commercial properties but then this happened. Cos then they took it internally and domestically transformed it, so now they are In deeper sh!ts than anything.
Even worse, the govt still owns the land the building is built on! The developers bid for 70 year leases for the land. So Chinese homeowners might own their flat, but not the land it sits on.
@@gerardp4759 : Then they are basically not "developers"... and if you project the old Imperial model onto this.. and this is whereby their so called "with Chinese characteristics" comes from... So basically.. it should be such that, the indigenous families or family clans that owns those land, and whatever.. only they should be sitting in the State Council. There used to be around 2 groupings. If I recall. One was the people's committee or other, and then the other one was the state council. So when there was all of this "one country, two systems" thing comes into play... It is like... there are no courts. And yet, there is one group of decision makers by consensus.. and then the other one is group of people with legitimacies.... Where does the courts come into play ? It only deals with foreigners then... the courts are for foreign companies and foreigners then. So then how come.. some people inside the PRC today, see a passport as a form of visa only ??? When it is about legitimacies ?
That is how preconstruction works. Imagine yourself buying a shirt on a lay-away plan. You tell the merchant to hold onto that shirt , and get yourself into a scheduled payment plan. After all, you are Tony Manero, you work at the local hardware store , and you need to upgrade your wardrobe for those Saturday nights . Money is scarce then. This was a very common practice in the US , around the 70’s. Same with pre construction. Builders acquire or lease land , supposedly secure financing , arrange for architectural services , spend money on promotional marketing , get approved by the zoning board to build, put up a show room, and sign up buyers to a pre payment plan that might cover 30% of the purchased unit retail value, parsed through cinstruction. The rest is to be paid upon delivery and a confirmed issued certificate of occupancy. The once ready units now need to be completed by buyers on their own nickel . Flooring , lighting fixtures , in-unit HVAC , cabinetry, closets. Chinese builders operate on other people’s money. They are supposed to secure lines of credit , or get securitized, or have their own cash reserves. Chinese oversight for this stage is done poorly , they are way behind on regulatory and compliance affairs. Other people’s money then become buyers prepayment cash outlays., therefore , builders do not secure for such sources of non buyer originated funds.
@@chinadollfmd there are ways around that, if you are in the mortgage industry you should know that, third party realestate, financing, Chinese contracts with Canadian Estate ect it’s not black and white
@@chinadollfmd: Well... they shouldn't be able to do so to begin with ! Cos some of the "money" is basically OUR money from the British commonwealths which fed into China as well. So then they claimed it as their ow public money. And now, they can't use their so called public money to rebuy back the British land ! Sorry.. but that is ridiculous to begin with ! What do people think they are doing ? Playing mah jong ! Until one gets sick and take them down cos they've not slept for days and days ???
It's almost impossible to be solved by any policies from the public sectors, because they are stakeholders . This crisis of property in China is correlated with the local governments' budgets. Even though the central government tried to tighten the policies, the local governments are inertia or lack of will to reduce their budgets and have to bid more land to real estate companies. As a resident, you only hope that the invisible hand can adjust the perperty' price. Even though the land supply has been monopolized by the government, the market mechanism still works on the price and the prices most of properties have falled during past several years.
Look at the auxillary construction markets linke with China. Cambodia had a ton of Chinese construction contractors there. Also look at Vietnam, it's having a construction meltdown too. I hope you guys continue the investigation, it doesn't stop at China!
China's property market is facing a deep-seated structural crisis, with deserted shopping malls, half-empty apartment complexes, and abandoned construction sites being just a few signs of the sector's struggles. The privatization of property in the 1990s generated an unprecedented boom in China's real estate, which was further fueled by domestic factors such as a tumultuous stock market. Developers would launch a project for pre-sales, get the money from homebuyers, and immediately invest in new land parcels to keep expanding. However, when sales suddenly tumbled, cash stopped coming in, and developers were unable to finish constructing homes previously pre-sold. The build-up of the bubbles went on unchecked until the Chinese government tightened regulations over developers, culminating in the three red lines policy, which limited firms' ability to obtain financing. Since then, dozens of private developers have collapsed, raising questions about the future of the property market and the health of the entire economy. The latest to struggle is Country Garden, once the country's largest developer by sales and a company many saw as too big to fail. The fallen fortunes of Country Garden signal something fundamentally wrong with China's housing market, pushing even formerly healthy developers to the brink of collapse.
China has 400 million middle-income families, and putting their money in banks that pay low-interest rates doesn't make sense. Buy property is the best. Many rent out their properties, and wait it out for their children to take over their parent property. China cannot afford to wait until there is a demand and then start building the houses. This scenario happened in Singapore during the late 70s and early 80s when the government built much public housing but not many applicants. A 4-room flat that cost 24K in 1981 and is now worth more than SDG $500K.
My understanding is Singapore actually sold those properties to working families at the time. They didn't simply exist to be unaffordable uninhabited speculative assets, as is the case in China
@@darthbumblebee7310 Although China has lifted up about 900 million citizens out of the poverty line, those people are not rich, but can live comfortably especially for those living in a third or fourth tier city due to lower inflations. Not a single nation on this planet may not experience higher inflations as they progressed from third to developing, and finally first World nations. As a nation run by a world class government, for the people, by the people of the people, need to distribute the nation's wealth of all its people is no easy task, but the CPC government did it. Of course often there are a small number of "sour grapes" from other nations would like to throw stones at China. China built houses made of bricks and cement, and not glass houses.
Empty apartments in China is just housing stock. There remains 500 million who do not yet have their own place. What about US empty office spaces ? Are they getting filed.
One man's loss is another man's gain. Back in 2010 in the US, we bought a bank-owned house for $289,000. In 2022, it was worth $1.2 million. China's population size can withstand a housing crisis. The people who are losing their butts are speculators, not everyday people. Lower housing prices are fantastic for new buyers, just like what happened to us back in 2010.
It's literally ordinary citizens, for whom there were few other "reliable" means to invest their savings, who are most affected. Even the shareholders of the large property developers affected will walk away with billions, and have likely long bought foreign assets with the profits to hedge against such domestic problems. The government will do all it can to save the banks. Which will have to include making sure people don't just withdraw and run with their money (which is one of the more common causes of bank collapse). The "everyday people" are literally the only ones who will suffer.
Why try to put lipstick on a pig? Ordinary people are losing a lot of their wealth. Risk aversion is affecting both A: Consumers, leading to deflation B: Investor confidence, leading to fewer job opportunities. And, Xi's foreign policy is practically encouraging foreign investors to look elsewhere too. Obviously it's not "the end", but there's serious economic difficulties baked into all this for Chinese citizens. And obviously the problems will not last forever, but there's basically no way around substantial short to long term pain for people affected. Many millions of people. Just about the only eventuality up for debate is how the gov will spin it. Not how it will fix it.
