Recent Development
There are a couple of interesting reports floating around on China Daily recently.
China needs three decades to make homes affordable
According to Chen, China has built about 70 million residential apartments in its urban areas in the past decade, which equals to one-third of the households. The figures indicated that only three or four out of 100 households moved into new apartments each year.
"China faces a severe housing shortage," Chen said. "Even if apartments didn’t cost any money, four units wouldn’t turn into 70 apartments."
Very interesting comments. On one hand, there is a “severe housing shortage” based on demand projection, which maybe partially explains why the housing price is shooting up so rapidly. On the other hand, housing price has driven the ordinary Joes out of the market. In cities like Ordos, a large percentage of apartments are empty, either unsold or horded by empty-nester investors, creating ghost cities like the one featured on Time.