there are no such thing as houses in urban china. these homes are apartments you basically get on a 40 year lease. when the lease is up the govt pays you to move out. also, when you buy an apartment in china, it's not finished. there's no flooring, paint, appliances, etc. the price of a finished one is the same or less as an unfinished since the new owner will usually redo the interior. so a lot of these new apartments are left unfinished in anticipation of the next 10x payday as has historically and repeatedly happened in urban cities.
several corrections, apartments are typically leased for 70 years, 40 is for commercial property which are sometimes inhabitable.
some apartments are finished, these days it’s more likely you’ll find a fully finished apartment, ready for move in, but they do have the unfinished apartments, but it’s too much trouble and trending down lately.
you’re right about the investment aspect, i believe in early < 2012, there was no limit to the number of houses you could own or mortgages you could take so the extremely weathly purchased apartments in batch as investment, never considered living or renting these out, many of these back then were unfinished, so you pay off the downpayment, get a mortgage, and leave it as an investment to sell later without having to deal with the complications of outfiting the apartment with drywall, hardwood floors, appliances, fixtures, paint, etc, and having to deal with rental hassles. basically what they purchased were these concrete enclosures with basic plumbing and electricity in place.
i used to rent an apartment in downtown shanghai, 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom, roughly 100 sq m (1000 square foot) new apartment, fully furnished with 60 inch led tv, furniture, etc, that cost me about 6k rmb a month (1000 usd a month), to buy would have cost me about 4m rmb (670k usd), i had pretty good relationship with the landlord, her father owned about 20 similar apartments in the complex, they were from a small town.
>i used to rent an apartment in downtown shanghai, 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom, roughly 100 sq m (1000 square foot) new apartment, fully furnished with 60 inch led tv, furniture, etc, that cost me about 6k rmb a month (1000 usd a month), to buy would have cost me about 4m rmb (670k usd), i had pretty good relationship with the landlord, her father owned about 20 similar apartments in the complex, they were from a small town.
Hahaha, things are even more crazier in Shenzhen. You can rent a 1.5 million buck apparent for $500