American media has been replaying this story since the early 2000s. Long story short is capital and manpower is invested into infrastructure when the timing is right. Concrete does not spoil. All the prior cities that were reported on eventually filled up as demand increased.
The life of concrete is variable depending on quality ingredients and soil/foundation preparation. It certainly can last a very long time when done properly.
South China Post is also playing similar stories. It isn't just American media. And the demand is there for the homes people have already paid for. There shouldn't need to be additional demand for a building that was pre-sold and never completed.
“Concrete Cancer” is a thing. It can most definitely “spoil.” Otherwise we would be refurbishing old buildings indefinitely instead of tearing them down to build replacements on-site.
@@Ryan_Christopher a building is not going to be unusable within a few years or even a decade. these are the timelines. two of the first of these stories were for the cities was in 2011ish and i remember it was about zhengzhou, henan province. Google what Zhengzhou looks like now that it has filled up. China's population was heavily based on the coast. Overcrowded urban areas. The idea, I'm guessing, is to improve infrastructure inland, in suburbs and border areas to promote expansion.
If you look at the recent G20 meetings in India western countries have been trying to pivot away from China and conduct trade deals with Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia and Vietnam) + India as the Chinese economy begins to stumble.
When people are buying homes as an investment rather than as a shelter or to even rent it out. That’s obviously going to lead to a bubble. It’s going to be a long and painful collapse of home prices but that will probably reshuffle the ownership of homes from old to young folks. I suspect the disposable income will be nothing like it was the past decade.
Where was Bloomberg in 2019 or 2020? The problems in the Chinese real estate market were painfully obvious then however, if I remember correctly, Bloomberg was touting China as the premier place to invest! The tiger that could not be tamed! Why should anyone listen to Bloomberg?
@@HKim0072 I met Mr. Bloomberg in 1986 and played with his then current terminals at Merrill Lynch that year. The TV stuff is a TV show that report still report on financial matters and to help investors. Make decisions. The point of my comment was that back in 2019 and 2020 they were very bullish on the future of China , even though the ghost cities that they talk about now had already been built by that time. I would contend that the Bloomberg TV show is actually not very knowledgeable or useful.
@@wbwarren57 I would concur, but realistically the journalists aren't top tier analysts. Very few of them are digging into the hard data since they don't have skin in the game. Then, they have people on the shows that are pushing their books.
@@HKim0072 Bloomberg is not alone in NOT having top tier analysts. About a year ago the "Economist" magazine put out a video made by their China "experts" in which the analysts were clearly using the "official" CCP published numbers on the economy without mentioning any caveats whatsoever that viewers might want to take those numbers with a South China Sea sized grain of salt.
I'm an idiot and I could have solved the housing crisis a decade ago. 1- true escrow accounts. None of this double dipping using prepayments as extra leverage 2- RE annual tax. The perverse incentives for local governments to keep selling land at higher prices would be mitigated somewhat. Housing costs soared because...local government were charging higher prices!
Escrow would not work in China. The scoundrels would make those deposits disappear or dip into funds. China is the land of Guanxin. Lots of shady characters doing patronage. The poor investor would’ve gotten swindled. Annual income taxes. Your ever so competent social credit savvy central and provincial governments are riddled with corruption. Let’s face it. China has corruption and graft running from top down throughout the country in every sphere and province. It takes more than sound leadership to reverse China’s fortunes , Singapore style. It takes compromise from the bottom up and the top down. Like the Netherlands.
Problems of China is .... many... but the biggest one is the CCP one party system, and as the result, roughly a quarter of their GDP is paid to Government workers. Compared to other developed countries this ratio is way higher. So, the private sectors, including domestic and foreign, have to pay not only taxes, but also other "fees" when demanded. Additionally, they stop construction on the way... so that they can pull more money from who orders to build the buildings. Chinese developers and construction companies simply neglect their contracts and promises. And they create unsafe and even non-working buildings, all of those end up with huthey stop construction on the way... so that they can pull more money from who
China's bad production and consumer habits extend here in Canada. Condos seem to grow like mushrooms and Toronto police say "there's not enough space" on the roads. It's pretty well known that "foreign investers" purchase a floor of condos and rent them or leave them vacant. An uber driver from Brazil told me he went rent a condo and the owner had about 10 units. The owner then told him he only rents to Chinese. Thankfully the building standards should be acceptable, but politicians are only interested in money and "growth". The planet can't sustain insane greed. I don't know what's worse, a communist government with too much top-down planning or uncontained greed in capitalism, which allows billionaires to make us slaves.
They are really all the same. I would love for someone to explain to me how a large corporation functions any differently than what we tend to consider a "communist" country. Authoritarian rule with people at the top far removed from the consequences of the decisions they make? Check inability to speak freely or be critical of higher ups to the wider public? check Those on top get rich off the labour of the working class? Check and double check keep everyone so broke and busy they have no time to question or rebel? check Foster an enviroment of gossip and snitching and a lack of transparent communication so you never know who to trust? yup! No elected representation in higher levels, promotion only comes from impressing those above, not taking care of those below? you betchya. I could go on.
Are sure about the impact of recession on the whole world? Most products sold in China are made in China. China doesn’t depend on imports of goods, just raw material. Lately China is trying not to depend on raw materials too.
Wow, I can't believe I was feeling nostalgic for those 90's footage of china. And I was only there in '98 as a child and can hardly remember anything too. But in all the times I have been back since, and constantly seeing empty high rises and buildings... yeah I saw this coming years away. The last time I went back and saw that it got even more empty buildings, I advised all of my family members to not buy anything and try to sell it at the next opportunity unless they were actually going to live in the buildings (and not speculate). Too bad they didn't want to believe the words of an American guy who said something negative about their economy. I hope that in those 5 years before the bust, he did something, but I haven't heard from one of my uncles since then.
I lived in China for three years. As a foreigner from the U.S. Early 2000’s. In Shenzhen. I saw so much building going on. Cranes everywhere in the air. I would also see many condos for sale but there was no real building yet. Just fancy looking showrooms with detailed models of that future building. So most Chinese would buy from just looking at a fancy looking model in the showroom. As one who has bought in Asia (not China), the most important thing to do is wait until the actual building is built! That you can literally see it. Finished. Running. Then buy into it. But most would not do this because they were tempted with the pre-sales prices. Discounted prices before they built the actual building. But then you took the risk of possibly losing your money down the road. Without getting anything. This is what is happening now to many who did this. Why the protests. The riots. Etc.
Always think of the little guy in these things, I truly hope that if NOTHING else, those people who prepaid their housing yet it went unbuilt or uncompleted, I hope they finally see the projects finished. They don't need to be punished when they did everything right.
You should view other channels as well, like China Insights. Then you will get a better picture of what is really going on. The CCP treats the citizens like rubbish. My heart aches for them.
This documentary was interesting, but they failed to mention the shoddy construction practices. Tofu dregs is a term they use to describe how bad the construction is.
