Nickname: BeijingMan

Review: The new problem in Beijing is that companies use apartments, as they are cheaper than real offices. Near Workers Stadium, Sun City has hundreds of offices and even small production units. House management is China's new weakness. http://beijingman.blogspot.com

Date reviewed: Jun 14, 2006 10:10 AM

Nickname: JeffreyX

Review: The situation is no different in booming IT hubs of India like Bangalore and Pune. Property prices have sky-rocketed to alarming levels so much that a delay in investment by two years could mean an additional 100-120% premium on the property. At least the Chinese government is investing in low-cost housing. The Indian government doesn't seem to be the least bit bothered about the changing social demographics.

Date reviewed: Jun 14, 2006 9:36 AM

Nickname: China Law Blog

Review: The situation in China is even more out of whack than in the United States. I say this because I have seen condo developments in some of China's cities that are fully sold out and yet nobody lives in them. They have been bought for speculative purposes by Hong Kong, Taiwan or Singapore money. One can rent a condo for around $6,000 a year that sells for around $250,000+, so obviously rents are not in line with the selling price, which has to be another indicator of speculation.

Date reviewed: Jun 13, 2006 1:10 AM

Nickname: Bo

Review: The bigger picture is that the local governments don't have any better way of collecting taxes than taxing the things that the governments can control, from land to utility. The tax system is simple and effective. However, the tax is not progessive. The poor end up paying more proportionally than the rich: you pay the same amount of tax, directly or indirectly, for the same house, regardless how rich or poor you are. One remedy of the disproportional real estate tax on the poor and middle class is to spend the tax on the items that disproportionally benefit them, such as education.

Date reviewed: Jun 11, 2006 7:40 PM

Nickname: house-seeker

Review: A critical reason for the increasing housing costs is that many local governments try to benefit from more sales of expensive houses. Though the central government, under the pressure by more and more urban residents requiring to stablize the housing prices, has issued several policies, local governments always try to circumvent them. The purpose: rising house prices will lead to higher GDP, and local bureaucrats may reap both political achievments and juicy incomes from it. Until the central government finds an effective way to curb local governments' greed, houses will remain unaffordable for most Chinese mid-class people. Besides, traditionally, most Chinese belive a person is independent only when he/she has an apartment of his/her own. This results in many young couples' desperate efforts to save enough money, even from meals, to repay for never-ending bankloans. Their lives therefore are much compromised. A new word was invented to dub these people: house-slaves.

Date reviewed: Jun 11, 2006 7:52 AM

Nickname: EnvisionAll

Review: Another problem is that large numbers of overseas Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong residents are purchasing homes in Beijing and Shanghai, which boosts the prices.

Date reviewed: Jun 10, 2006 6:02 PM

Nickname: Interconnect

Review: Excellent benchmark. Look around anywhere in Asia, India, Pakistan or Bangladesh. Take Karachi city in Pakistan. With poor infrastructure for rail/road intercity public transport, the industrial city should essentially have resident labor. Labor cannot go out of the city, due to fuel costs, and poor infrastructure. When China cannot solve this issue, what will happen to Pakistan? Please answer, World Bank.

Date reviewed: Jun 9, 2006 1:25 PM

Nickname: Aaron

Review: Just after the issuance of the policy, the customer turned out to more prudent and mostly decided to hold their money to see if there would be any anticipated downward pressure on housing prices. As known to all, devoting 30% of your income to pay for a house installment is harmful to the whole market--which turns out to be more popular nowadays in China.

Date reviewed: Jun 9, 2006 8:07 AM