How many empty apartments are in China?
China has at least 65 million empty homes — enough to house the population of France. It offers a glimpse into the country's massive housing-market problem. The letter F.
A recent report reveals that about 20% of the total urban housing properties in China — around 65 million properties — are vacant.
In 2020, almost six million new residential properties were built in China, a slight decline from the previous years.
Overall, China has a geographical mismatch of housing demand and supply; too much housing in less-developed areas, but also an acute shortage in large cities where people want to work and raise families.
A report reveals that there could be as many as 50 ghost cities in China at present. Unlike parts of the US and Japan, where unoccupied homes in various states of abandonment and decay have earned cities and regions the titles of "ghost towns," China's are different. They're not abandoned, but rather unoccupied.
You can live in most China's major cities for far less than $1,000 per month, and with a great lifestyle. However, there's always room for luxury and more spending. It costs around $1,000 or more to rent a nice apartment in the center of Beijing or Shanghai if that's the kind of lifestyle you are seeking.
China's record number of vacant houses and urban projects, sitting at over 50 million units and growing, are an increasingly worrying domestic challenge. Known as “ghost cities,” these developments have created a housing bubble representative of decades of Chinese progress — but also turmoil.
These cities were often thrown up fast and with little attention to sustainability; the average life span of a building in China is only 25 to 30 years.
More than 85 percent of Chinese houses are sold through presale—up from about 50 percent in 2005; mortgages begin months or even years before buildings are finished. Projects have only slowed since 2020, when the Chinese real estate market entered a protracted crisis and developers started to struggle.
Apartments are the most common type of property that you can buy in China. Buying a house is not usual, and not only because of the real estate prices. Houses in city centers are scarce, they are mostly available outside city limits, in more rural areas. Even then a lot of them might be run down and in a poor state.
Who owns apartments in China?
Ownership rights
In general, rural collectives own agricultural land and the state owns urban land. However, Article 70 of The Property Law allows for ownership of exclusive parts within an apartment building, which endorses the individual ownership of apartments.
Look Inside a Chinese Apartment - WOW! - YouTube
However, to keep all the jobs from going to the coastal cities, China built up its rural areas. "Local governments around the country tried to juice and stimulate their economies by building more infrastructure and stimulating the property market," Dinny McMahon, author of China's Great Wall of Debt, explains to ABC.
Since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, China has experienced severe shortages of housing space, deteriorating housing conditions, and overcrowding. With the open-door policies of the present government, however, China has invested more funds in housing and is trying to improve the general situation.
According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, China had approximately 2,000 shelters and 20,000 social workers to aid approximately 3 million homeless people in 2014. From 2017 to 2019, the government of Guangdong Province assisted 5,388 homeless people in reuniting with relatives elsewhere in China.
Ordos, China, once flush with cash, has been called the world's largest ghost town. In the early 2000s, a coal-mining boom led the local government to throw money at urban development in the hopes of creating a new epicenter of culture, economy, and politics.
- Pudong - one of the first ghost cities, now a prominent global financial district of Shanghai.
- Chenggong District - the chief zone for the expansion of the city of Kunming. ...
- Ordos City, Kangbashi New Area - described in 2009 by news media as a 'ghost city'. ...
- Nanhui New City.
- Yujiapu Financial District.
Owning a car in China is so unusual it hasn't become a status symbol. Out of some 3 million vehicles on China's roads, about 170,000 are passenger cars. Most are state-owned. In Peking, a city of 9.5 million people, fewer than 1,000 Chinese own their own cars, according to local residents.
China has some of the youngest retirement ages in the world, which is becoming a major problem for a country that is steadily aging. The official retirement age for men is 60. Women in managerial positions have a retirement age of 55, while blue-collar female workers can retire at 50.
How much do houses cost in China?
In 2020, the average sales price for residential real estate in Shenzhen was over 56 thousand yuan per square meters. It was the highest price among all major cities in China. The average price across the country was 15,192 yuan per square meter.
As of June 2020 the PRC has a total of 687 cities: 4 municipalities, 2 SARs, 293 prefectural-level cities (including the 15 sub-provincial cities) and 388 county-level cities (including the 38 sub-prefectural cities and 10 XXPC cities).