Why no one mentioned that the fundamental reasons for this huge property bubble in china is because of one SINGLE thing: the monopolization of land supply by the party !
6:31 - // "80% of the wealth of the average Chinese household is tied up in their homes. When that home price goes down, they feel poorer...." Hold up there. You JUST said their wealth is literally tied up in their homes. So, when home prices go down, they don't just FEEL poorer. They are *literally* poorer. I do not know why there would be a reframing of this as if it's just irrational emotions. These people are getting burned for real here. It's not just feelings.
The reality isn't realised until the property is sold. All it is is something that's probably true. But the perception has immediate effects on economic behaviour.
Yeah, it looks like the American shopping Centres. Melting down according to the American media since 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 2024s and keep going on and on and on
1:08 - "There was this fundamental belief that property price's could only go up". Yes, if looking at it in the "long" term (10-30 years). Japan in late 1980s and USA in late 2000s, show that there can be bust. Heck, adjusted for inflation - Japan's property price is still not as high as the bubble back then. Also 2:38 - that's the foundation of a Ponzi Scheme.
Western think tanks been predicting Chinese economic collapse for over 3 decades lol. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. All economies eventually face recession, you can keep repeating every morning till it true lol.
There is also a lot China money invested in Thailand,so some people who are getting in trouble in China are forced to sell their assets in Thailand to pay back credits in China
If the properties had gone up,the value of the currency decreased. That means, labor is making less. It's a gambling market. I liked when interest rates were above 20 percent, we didnt have these problems. See what negative interest rates and fractional reserve banking does to the workers. It squeezes them, I think that's sick thinking.
The private real estate industry has been the stable engine of growth for the Chinese economy for decades. Recently, it became increasing bubbling out of control and became unstable. One example is evergrande. This indicated the limit of the private realestate sector. The Chinese government will not bail out Evergrande. In fact, the government will now steer real estate away from the capitalist direction since it has reached the end and back to socialist direction. There will be less private builders and more public housing. China is deflating the real estate bubble now. Yes this means the economy slow down and massive job losses. This is a short term pain for longer term gain. This is a make or break challenge for the Chinese government. All mainland Chinese know this. It is not a secret. China is full of problems and look at how many of those problems China has already overcome.
they have many homes in china, In china owning homes are the only form of wealth creation. People usually have 4-5 homes and yes most sit empty only waiting to be sold to someone else. People take out loans from banks to buy new homes, and when the value of hyperinflated homes collapse you get biggest wealth eroder in human history while the debt on which it was built would still remain entact. There is no clear way out of this........ You can do deleveraging coz other methods like bailing out wont work as chinese governments are themselves in huge debt anyways. Printing money to deflate the debt can have a devastating consequences if activity doesnt get aligned with it and with chiense demograhpics it would be real hard if they did. As an economist myself, I dont know what would chinese do and how would they do it, at best they can hope for long stagnating period if managed well otherwise there would be negative gdp growth. There is no clear way out of this, they would need a miracle
People do not 'usually have 4-5 homes'. Not sure where you read or heard that, but it's nonsense. More than 20% of the population owns more than 1 home, that is true, but even they don't own 4-5, generally speaking, at least not outright. Speculation is no doubt a huge problem there.
How does the banks loaning money to the developers help? If the builders have already spent that money somewhere else, they have no income coming on the buildings they are now completing, so how will they pay the bank back?
The point is to complete the already sold apartments and hand them over to the buyers, thereby preventing large-scale social unrest. Whether the developers get out of it alive is less concerning for the government. The banks are owned by the state, so you could say it is primarily a 'government social stability program'.
@pjacobsen1000 I came to the same conclusion, but in some ways, this is just shifting the pain and damage from the Chinese people to the banks and indirectly, to the value of the Chinese currency. It also is not addressing the problems that allowed this to happen in the first place. /
Price of housing can not go up forever, which is the belief in China & many Asian countries. Because eventually it will tricks down to rent. Rent should be cheap enough for business & households too. This has gone too far
The wealth was only on paper for both the individual and the government. This should have been caught by Bloomberg a long time ago. There are entire cities that are completely vacant and being taken over by nature. Some cities are only 20% occupied. In the larger cities there are many buildings that are only 60% occupied. They had the delusion that if they build it they will buy and come but they built more Apartments than they had people
Did not even mentioned China's demographic problems. The long over pushed one child policy , and the lack of interest in the upcoming zoomer and millenial generations to have children has led to a population collapse not seen ever in the modern history of human society. You need young working energetic people , having families , to push forward a housing market. Slowly but surely , because of economic pressures , people have stopped having children. You got to give the slaves some time off and time , space , and reason to breed !!!
Unfortunately it seems even if your lucky enough to get the condo you paid for completed it will fall apart in five years....money obviously does not buy quality
I was in China in the 1990s and this was going on. I met some expats working for architecture companies and they said builders were selling entire floors of apartments to single buyers and no one was moving into the apartments. They also said builders were using the cheapest materials possible with zero insulation so the heating and cooling costs were enormous
Go to Chinese shopping malls. There are too few investment cases. Most shopping malls are operating normally and are designed to deceive you fools.😂😂😂
@@semanadelherrero Your account is two weeks old. More CCP propaganda.
Another reason for such oddity is the over-regulation of the stock market in China. Not everyone can trade stocks freely, authorities step in whenever they like, lots of scams in the market over the decade. All these contribute further to the property investment market, as it has seemed to be the "only legal and safe way" to invest for the masses in China. Just wait for this perfect storm to brew even stronger.
This makes no sense. .your saying jibberish ..
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"Homes are for living in, not for speculating on." - Xi Jinping
I agree. The commodification & financialization of housing is an evil scourge on society.
Real Estate business is up there of the most evil legal business
Only words from comrade Xi, his government actions speaks contrary.
It's just a political slogan to deceive the angry people, because price is too high and most people can't afford housing. Yet their policy is opposite. Fact: China still has ZERO property tax today. This is single most contributing factor that makes housing a perfect speculating investment. No cost to own properties. Keep buying. Rich get richer.
哎。中国房子不用交税。70年到期后自动续费，交几千块就行了。美国要交房产税。30年就相当于买一套
Funny Trudeau in Canada said the same thing!!!
Indian developers were doing similar models of business, pre sales, using the money to buy to new land, not completing per sold projects.
The Supreme court steps in, created the regulatory framework nationwide. Parliament passed a law to create the independent statutory regulatory authorities in all states. Thats how the Indian real estate industry saved, consumer interest is saved and china like situation is averted.
Smart move from India's Supreme Court to protect the rights of individual consumers, and buyers, or else end up with over a hundred half-finished, skeletal buildings dotting across India. That would later be demolished just like China. A total waste of materials, and resources. At least India has a high-quality demand for building standards, unlike China. Less chance of falling through the floor.
