Have been watching this for a couple of years...not sure how the PRC will do as huge dollars from both PRC and HK companies invested in such developments. https://www.smh.com.au/business/the...homes-in-china-are-empty-20181110-p50f70.html Ghost cities: 50 million homes in China are empty Chinese President Xi Jinping's mantra that homes should be for living in is falling on deaf ears, with tens of millions of apartments and houses standing empty across the country. Soon-to-be-published research will show roughly 22 per cent of China's urban housing stock is unoccupied, according to Professor Gan Li, who runs the main nationwide study. That adds up to more than 50 million empty homes, he said. There are developments completed across China with few residents. Credit:Bloomberg The nightmare scenario for policy makers is that owners of unoccupied dwellings rush to sell if cracks start appearing in the property market, causing prices to spiral. The latest data, from a survey in 2017, also suggests Beijing's efforts to curb property speculation - considered by leaders a key threat to financial and social stability - are coming up short. "There's no other single country with such a high vacancy rate," said Gan, of Chengdu's Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. "Should any crack emerge in the property market, the homes to be offloaded will hit China like a flood." One solution that the government could use is property or vacancy taxes to try to counter the issue, but neither appears imminent and some researchers, including Gan, say what actually counts as vacant could be tricky to determine. The underoccupation problem has been on Xi Jinping's mind for a while. Credit:AP Thousands of researchers fanned out across 363 counties last year as part of the China Household Finance Survey, which Gan runs at the university. The vacancy rate, which excludes homes yet to be sold by developers, was little changed from a 2013 reading of 22.4 per cent, he said by phone, adding that he was finalising the data for its release. The 2013 study showed 49 million vacant homes, and Gan puts that number now at "definitely more than 50 million units." Housing speculation has bedeviled China's leaders for years, as some cities and provinces tightened buying restrictions only to see money flooding into other areas. Rampant price gains also mean millions of people are shut out from the market, exacerbating inequality. Xi famously said in October last year that "houses are built to be inhabited, not for speculation." Holiday homes and the empty dwellings of migrants seeking work elsewhere account for some of the deserted properties, but purchases for investment are a key factor keeping the vacancy rate high, according to Gan. That's despite curbs across the country meant to discourage buying of multiple dwellings. There's an economic cost to vacancies too because they're a drag on supply, which puts upward pressure on prices and crowds young buyers out of the market, according to Kaiji Chen, who co-authored a Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis working paper called "The Great Housing Boom of China." Barely any residents means fewer traffic problems.Credit:Bloomberg Gan believes the government plans to do its own, larger survey in the next year or two. Alternative sources for estimates include State Grid Corp. electricity data, which former senior official Chen Xiwen cited this year for a 13 per cent vacancy level in medium-to-large cities. Last month, Qiu Baoxing, a former vice housing minister, said the rate is 10 to 20 per cent in Beijing, exceeding levels in countries with vacancy taxes. One example of a vacant home is a villa on the outskirts of Shanghai that 27-year-old Natalie Feng's parents bought for her. The two-story residence was meant to be a weekend escape for the family of three. In reality, it's empty most of the time, and Feng says it's too much trouble to rent it out. "For every weekend we spend there, we need to drive for an hour first, and clean up for half a day," Feng said. She joked that she sometimes wishes her parents hadn't bought it for her in the first place. That's because any apartment she buys now would count as a second home, which means she'd have to make a bigger down payment. Bloomberg
I suspect that this should read: “The nightmare scenario for policy makers is that owners of unoccupied dwellings rush to sell when cracks appear in the buildings causing prices to fall. Along with the building”.
The problem is that Chinese properties are built for flipping. Many years ago I went to see a property in China, it’s basically just a bare concrete and brick structure, not even plaster on the walls. When buildings are left exposed like that, moisture and dampness seep into the structure. After 10-20 years, it’s doubtful if they could withstand even a mild earthquake.
Most of these ghost cities are now vibrant cities. Another way of looking at it is.... BRILLIANT TOWN PLANNING
Singapore had this kind of town planning and we did this much earlier than China. New town planning started in the 1970s. What happened is that you build as many high rise apartments on large empty plots of land as quickly as possible within a short period and 'move' people into these apartments. So the apartments are built to last a certain number of years, which I believe is 60 years or so (better than China's 20-30 years). As many of the apartments reach the end of the designed lifespan, which is happening to those built in the 1970s, the Singapore government has to plan to have them demolished. But to demolish them, you need to move the residents out, but this is not possible when the people living in them are already in their 70s and 80s. For some, no amount of money compensation can make them give up their homes, so the law in Singapore allows for forced eviction and relocation. The good thing in Singapore is there are no earthquakes or tremors so it's possible for apartments to last longer than their designed expiration age, allowing the government to drag their feet on a politically tricky problem. It also costs money to build replacement apartments.
