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by dcldcl 3038 days ago
I've spoken to tech workers from Beijing and my impression from them is the cost to purchase homes was on par (if not higher) than SV (and Seattle).

Is rent that much cheaper?

2 comments

Yes! You can rent an apartment that retails for a million dollars for $1500/month or less. It is just a huge property bubble, actual residential demand isn’t that strong.
Yes, but.... there is a lot of but there:

Technically speaking (literally), a shack in Gangxia, Shenzhen can have market value from $1m to $2m, but nobody will ever sell it. They have no value other than of land under them.

Rents for a room there were around CNY400 per month 5 years ago.

80ies era apartments - also cheap, but quite a lot of them are in even worse shape than property in villages.

post 2000 housing - gets better, actually livable somewhat. Look for 4k CNY in good locations.

Western like proper highrise apartments - no less than 9k, availability is smallish. Everybody is looking for then. I was looking for one in Huafu area, but they just go too fast to even get sense of a price