Yeap, CCP regulations are meant to protect state owned banks and not the consumer.
Yeah that is a democracy. Not in China mate. Chairman knows best
@@AnnaCentauriemperor knows everything
That is because it is still under the British monarchy and basically the Indian framework is the same as the UK's... people tried that with china cos the HK was meant to be the seeding. But it didn't happen that way... the stare council stated that HK remains unchanged but it has changed. Now it has gone beyond repair?....
So, I think you just about managed to scratch the surface of the problems. Next time maybe look at who sold the land parcels, why property prices in tier 1 cities are artificially prevented from falling. Who holds the mortgages on the roughly 100 million unfinished apartments bought off plan?
All true. Prices are tumbling in the secong hand market as unseen ever before in China. Some places up to 70% down from purchasing prices just a few years ago (outskirts of Beijing in bordering Hebei province) and Tianjin Binhai New Area 40% down from purchasing prices from 2017. And so on thoughout the country.
@@swingingdaniel The specific locations you pointed out are far away from the city center and are not representative. If readers are interested, you can check the relevant maps by yourself.
Not true. Beijing Wukesong secong hand apartment 2022 asking price 7.5 million, and the offer received was 7.3 million. Sellers did not agree. Now 7.0 Million will not find a buyer. Same for Chaoyang distirict villas. All down by at least 15% and that is about the officially reported number.
@@WellSalt-Studio
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@@indiasuperclean6969 Fully agree!
Go to sleep quickly and trying to have more dreams.
A lot of valuable nuance here. Thank you Bloomberg Originals.
In the long term, more affordable prices for housing are always better. The bubble was going to pop eventually, and it's better to have it deflate now than let it balloon into an even bigger problem later on. Tough luck for all the investors though.
Haha, 70% of household wealth is housing real estate. Ain’t just about investors.
The percentage of worth is realestate and investors are like 80:20 there is no real investors apart from Chinese companies
"In the long term, more affordable prices for housing are always better." Not for China's economy. Without a domestic consumer base, which Xi adamantly refuses to nuture, due to considering domestic credit based consumption as making people "lazy", and 80% of the typical Chinese's wealth being locked up in their home value, you are proposing China falling out of the Middle income trap into the Low-income one.
"tough luck for all the investors though." Those investors are literally every single homeowner, which are all Chinese people or companies.
@@HKim0072yeah, if you own your house. There's like 30 to 40% of people who are renters. Same in the US or UK
@@freemanol Politely, you are misinterpreting the statistic. It's not talking about % of ownership. It's saying that household wealth at the total is 70% housing. The other 30% is stocks, bonds or cash in banks.
This happens when homes become a speculation when they should be a primary need.
In China there are very few ways that people are allowed to invest so they bid up house prices. You will actually get more housing through investment than if it is price controlled. In USSR there was never enough housing. Unfortunately China's government directed a lot of malinvestment and it is has been very inefficient.
Amen!
Totally underselling the pain that is spread out due to the “debt” structure of developers.
Generally speaking, 1/3 of debt is bonds, 1/3 is pre-payments and 1/3 is debt to suppliers.
Sure banks are “protected”, but everyone else is totally f’d.
Also, the magnitude of debt. Just Evergrande and Country Garden have debt of close to 3% of GDP. When Lehman folded, their debt was about 0.5% of GDP.
@@robbrand922 lol, this dude never heard of mark-to-market.
Lehman had $600B in assets on the books. It wasn't an accounting scandal. YOU'VE NEVER TAKEN AN ACCOUNTING CLASS HAVE YOU?
China has an everything problem right now. One goes down, the rest follows
Investment interest in construction will completely collapse. There will be little to no returns.
BUT SIR MY INDIA IS THE REAL SUPERPOWER 🤗🇮🇳 WE HAVE THE BEST INFRASTRUCTURE AND HIGHSPEED RAIL 🤗🇮🇳 MEANWHILE IN CHINA PEOPLE STILL RIDE RICKSHAW EVERYWHERE AND THEY ALSO POOR DONT HAVE CAR . THIS WHY IM SO LUCKY LIVE IN SUPER INDIA THE CLEANEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD 🇮🇳🤗 , WE NEVER SCAM! WE GIVE RESPECT TO ALL WOMEN THEY CAN WALK SAFELY ALONE AT NIGHT AND WE HAVE CLEAN FOOD AND TOILET EVERYWHERE 🇮🇳🤗🚽, I KNOW MANY POOR PEOPLE JEALOUS WITH SUPER RICH INDIA 🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳
When push comes to shove, Chinese companies will (and already have) simply default on foreign investors FIRST as a stop gap measure.
They are already doing it. ever grande filed for bankruptcy in US, but are paying the debt to chinese banks. 😃
Foreign investors deserve it.
BUT SIR MY INDIA IS THE REAL SUPERPOWER 🤗🇮🇳 WE HAVE THE BEST INFRASTRUCTURE AND HIGHSPEED RAIL 🤗🇮🇳 MEANWHILE IN CHINA PEOPLE STILL RIDE RICKSHAW EVERYWHERE AND THEY ALSO POOR DONT HAVE CAR . THIS WHY IM SO LUCKY LIVE IN SUPER INDIA THE CLEANEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD 🇮🇳🤗 , WE NEVER SCAM! WE GIVE RESPECT TO ALL WOMEN THEY CAN WALK SAFELY ALONE AT NIGHT AND WE HAVE CLEAN FOOD AND TOILET EVERYWHERE 🇮🇳🤗🚽, I KNOW MANY POOR PEOPLE JEALOUS WITH SUPER RICH INDIA 🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳
@@indiasuperclean6969 I feel sorry for you.
@@indiasuperclean6969
its obviously a satire comment
but i would still rather live in india than in big brother dictatorship like china especially as a citizen
so the joke is on you buddy
The scary thing is that China's real estate investment cycling has been going on for several years now, and the debt continues to grow every time the debt is paid off with debt. And the sky is the limit. It's not just a limited number of real estate developers. Sixty-four major real estate developers, counting those in China, have such insolvencies. Other bright spots in China are not to be found, such as the high-speed rail system, which continues to swell with regular losses, and the semiconductor companies, more than 5,700 of which have gone out of business.
There should be more emphasis on the differences between 2008 and this crisis. The huge difference being Chinese banks seem to have much less exposure to the Chinese realestate market compared to the US banks in 2008. US banks made bad investments in derivatives of subprime loans, which led to the first bankruptcies, then panic and bank runs. And these financial instruments were sold to many foreign investors as well, which is what made the recession so global.
The current situation in China, while bad, looks nothing like the 2008 crisis. These are defaults of DEVELOPERS, not financial institutions. The major concern would be a panic and bank runs, but even then the effects would probably be mostly domestic, since foreign exposure to Chinese realestate is nowhere near that of international exposure to US realestate in 2008.
