What This $100B Ghost City Reveals About China’s Property Crisis | WSJ 

This is not about speculation. These ghost cities will be the smart cities

I don’t understand why this is a bad thing. Developers adding dense housing to inventory is not a bad thing, isn’t it? That would help alleviate cost of living increases which seems to plague the world

Dense housing is great. Real Estate speculation is bad. You can have one without the other.

Yes it shouldn't because Residential buildings don’t create wealth, they are liabilities. Saying the building is adding to GDP is false. Any profit its making is clearly the illusion of the ponzi scheme. Now it all comes crashing down like every ponzi and creates trouble.

The issue is these building are not added to the market as inventory. They are being left empty by investors who will never live in them. They won't be rented out either. Many of these investors believe the buildings will lose value once they are used.@@0IIIIII

would be nice if tampa and miami homes went back to 2019 prices. its gotten ridiculous

They are doing it all over Texas also. Ripping up beautiful, bucolic countryside and building massive apartment complexes and 6-lane highways.

🧂

@@carefulconsumer8682in terms of land use efficiency those apartments are far better than a suburban neighborhood

Very similar happening here with people just buying multiple secondary homes as speculative asset and just looking it up or putting for Short or long term rent.

they defaulted in US and EU, not in China, to avoid paying back western investors

@@artmaknev3738Their balance sheet cannot pay back China’s investors either.

Non of them will default in China, because the government is keeping them alive, requiring them to die after finishing their building projects. However, that caused their debt holders to fall, like construction companies and construction materials companies.

Their Government was cracking down on these developers since 2011...thats why we heard of the underground economy and shadow banks... It's been crack down after crackdown and regulations since. Culminating in them seeking money flow and selling their junk bonds to foreign investors. The real problem is these developers are greedy. There are still a few hundred million rural people expected to move to the cities. But not enough affordable housing is being made for them

Scammers

China also give house to his citezen thorough relocation program

People who don't own property complain property prices are too expensive. As soon as they can afford it, they start complaining their property value isn't going up fast enough. Rinse and repeat. "F*** you I got mine" mentality seems to be universal in humans.

​@@UserName92149If only that apartment was the only one they'd ever buy. But we all know that's not the case.

🧂

Exactly... house and property industry must be overhauled around the world..the price is getting crazy each year

When you compare the cost/sqft (even after drop) against Malaysian average salary then you will notice where is the problem. This project simply put only targeting international buyer. So you will rarely see local business move there due to high cost and no demand.

@@chanhou964 If the price collapse enough they would be able to afford it.

Yup Their Government was cracking down on these developers since 2011...thats why we heard of the underground economy and shadow banks... It's been crack down after crackdown and regulations since. Culminating in them seeking money flow and selling their junk bonds to foreign investors. The real problem is these developers are greedy. There are still a few hundred million rural people expected to move to the cities. But not enough affordable housing is being made for them

​​​@@maggiejetson7904This is not the case. Actually many buildings of the project in Malaysia have not been completed so they are not livable. Most parts have not started. Country Garden still has lots of projects in progress in China. The company does not have sufficient funding to complete these projects. The China government forces the company to use all funding to finish pending projects in China first to make sure that consumers can get their own properties. They totally have no intention to complete the project in Malaysia.

What are the chances of the GOV stepping in to complete the project if CG default? Letting it be abandoned is not really a good look and there's truly a potential in the project if completed. Even if the GOV have no money now, maybe in the future it will still be completed? I think there's a huge potential that CG is also looking for a bailout from the local GOV.

ah... that explain a lot of things.

China should have pursued public housing models.

THAT IS COMMUNISM

CCP has deep pockets 😂

yes there are public housing but occupied by families of corrupted governor​@@Western_Decline

Over building can still lead to a shortage of affordable housing.

funnily enough, the same places with housing shortages are also over bulding

@@luqmanfauzi3583 Correct. It's a common mistake that wealthy people think that housing development for people like themselves is a smarter investment than making housing working class people. Just of a bunch of out of touch snobs, who overestimate their own intelligence.