I watched the video, all I can say is that they do things the opposite way over there. I mean a shell apartment is worth more than one already fitted out.....??? What a waste, the whole concept. Those who bought only to speculate and by borrowing money on the black market deserve to get burn't. Like the guy said, the one positive is that when a economic collapse comes at least there will always be housing for the Chinese. Imagine that, the government tries to restrict apartments to only one per couple. So they divorce but still live together so they can buy one each. Total madness. There is no stopping human greed.
So much better than Australian idea of future planning NBN $50,000,000,000 wasted within ten years broadband will be like landline telephones.
The NBN has been a shaft from the beginning. Last century tech and for 10's of billions of $ only to now face 5g. Back in 2011, the creators of wireless, our own CSIRO were doing there own testing on high speed wireless internet and prior to take very high speed fibre. Here's a report from 2011. I refer readers to pages 18 and 19. Here's the extract anyway: CSIRO is undertaking research into new wireless access and backhaul technologies (named Ngara) with the objective to offer an alternative for the wireless component of a high speed network in regional and rural areas. CSIRO has recently demonstrated the first stage of the Wireless Access technology in Smithton, Tasmania. This technology is proposed as an alternative technology for the wireless part of a high speed network in regional and rural areas. These initial trials achieved symmetric data rate speeds of 12 Mbps (simultaneous transmission and reception of 12 Mbps at the premises) with further field trials scheduled for late 2011 aiming to demonstrate a symmetric data rate of up to 50 Mbps from multiple premises simultaneously. CSIRO has briefed the NBN Co on this research program and has commenced discussions with telecommunication equipment providers. CSIRO is actively pursuing commercialisation opportunities for Ngara. CSIRO is developing applications which utilise high speed network infrastructure. CSIRO has significant intellectual property and experience in advanced networking technologies, broadband applications development and wireless technologies (both terrestrial wireless and satellite). From 2000- 2007 CSIRO built and operated an experimental network similar to that planned for the NBN. This program of work, called the Centre for Networking Technologies for the Information Economy (CeNTIE), established a multi-gigabit metropolitan area fibre network in Sydney and Perth and connected to the two cities with a 10 Gigabit per second connection. Broadband applications were developed and trialled for education, health, banking and remote collaboration in the motion picture industry.
I 100% agree that our implementation of the NBN is not good, but people should not confuse that with fiber in general. Fiber is far superior then wireless can ever be, one reason is due to the frequency difference between visible light and what can realistically be wireless transmitted without high interference. There are also many other reasons fiber is better. But i also understand the logistics to run fiber throughout a large country like Australia is costly and problematic.
I got NBN with constant 43 MBPS downloads. My plan is unlimited. It is far better than ADSL2 + ever was and much cheaper too. It is better than anything we ever had in the past. As for 5G, all good and well until you stream movies and use 9 Now and other streaming services. In other words will the 5G network be unlimited and constant as my present fibre? I doubt it.
I have worked in this sector for 20 years, with 5 years we will have unlimited 4g plans and 1tb 5g plans. Why would 20 million households want a landline? Business need8ng 10 or 100 terrabit network I can see, but homes fibre for residential is finished I am saying this as the operater of 3rd largest fibre asset in Australia behind NBN and Telstra.
I've lived in many dense apartment blocks around Sydney and all i can say is good luck playing multiple 1080P steams consistently at 6-9pm. There is nothing you can tell me to over come what i have experienced first had. For how i and many families today use internet wireless is no good. Btw there is no 5G standard atm, just different flavours of 4G. 5G is still maybe 5+ years away for the masses. Who do you work for LBNCo, iinet, TPG?
Considering our population is only 24 million are you suggesting almost every single baby, child, husband, wife etc have their own house.
I use TPG 50 MBPS medium speed, unlimited for $69.90 P/M. Multiple devices all downloading stuff 18 hours of the day. Really love my NBN, have not had an outage in 18 Months already. When we do get one then everyone loses it for a while. My first ADSL plan 17 years ago was with Telstra, cost me $96 P/M for 1 lousy gig + I had to pay line rental $30 on top. So all in it was nearly $130 P/M versus todays superfast NBN with free phone line and unlimited download for $70.
Me too. Not to mention you go in some rooms, you lose it altogether because in some cases it just doesn't work through concrete. Now a fixed modem/router does work in those same rooms when it is located centrally in your unit. Then you lose 4g altogether sometimes, don't know, upgrades or tower crowding. But as I type here on my NBN no such dramas.