You haven't read up enough... look deeper
Nice to see this counterargument to all the doomers here on YT
@@popcorn6931 Perhaps you could read deeper and tell us how the Americans gave the world the GFC back in 2008? Allow me to drop you a hint, non existent lending controls and CDOs. now get educated.
@@ML-yu5ij that's cgtn narrative... don't let that be your only source. the writing is on the wall.... and years in the making
@@popcorn6931 Once again, the Chinese did not amplify their exposure with derivatives. Writings on your wall of bigotry?
1:37 Look at that archival footage from Beijing 1995: New apartment projects selling for 1,600/sqm. 25 years later, those same apartments would likely go for 90,000/sqm; a 5,500% increase. Real estate used to be one of the best, if not the best, investments you could make.
true, back in the "old" days.
BUT SIR MY INDIA IS THE REAL SUPERPOWER 🤗🇮🇳 WE HAVE THE BEST INFRASTRUCTURE AND HIGHSPEED RAIL 🤗🇮🇳 MEANWHILE IN CHINA PEOPLE STILL RIDE RICKSHAW EVERYWHERE AND THEY ALSO POOR DONT HAVE CAR . THIS WHY IM SO LUCKY LIVE IN SUPER INDIA THE CLEANEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD 🇮🇳🤗 , WE NEVER SCAM! WE GIVE RESPECT TO ALL WOMEN THEY CAN WALK SAFELY ALONE AT NIGHT AND WE HAVE CLEAN FOOD AND TOILET EVERYWHERE 🇮🇳🤗🚽, I KNOW MANY POOR PEOPLE JEALOUS WITH SUPER RICH INDIA 🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳
The trick with the greater fool theory is...don't be the fool.
@@indiasuperclean6969 India is a joke.
Most Chinese buildings are made using reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) which has a 30 year lifespan before it comes crashing down.
47 industries are upstream and downstream of the real estate industry. It’s affecting everything and everyone there directly or not . Local governments have been cutting salaries to civil servants from office employees, teachers , bus drivers and on and on . 125 thousands teachers have lost their jobs due to demographic downturn and the dominos haven’t all failed yet …
One thing very important not mentioned is that the house buyers have no way out as walking away from their house investments isn’t possible because even if they walk away from their houses they are still liable for the rest of the original loan hence ending up with no house and still a mortgage to pay ! And same with unconstructed houses . The first payment comes when you buy the house NOT when you move in therefore they are stuck paying for a house that might never be built and best case scenario is worth 30 to 50 percent less then they paid for .
Those empty buildings would make for great dystopian sci-fi brutalist architecture for a TV series or movie.
At the time of the global financial crisis, property development and construction was 10% of gdp. In 2020 China, property development and construction was 25% of gdp. China’s potential bubble burst is much bigger than the US.
Just have a rule that nothing can be sold until its finished.
I love how this is really slapping the older generation’s idea of buying a house no matter how hard it makes your daily life.
It’s great.
Chinese economy is very sick. There's no cure.
- Only regime change to something like Taiwan 🇹🇼 can help.
It's a win-win solution for both China and the world.
Starting to happen in Canada with Toronto and Vancouver leading the way home prices are over priced by at least 40%
Why do you lie? The price of the average home in Vancouver has fallen by more than $100,000 over the last year.
I feel like speculation has gotten so bad over here that developers and building homes that are more and more inhospitable - they're smaller, uglier, and more poorly built
What a huge waste of natural resources with all those abandoned half built buildings…
It isnt just about the housing market. The US and other countries are looking elswhere for manufacturing. China's in for hard times.
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Their demographics are collapsing, their cost of production has gone up 14x, mexico is much cheaper. They also are going to half their population by 2050 to 2070
China will be fine. Just worry about your own country.
their buildings look a lot like prisons
How can someone obtain a mortgage for a propertly that does not exist? This is also the problem of sick financial rules by speculating Banks.
It wasn't a mortgage product then, do you see? It was a form of credit card company that was being used for investment banking and the offshore locations for commercial properties but then this happened. Cos then they took it internally and domestically transformed it, so now they are In deeper sh!ts than anything.
Even worse, the govt still owns the land the building is built on! The developers bid for 70 year leases for the land. So Chinese homeowners might own their flat, but not the land it sits on.
@@gerardp4759 : Then they are basically not "developers"... and if you project the old Imperial model onto this.. and this is whereby their so called "with Chinese characteristics" comes from... So basically.. it should be such that, the indigenous families or family clans that owns those land, and whatever.. only they should be sitting in the State Council. There used to be around 2 groupings. If I recall. One was the people's committee or other, and then the other one was the state council. So when there was all of this "one country, two systems" thing comes into play... It is like... there are no courts. And yet, there is one group of decision makers by consensus.. and then the other one is group of people with legitimacies.... Where does the courts come into play ? It only deals with foreigners then... the courts are for foreign companies and foreigners then. So then how come.. some people inside the PRC today, see a passport as a form of visa only ??? When it is about legitimacies ?
That is how preconstruction works.
Imagine yourself buying a shirt on a lay-away plan. You tell the merchant to hold onto that shirt , and get yourself into a scheduled payment plan. After all, you are Tony Manero, you work at the local hardware store , and you need to upgrade your wardrobe for those Saturday nights . Money is scarce then. This was a very common practice in the US , around the 70’s.
Same with pre construction. Builders acquire or lease land , supposedly secure financing , arrange for architectural services , spend money on promotional marketing , get approved by the zoning board to build, put up a show room, and sign up buyers to a pre payment plan that might cover 30% of the purchased unit retail value, parsed through cinstruction. The rest is to be paid upon delivery and a confirmed issued certificate of occupancy.
The once ready units now need to be completed by buyers on their own nickel . Flooring , lighting fixtures , in-unit HVAC , cabinetry, closets.
Chinese builders operate on other people’s money. They are supposed to secure lines of credit , or get securitized, or have their own cash reserves. Chinese oversight for this stage is done poorly , they are way behind on regulatory and compliance affairs. Other people’s money then become buyers prepayment cash outlays., therefore , builders do not secure for such sources of non buyer originated funds.
I wish Canada gets some of this and wish to see some real estate gamblers begging in the streets and taking horse tranquilizers!!
Canada got a lot of Chinese investment into real estate. So the bubble bursting might bring down prices.
@@MrMakabar I am from the mortgage industry and Chinese aren't allowed to buy real estate due to foreign buyer ban In Canada.
@@chinadollfmd there are ways around that, if you are in the mortgage industry you should know that, third party realestate, financing, Chinese contracts with Canadian Estate ect it’s not black and white
Noticing here in Australia that units Chinese like are being sold. Some at lower levels when bought. The Chinese inflate their own market.
@@chinadollfmd: Well... they shouldn't be able to do so to begin with ! Cos some of the "money" is basically OUR money from the British commonwealths which fed into China as well. So then they claimed it as their ow public money. And now, they can't use their so called public money to rebuy back the British land ! Sorry.. but that is ridiculous to begin with !
