[baybal2]

A more extreme example: 1/5 of all housing stock in China are vacant concrete boxes, and people are still complaining about apartment prices reaching to the sky.

Imagine cities both 20 times the size of SF, and being one fifth vacant.

[pmiller2]

Imagine there being 59 empty homes for each homeless person in the country. That's the US, not China, BTW: https://www.self.inc/info/empty-homes/

[hedora]

I wonder what percentage of the vacant California homes are held up waiting for permitting. It’s definitely non-zero.

(Similarly, I wonder how many are off market because it’s so difficult to evict problem tenants.)

[BobbyJo]

To be fair, housing in China is used as a savings vehicle. They have few, if any, social safety nets available to them, and don't trust the stock market.

Housing in the US doesn't have nearly the same speculative force behind it.

[baybal2]

Very much true, and this is what I wanted to show — what is a case of a real speculative runaway.

Still, the fact stands as mindboggling as it is — China has few Californias of empty housing, and a ridiculous housing price runaway at the same time.

[ladberg]

Vacant != on the market. I know a few people living in china, all of whom own more apartments than they can use (in the same neighborhoods no less, so it's not even vacation homes).

They do it because it's the best way to invest their savings, so new apartments are usually spoken for before they're even built and often unoccupied until they're sold again.

[pmiller2]

Is it legal for private citizens to rent out vacant housing units in China? If so, that doesn't surprise me very much. Every landlord has more housing units than they can use.

[ladberg]

Yes it's legal but the people I've talked to don't do it. There's a stigma of renting over buying so the rent/home value ratio is way off compared to the US. Renting out the homes wouldn't really net much profit overall and they don't want to deal with being a landlord anyway, so they let the apartments sit empty.

[ricardobayes]

It is impossible to get married in China if the bride doesn't own property. The family won't allow it.