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by HDThoreaun 656 days ago
The chinese property bubble was created because of the lack of equity markets for chinese investors to dump money in. Without good investments to be had the chinese turned to pure speculation in the real estate market. Their housing market is actually quite good at providing housing, in fact theyve lifted 800+ million people out of poverty in the last 80 years. Just the crappy financial regulations that caused the problem.

The American housing market does not seem to have much speculation right now. Houses actually provide utility around equal to what they cost here, theres just a big enough wealth disparity combined with not enough housing that a huge number of people cant afford that price.
1 comments
seanmcdirmid 656 days ago
The construction industry really is a jobs program for rural surplus labor, they’ve optimized their construction techniques for that with the same 30 story blocks with slightly overbuilt concrete walls and floors. But they have surplus units and even in hot cities like Beijing or Shanghai you’ll find empty apartments that haven’t even been renovated yet. It’s not clear where this will end.

The American market has lots of speculation. Many landlords are just in it for the appreciation given that they can’t even make a mortgage payment with rent, I know of multiple homes in my (Seattle) neighborhood owned by Chinese investors that are barely lived in.

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HDThoreaun 656 days ago
They build the same building over and over again because theyve had to create litearlly a billion units in the last 50 years and it's faster that way.

There are unsold units because the price went crazy due to speculation. Empty housing is one of the main indicators of a real estate bubble. American vacancy rate has slowly crept up but is still extremely low outside of manhattan. Americans tend not to believe housing will appreciate faster than the stock market, so housing speculation is limited, although of course not unheard of. We'd need LVT for that.

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seanmcdirmid 656 days ago
The empty houses are definitely sold. They are just being held since the return on an unrenovated unit is higher than a renovated one. They are speculating long term, and being landlords doesn’t give them much. There are also apartments that have been sold but are never being lived in before the building is torn down and rebuilt, but they’ll still make their return regardless.

As for the USA, yes it isn’t as bad here yet. But it’s getting there.

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