What do people think they are doing ? Playing mah jong ! Until one gets sick and take them down cos they've not slept for days and days ???
This has been going on for years. They have done these to themselves.
It's almost impossible to be solved by any policies from the public sectors, because they are stakeholders . This crisis of property in China is correlated with the local governments' budgets. Even though the central government tried to tighten the policies, the local governments are inertia or lack of will to reduce their budgets and have to bid more land to real estate companies. As a resident, you only hope that the invisible hand can adjust the perperty' price. Even though the land supply has been monopolized by the government, the market mechanism still works on the price and the prices most of properties have falled during past several years.
Zhou Xiaochuan was the man who blew the China's housing bubble.
[he was Governor of the People's Bank of China from 28 December 2002 to 19 March 2018]
Look at the auxillary construction markets linke with China. Cambodia had a ton of Chinese construction contractors there. Also look at Vietnam, it's having a construction meltdown too.
I hope you guys continue the investigation, it doesn't stop at China!
I'm glad someone noticed this
China's property market is facing a deep-seated structural crisis, with deserted shopping malls, half-empty apartment complexes, and abandoned construction sites being just a few signs of the sector's struggles. The privatization of property in the 1990s generated an unprecedented boom in China's real estate, which was further fueled by domestic factors such as a tumultuous stock market. Developers would launch a project for pre-sales, get the money from homebuyers, and immediately invest in new land parcels to keep expanding. However, when sales suddenly tumbled, cash stopped coming in, and developers were unable to finish constructing homes previously pre-sold. The build-up of the bubbles went on unchecked until the Chinese government tightened regulations over developers, culminating in the three red lines policy, which limited firms' ability to obtain financing. Since then, dozens of private developers have collapsed, raising questions about the future of the property market and the health of the entire economy. The latest to struggle is Country Garden, once the country's largest developer by sales and a company many saw as too big to fail. The fallen fortunes of Country Garden signal something fundamentally wrong with China's housing market, pushing even formerly healthy developers to the brink of collapse.
Despite all these signs there are still many china supporters on the waiting for china to overtake the US economy.
China has 400 million middle-income families, and putting their money in banks that pay low-interest rates doesn't make sense. Buy property is the best. Many rent out their properties, and wait it out for their children to take over their parent property. China cannot afford to wait until there is a demand and then start building the houses. This scenario happened in Singapore during the late 70s and early 80s when the government built much public housing but not many applicants. A 4-room flat that cost 24K in 1981 and is now worth more than SDG $500K.
My understanding is Singapore actually sold those properties to working families at the time. They didn't simply exist to be unaffordable uninhabited speculative assets, as is the case in China
@@darthbumblebee7310 Although China has lifted up about 900 million citizens out of the poverty line, those people are not rich, but can live comfortably especially for those living in a third or fourth tier city due to lower inflations. Not a single nation on this planet may not experience higher inflations as they progressed from third to developing, and finally first World nations. As a nation run by a world class government, for the people, by the people of the people, need to distribute the nation's wealth of all its people is no easy task, but the CPC government did it. Of course often there are a small number of "sour grapes" from other nations would like to throw stones at China. China built houses made of bricks and cement, and not glass houses.
I remember riding from Shanghai airport to downtown and seeing brand new buildings everywhere completely empty. Like a ghost town of new buildings.
And why are the prices still on affordable to me? I want to buy there
Empty apartments in China is just housing stock. There remains 500 million who do not yet have their own place.
What about US empty office spaces ? Are they getting filed.
China needs a new leader!
One man's loss is another man's gain. Back in 2010 in the US, we bought a bank-owned house for $289,000. In 2022, it was worth $1.2 million. China's population size can withstand a housing crisis. The people who are losing their butts are speculators, not everyday people. Lower housing prices are fantastic for new buyers, just like what happened to us back in 2010.
Agree. News media tend to exaggerate things as if it were the end of the day.
It's literally ordinary citizens, for whom there were few other "reliable" means to invest their savings, who are most affected. Even the shareholders of the large property developers affected will walk away with billions, and have likely long bought foreign assets with the profits to hedge against such domestic problems. The government will do all it can to save the banks. Which will have to include making sure people don't just withdraw and run with their money (which is one of the more common causes of bank collapse). The "everyday people" are literally the only ones who will suffer.
Why try to put lipstick on a pig? Ordinary people are losing a lot of their wealth. Risk aversion is affecting both A: Consumers, leading to deflation B: Investor confidence, leading to fewer job opportunities. And, Xi's foreign policy is practically encouraging foreign investors to look elsewhere too.
Obviously it's not "the end", but there's serious economic difficulties baked into all this for Chinese citizens. And obviously the problems will not last forever, but there's basically no way around substantial short to long term pain for people affected. Many millions of people. Just about the only eventuality up for debate is how the gov will spin it. Not how it will fix it.
American media has been replaying this story since the early 2000s. Long story short is capital and manpower is invested into infrastructure when the timing is right. Concrete does not spoil. All the prior cities that were reported on eventually filled up as demand increased.
The life of concrete is variable depending on quality ingredients and soil/foundation preparation. It certainly can last a very long time when done properly.
South China Post is also playing similar stories. It isn't just American media. And the demand is there for the homes people have already paid for. There shouldn't need to be additional demand for a building that was pre-sold and never completed.
“Concrete Cancer” is a thing. It can most definitely “spoil.” Otherwise we would be refurbishing old buildings indefinitely instead of tearing them
down to build replacements on-site.
@@Ryan_Christopher a building is not going to be unusable within a few years or even a decade. these are the timelines. two of the first of these stories were for the cities was in 2011ish and i remember it was about zhengzhou, henan province. Google what Zhengzhou looks like now that it has filled up.
China's population was heavily based on the coast. Overcrowded urban areas. The idea, I'm guessing, is to improve infrastructure inland, in suburbs and border areas to promote expansion.
@@kelli_1652We are talking two things. Im talking about "ghost cities", you are talking about developers not fulfilling their contractual obligation
Chinese real estate has been collapsing for more than 15 years now. Maybe 15 years from now it will be even worse.
ccp wumao!
ccp wumao rat!
if even 1/3 of the unfinished housing projects are finished I will be amazed.
If you look at the recent G20 meetings in India western countries have been trying to pivot away from China and conduct trade deals with Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia and Vietnam) + India as the Chinese economy begins to stumble.
China is SO DONE NOW
When people are buying homes as an investment rather than as a shelter or to even rent it out. That’s obviously going to lead to a bubble. It’s going to be a long and painful collapse of home prices but that will probably reshuffle the ownership of homes from old to young folks. I suspect the disposable income will be nothing like it was the past decade.
Nothing that is not sustainable should be allowed to become an investment object.
Is this another one of those "China Collapse in 30 days" video?
Bloomberg originals you're full of it.The information here is unfounded.