Build more,.. a Cedars Sinai & a Cleveland Clinic & a Raffle's, and a Cesars Palace and Trading floor & Casino floor in the Bellagio Shanghai, and Cesars Palace casino floor right Beside It,..

its already happening, i was living there and you could see the monkeys and monitor lizards casually crossing the road. the place is devoid of human residents, though there are way more human staff working there.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

@@daeseongkim93 This is Malaysia, that is a normal sight.

the new name is 'ghost'

@@WellSalt-Studio😂😂😂😂 Most of their buildings are in Tier 3 and 4 cities of China, with net outflow of young people. And the real estate price there have slumped more than 50%😂. What makes you think it can pay back their debt? Country Garden’s headquarter is in Shunde, a place I lived in for decades. We local people know how bad the situation is.

No, this project is being pitched by Malaysia. This project was next to Singapore. The plan was to attract residents from Singapore, but it was sabotaged by the change of government palace fighting in Malaysia.

​@@haochengzhai7156 There are a lot of problems within their internal structure, not just geopolitics. I got to see a glimpse of it firsthand. 1) It was started to attract "foreign" buyers. 2) When Captail outflow was restricted, Forest City demanded monthly payments still. Property owners complained and had to default payment. (Was the issue resolved, I did not know) But what I know it started the downward demand. 3) What they did next was to get Singapore property agents to start selling to Singaporeans. They built a mini showroom at Suntec City. They rely heavily on property agents to market the product. But fail to look into their own marketing channel. 4) Here is the kicker: marketing/creative companies came to pitch, but being hierarchical and authoritarian, they pretended to "know" (which means dun tell them what to do, they will tell us what to do) and said they already "did" it and rejected pitches and ideas. 5) The turnover rate of the local staff is crazy because if they fail 3 months in sales, you know what happens. Overall, internally they fail to manage the project properly and think highly of themselves. Only now they are desperate and start to talk and ask the Malaysian government for help. Which now PM Anwar is considering. So I hope this gives a bit of a clearer picture.

​@@haochengzhai7156这些人是不会说政府政策的变动导致公司经营陷入困境的，碧桂园因为这个项目陷入债务困境，他们只会攻击中国人去他妈的。

Oh, I have 2 friends with a combined 14 years experience of living in China and doing business there. They have now moved out. They come from England and South Africa. And they now moved to the US to work for big American corporations that are afraid of being scammed in China. They say the golden era is over. You cant even go there now without having secret police coming into your home asking for papers every other day. They really want white people out. They want to do things their way. And the corruption is equal to Russia. Just like America, Chinese government doesnt care. They just print new money at an insane rate.

totalitarian empires in decline lashes out...

Lol, you've got no idea how economics works.

@@jin_asap Deflation and having the largest companies in a sector that makes up a stupefying 31% of your economy going bankrupt as your population begins to decline on top of not having built up the welfare state to counteract that decrease in working age population while having one of the highest levels of wealth inequality on the planet sure is not how healthy economies work. But hey, maybe China is just playing with 12D chess with it's eocnomics, just like how people claimed with their 1-child-policy for decades. Oh wait... that directly led them into these problems

Enlighten us

@@gaius_octavius oh, please. 🙄 "but okay", indeed.

WSJ lies again. Smh

this sums it very well

China capital controls and Malaysia preferences for locals was well known, so why build first. Just excuses for company that was careless and aggressive to meet numbers.

1st tier cities have recovered.. as soon as the rest have restocked the empty shelves it would be business as usual

WSJ should go to China to verify these ghost cities they mentioned because all of them are currently occupied but I guess it can't because it was banned from China for producing fake and anti-China news. Associated Press did go and verified that there are no ghost cities.

Chinese people WHO bought a property unit in China from same developer will receive a free unit in forest city!

@@charsiew88 seriously that's like buy 1 get free 1 but it's must very expensive for commoners buy their own land in China, another reason is there is communists policy that can take your your own land for government to develop

@@mr.cannedble9724 properties in Shanghai can sell 20 Times the value Of Forest CITY apartments

Unfair? This project was never built for locals in mind to begin with. Its for china people who need to move cash overseas to circumvent their internal policies.

Only 5 comments, but 4 comments are wrong or biased. 1. @charsiew88 a lie about getting free unit. 2. @mr.cannedble9724 a lie about govt will take your land. In China, all land belongs to all peoples in form of govt. No own land in China. 3. @keanhonglau is right. The original target customer is the people working in Singapore, whether they are which country from, even from China. 4. @deathempire70 it's a stupid idea to invest on real estate to move cash, especially on a in-completed project.

