隨著財富夢想的破滅，中國大城市的業主紛紛套現 (2/2)

Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:

China’s Big-City Homeowners Cash Out as Wealth Dream Fades (2/2)

Bloomberg News

Sun, June 18, 2023 at 4:00 p.m. PDT

(continue)

Different Cycle

The days of roaring demand are unlikely to come back any time soon, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts, who said China could experience an “L-shaped” real estate market.

This “cycle is different from previous rounds, as policymakers appear very determined not to use the property sector as a short-term stimulus tool,” Goldman analysts wrote in a June 11 note. “We believe the policy priority is to manage the multi-year slowdown rather than to engineer an up-cycle.”

Longer term, China is experiencing a structural shift due to its aging population, and limited scope for moving more people into cities. The country’s urbanization rate is expected to peak at about 75%, up from 64.7% in 2021 — all of which is weighing on sentiment.

Such pessimism is increasingly showing in Shanghai, as tough Covid measures in the last three years and weakening confidence in China’s economic outlook pushed homeowners and tenants — many of whom are expats — to pack and leave.

Shanghai Exodus

Favored by foreign companies, Shanghai was home to a quarter of China’s expatriate population before 2022. The city saw an exodus after the lockdown that kept nearly 25 million people confined to their homes for more than two months.

About 25% of Germans living in the city left in the fallout, while the number of French and Italian citizens registered with their governments each fell by 20%, according to a report by the Shanghai chapter of the European Union Chamber of Commerce early this year.

In Lianyang, a downtown neighborhood popular with expats and financiers in Shanghai, residential prices have slid 15% to 20% from record highs in mid-2021, according to a local property agent who asked to be identified by her surname Liu, because she wasn’t authorized to speak about the matter publicly.

Yi, a 31-year-old Shanghai resident, sold her suburban home in April for 4 million yuan, representing a steeper-than-expected 11% discount to her initial asking price. Second-hand inventory reached a record-high at 200,000 units that month, according to the Economic Observer.

She was in urgent need of cash and requested to be identified by her last name for privacy reasons. “It’s a buyers’ market now,” she said.

Translation

（繼續）

不同的周期

高盛集團分析師表示，需求旺盛的日子不太可能很快回來，中國可能會經歷“L型”房地產市場。

高盛分析師在 6 月 11 日的一份報告中寫道: “這一周期與前幾輪不同，政策制定者似乎非常堅決不將房地產行業用作短期刺激工具” 。 “我們認為政策的首要任務是應對多年的經濟放緩，而不是推動經濟增長周期。”

從長遠來看，由於人口老齡化,以及將更多人口遷入城市的空間有限，中國正在經歷結構性轉變。 中國的城市化率預計將達到 75% 左右的峰值，高於 2021 年的 64.7% - 所有這些都在影響情緒。

有些悲觀情緒在上海越來越明顯，因為過去三年採取的嚴厲的新冠疫情措施以及對中國經濟前景信心的減弱，迫使業主和租戶 - 其中許多是外籍人士- 收拾行李離開。

從上海出走

受到外國公司的青睞，到 2022 年，上海已成為中國四分之一的外籍人口的所在地。封城後，近 2,500 萬人被困在家裡兩個多月，上海出現了大批外籍人士外流。

歐盟商會上海分會今年年初的一份報告顯示，居住在這座城市的德國人約有 25% 受到外流影響，而在政府登記的法國和意大利公民人數分別下降了 20% 。

當地一位無權公開談論此事劉姓女房地產經紀人表示，在深受上海外籍人士和金融家歡迎的市中心 Lianyang 社區，住宅價格已從 2021 年中期的歷史高位下跌了 15% 至 20%。

31 歲的上海居民姓 Yi 女士於 4 月份以 400 萬元的價格出售了自己位於郊區的房屋，這比她最初的要求價低了11%，。 據經濟觀察報報導，在這個月的二手住房庫存達到20萬单位的歷史新高。

她急需現金，出於隱私原因要求透露她的姓氏。 她說: “現在是買家市場” 。

              So, some Chinese homeowners are losing conviction that property is a reliable store of wealth, adding pressure on authorities to find new sources of economic growth. Asking prices in Shanghai have slumped for a few months, according to data compiled by Centaline Group. Let us see how China will try to pop up the property markets.