Where was Bloomberg in 2019 or 2020? The problems in the Chinese real estate market were painfully obvious then however, if I remember correctly, Bloomberg was touting China as the premier place to invest! The tiger that could not be tamed! Why should anyone listen to Bloomberg?
Do you realize that Bloomberg is a computer terminal that provides information?
The TV stuff is just a sideshow.
@@HKim0072
I met Mr. Bloomberg in 1986 and played with his then current terminals at Merrill Lynch that year. The TV stuff is a TV show that report still report on financial matters and to help investors. Make decisions. The point of my comment was that back in 2019 and 2020 they were very bullish on the future of China , even though the ghost cities that they talk about now had already been built by that time. I would contend that the Bloomberg TV show is actually not very knowledgeable or useful.
@@wbwarren57 I would concur, but realistically the journalists aren't top tier analysts. Very few of them are digging into the hard data since they don't have skin in the game.
Then, they have people on the shows that are pushing their books.
@@HKim0072
Bloomberg is not alone in NOT having top tier analysts. About a year ago the "Economist" magazine put out a video made by their China "experts" in which the analysts were clearly using the "official" CCP published numbers on the economy without mentioning any caveats whatsoever that viewers might want to take those numbers with a South China Sea sized grain of salt.
I'm an idiot and I could have solved the housing crisis a decade ago.
1- true escrow accounts. None of this double dipping using prepayments as extra leverage
2- RE annual tax. The perverse incentives for local governments to keep selling land at higher prices would be mitigated somewhat. Housing costs soared because...local government were charging higher prices!
Escrow would not work in China. The scoundrels would make those deposits disappear or dip into funds. China is the land of Guanxin. Lots of shady characters doing patronage. The poor investor would’ve gotten swindled.
Annual income taxes. Your ever so competent social credit savvy central and provincial governments are riddled with corruption.
Let’s face it. China has corruption and graft running from top down throughout the country in every sphere and province. It takes more than sound leadership to reverse China’s fortunes , Singapore style. It takes compromise from the bottom up and the top down. Like the Netherlands.
There’s no crisis… just use a grey filter and took some unfinished building, fabric some, find some extreme examples and make the story.
据说五毛党员还没失业
Problems of China is .... many... but the biggest one is the CCP one party system, and as the result, roughly a quarter of their GDP is paid to Government workers. Compared to other developed countries this ratio is way higher. So, the private sectors, including domestic and foreign, have to pay not only taxes, but also other "fees" when demanded. Additionally, they stop construction on the way... so that they can pull more money from who orders to build the buildings. Chinese developers and construction companies simply neglect their contracts and promises. And they create unsafe and even non-working buildings, all of those end up with huthey stop construction on the way... so that they can pull more money from who
what kind of idt is this? 🤣
You should go to China and tell the CPC this, you're a genius!
China's bad production and consumer habits extend here in Canada. Condos seem to grow like mushrooms and Toronto police say "there's not enough space" on the roads. It's pretty well known that "foreign investers" purchase a floor of condos and rent them or leave them vacant. An uber driver from Brazil told me he went rent a condo and the owner had about 10 units. The owner then told him he only rents to Chinese. Thankfully the building standards should be acceptable, but politicians are only interested in money and "growth". The planet can't sustain insane greed. I don't know what's worse, a communist government with too much top-down planning or uncontained greed in capitalism, which allows billionaires to make us slaves.
They are really all the same.
I would love for someone to explain to me how a large corporation functions any differently than what we tend to consider a "communist" country.
Authoritarian rule with people at the top far removed from the consequences of the decisions they make? Check
inability to speak freely or be critical of higher ups to the wider public? check
Those on top get rich off the labour of the working class? Check and double check
keep everyone so broke and busy they have no time to question or rebel? check
Foster an enviroment of gossip and snitching and a lack of transparent communication so you never know who to trust? yup!
No elected representation in higher levels, promotion only comes from impressing those above, not taking care of those below? you betchya.
I could go on.
Are sure about the impact of recession on the whole world?
Most products sold in China are made in China.
China doesn’t depend on imports of goods, just raw material.
Lately China is trying not to depend on raw materials too.
This is a cautionary tale for everyone.
China has ~65m more houses than households.
Their ghost would live in these houses.
Wow, I can't believe I was feeling nostalgic for those 90's footage of china. And I was only there in '98 as a child and can hardly remember anything too. But in all the times I have been back since, and constantly seeing empty high rises and buildings... yeah I saw this coming years away. The last time I went back and saw that it got even more empty buildings, I advised all of my family members to not buy anything and try to sell it at the next opportunity unless they were actually going to live in the buildings (and not speculate).
Too bad they didn't want to believe the words of an American guy who said something negative about their economy.
I hope that in those 5 years before the bust, he did something, but I haven't heard from one of my uncles since then.
As always... they will try to blame everything on the CIA for their mess
Great report. India's major cities future.
I lived in China for three years. As a foreigner from the U.S. Early 2000’s. In Shenzhen. I saw so much building going on. Cranes everywhere in the air. I would also see many condos for sale but there was no real building yet. Just fancy looking showrooms with detailed models of that future building. So most Chinese would buy from just looking at a fancy looking model in the showroom. As one who has bought in Asia (not China), the most important thing to do is wait until the actual building is built! That you can literally see it. Finished. Running. Then buy into it. But most would not do this because they were tempted with the pre-sales prices. Discounted prices before they built the actual building. But then you took the risk of possibly losing your money down the road. Without getting anything. This is what is happening now to many who did this. Why the protests. The riots. Etc.
if property not melted down, GCD will meltdown. Flourishing property market will result more people sleep in car or camping on road side in the city.
2:34 It's always funny seeing people describe ponzi schemes without calling them ponzi schemes.
So much for the pipe dream of China becoming a superpower, 🤣
Always think of the little guy in these things, I truly hope that if NOTHING else, those people who prepaid their housing yet it went unbuilt or uncompleted, I hope they finally see the projects finished. They don't need to be punished when they did everything right.
Yes about a million people in China stuck with unfinished home.
You should view other channels as well, like China Insights. Then you will get a better picture of what is really going on. The CCP treats the citizens like rubbish. My heart aches for them.
@@dustintacohands1107Many more than a million.
@@marieslabbert6009 that just the number I heard that have unfinished house that won’t be finished now
@@marieslabbert6009you are trapping him to propaganda!
Now finally BBG also talks about the OBVIOUS. Other channels have done for at least a year.
So, it was a missive Ponzy Scheme.
Meanwhile SLOWING economy will stay grow at 4.6-5.5% and will contribute 40% of global economic growth
how many times and years has this been reported. It is just so funny that people in the comment section are believing this bs.
This documentary was interesting, but they failed to mention the shoddy construction practices. Tofu dregs is a term they use to describe how bad the construction is.
Bad planning, organisation and economics at play here.
It's the usual everything bad or getting worst 🤣 I think the US is the best place to live in now no crimes, no homeless, everybody happy n rich. 👍🤣
sounds like to know US but not enough of china.... is china a pretty place right now?
home is for living. the real "meltdown" was in Maui (like the Grenfell Tower fire)
ccp wumao rat!
Why no one mentioned that the fundamental reasons for this huge property bubble in china is because of one SINGLE thing: the monopolization of land supply by the party !
Very very evil communism. Everything is state owned, but at the end of day it’s THEY owned
same thing happens in america
6:31 - // "80% of the wealth of the average Chinese household is tied up in their homes. When that home price goes down, they feel poorer...."
Hold up there.
You JUST said their wealth is literally tied up in their homes.
So, when home prices go down, they don't just FEEL poorer. They are *literally* poorer.
I do not know why there would be a reframing of this as if it's just irrational emotions. These people are getting burned for real here. It's not just feelings.
The reality isn't realised until the property is sold. All it is is something that's probably true.
But the perception has immediate effects on economic behaviour.
Chinese developers.... yes but what is there to develop? When everything has already been developed
It is like tax cuts, too much government subsidies provide diminishing benefits.
As long as Chinese government step in ,the problems will be solved
No. It's all false Communist manipulation.
Yeah, it looks like the American shopping Centres.
Melting down according to the American media since 1980s 1990s
2000s 2010s 2020s 2024s and keep going on and on and on
China's real estate is totally ridiculous.
1:08 - "There was this fundamental belief that property price's could only go up". Yes, if looking at it in the "long" term (10-30 years). Japan in late 1980s and USA in late 2000s, show that there can be bust. Heck, adjusted for inflation - Japan's property price is still not as high as the bubble back then. Also 2:38 - that's the foundation of a Ponzi Scheme.
who didn't see it coming? I know I did, 10 years ago...
Central banks can stave off reality until they can’t… US is same situation, stocks and real estate are beyond bubble levels
Western think tanks been predicting Chinese economic collapse for over 3 decades lol. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. All economies eventually face recession, you can keep repeating every morning till it true lol.
Thanks...Great in-depth review!! 👍
There is also a lot China money invested in Thailand,so some people who are getting in trouble in China are forced to sell their assets in Thailand to pay back credits in China
I hope so!, we want them out of NZ as well!
If the properties had gone up,the value of the currency decreased. That means, labor is making less. It's a gambling market. I liked when interest rates were above 20 percent, we didnt have these problems. See what negative interest rates and fractional reserve banking does to the workers. It squeezes them, I think that's sick thinking.
The Chinese Communist Party has a social agreement w the people... keep prosperity and the people will accept totalitariansm.
The private real estate industry has been the stable engine of growth for the Chinese economy for decades. Recently, it became increasing bubbling out of control and became unstable. One example is evergrande. This indicated the limit of the private realestate sector.
The Chinese government will not bail out Evergrande.
In fact, the government will now steer real estate away from the capitalist direction since it has reached the end and back to socialist direction. There will be less private builders and more public housing.
China is deflating the real estate bubble now.
Yes this means the economy slow down and massive job losses. This is a short term pain for longer term gain.
This is a make or break challenge for the Chinese government. All mainland Chinese know this. It is not a secret. China is full of problems and look at how many of those problems China has already overcome.
China is already broke... you still have hope?
they have many homes in china, In china owning homes are the only form of wealth creation. People usually have 4-5 homes and yes most sit empty only waiting to be sold to someone else. People take out loans from banks to buy new homes, and when the value of hyperinflated homes collapse you get biggest wealth eroder in human history while the debt on which it was built would still remain entact. There is no clear way out of this........ You can do deleveraging coz other methods like bailing out wont work as chinese governments are themselves in huge debt anyways. Printing money to deflate the debt can have a devastating consequences if activity doesnt get aligned with it and with chiense demograhpics it would be real hard if they did. As an economist myself, I dont know what would chinese do and how would they do it, at best they can hope for long stagnating period if managed well otherwise there would be negative gdp growth. There is no clear way out of this, they would need a miracle
Canada should send all those immigrants Trudeau is receiving in Canada to CHINA
People do not 'usually have 4-5 homes'. Not sure where you read or heard that, but it's nonsense. More than 20% of the population owns more than 1 home, that is true, but even they don't own 4-5, generally speaking, at least not outright.
Speculation is no doubt a huge problem there.
How does the banks loaning money to the developers help? If the builders have already spent that money somewhere else, they have no income coming on the buildings they are now completing, so how will they pay the bank back?
The point is to complete the already sold apartments and hand them over to the buyers, thereby preventing large-scale social unrest. Whether the developers get out of it alive is less concerning for the government. The banks are owned by the state, so you could say it is primarily a 'government social stability program'.
@pjacobsen1000 I came to the same conclusion, but in some ways, this is just shifting the pain and damage from the Chinese people to the banks and indirectly, to the value of the Chinese currency. It also is not addressing the problems that allowed this to happen in the first place. /
@@stephanledford9792 I agree.
Price of housing can not go up forever, which is the belief in China & many Asian countries. Because eventually it will tricks down to rent. Rent should be cheap enough for business & households too. This has gone too far
the quality of construction, of lack of there in, is absolutely shocking; these building are designed to last 20 years -- max
Housing has no business being used as an investment platform like this. What a joke.
Chinese ghost city they should make a post apocalyptic movie in china .
Excelentes documentales, excelentes
I didn’t think I would see this bubble burst in my lifetime but here we are. Another country failed to outrun economics.
The wealth was only on paper for both the individual and the government. This should have been caught by Bloomberg a long time ago. There are entire cities that are completely vacant and being taken over by nature. Some cities are only 20% occupied. In the larger cities there are many buildings that are only 60% occupied. They had the delusion that if they build it they will buy and come but they built more Apartments than they had people
Well opposite problem here in the US.. makes you understand how there is a balance that is very delicate
Posted on 15th March 2023.
If it was not for greed all the way around they would not be in this mess.
Great video. Just subscribed !
Did not even mentioned China's demographic problems. The long over pushed one child policy , and the lack of interest in the upcoming zoomer and millenial generations to have children has led to a population collapse not seen ever in the modern history of human society. You need young working energetic people , having families , to push forward a housing market. Slowly but surely , because of economic pressures , people have stopped having children. You got to give the slaves some time off and time , space , and reason to breed !!!
When year 2008 USA housing bubble began, Government bail out bank.
Right now, China not bail out bank, but take over share as state company.
Did I just see the Singapore merlion towards the end of the video? Apparently Bloomberg can't tell Singapore apart from China!
Unfortunately it seems even if your lucky enough to get the condo you paid for completed it will fall apart in five years....money obviously does not buy quality
Great so very informative
Thank you
so why do i have to worry about my personal carbon footprint again? biggest polluters in the world!