Yep, it's true..transportation is the main problem here.

Totally agree. Decades on now, and the traffic jams at the Causeway remain ridiculous. Tuas second link is far.

This is in Malaysian border. Even they build the ferry terminal, they would not legally able to go to Singapore without having to go through the immigration 😅

So Singapore & Malaysia set up a new immigration point ....?

I say, god bless! Philippine needs the Chinese investment. Let it be!!

Stop electing a duterte. Edit: and a arroyo.

Condo prices in Manila have even started to cool down. It's mainly mainlanders pushing prices up in the last ten years. I wonder where condo prices will be headed without Chinese investors.

Y'know what, stop liberal party from ever eroding filipino interests by their presidential proxies. Liberal party is run by the corporate oligarchs and super clans of the country

Nope, that's a mixture of some truth and malicious fallacies with a political undertones which is in liberal leftist side of the spectrum.

bank lend mortgages, because house are sold before they were built.. loan to developer are recovered by this mortgage. and gov fine developer low their selling price. you get it ？

​@lancelotf.x3619 if you are correct, then how come developers default? The already sold all units before their completion and the owners paid for that? There must be a link that causes all this mess. Guess what? You get it?

​@@joonwonlee1567covid

Chinese biggest banks aren't real banks like those in the US. They are in fact government agencies. They have superior power and will never get in trouble, unless the government itself is in trouble.

Their Government was cracking down on these developers since 2011...thats why we heard of the underground economy and shadow banks... It's been crack down after crackdown and regulations since. Culminating in them seeking money flow and selling their junk bonds to foreign investors. The real problem is these developers are greedy. There are still a few hundred million rural people expected to move to the cities. But not enough affordable housing is being made for them

if everyone is making money no cares to look.

The dreadful thought of daily commute through Tuas checkpoint alone was awful enough. That's why Forest City was only for PRC Chinese buyers alone to begin with, No one who lived in Singapore long enough would have been so insane to buy there, no matter how much of a discount it was at.

This project was originally created to boost the Malaysian and Singaporean economy. It was designed primarily for wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs and investors, and also provided a way for them to diversify internationally and move money out of the PRC. Change in political and economic climate eventually led to its downfall. The master plan included infrastructure upgrades, creation of a special economic and taxation zone, and exclusive internal customs and border checkpoint. There was also to be special visa status for the residents there travelling to Singapore and Malaysia. However, the project was overly optimistic and the construction and environmental costs were staggering.

Not all singaporeans are cash rich bruhhh

@@mrslcom 'boost' the economy by real estate? No thank u. Malaysia has no lack of good developers or houses. Even tiny Singapore has her HDB. This is purely a Chinese play from Chinese perspective in Chinese interest. The Iskandar project makes much more economic sense for us, and even so we were also very careful with it.

@@aceryerof course bro

Should tax the onwers at higher rate is it not occupied. If dont pay repossesd and auction off. If it is eyesore tear it down and return to nature. Too expansive to maintain in long term

🧂🧂

No it will start a chain reaction like in 2008. When new properties are sold way cheaper than existing ones, speculation will be high, homeowners will start selling, putting more supply than demand, and continue down the death spiral, people will default their loans, properties market will crash, sending the country into huge recession and economic depression 😂😂😂

Not really, no of homes in China is greater than no of people. And population growth is slowing.

@@gund89123”Population growth is slowing”…. Not just slowing, it’s decreasing. They are the fastest aging population and their kids doesn’t want to reproduce even when one child policy has been lifted.

i mean they're already down from $236 a square foot to $100 a square foot so we may already be in that recession lol@@Epiderm91

You need jobs, excess cash, an optimistic attitude in order to purchase large assets such as homes.

Their Government was cracking down on these developers since 2011...thats why we heard of the underground economy and shadow banks... It's been crack down after crackdown and regulations since. Culminating in them seeking money flow and selling their junk bonds to foreign investors. The real problem is these developers are greedy. There are still a few hundred million rural people expected to move to the cities. But not enough affordable housing is being made for them The homes are used to store equity/wealth. In 2008 around 70% of the people were buying their first homes in the city. By 2018, 70% of the people were buying their 2nd or 3rd homes

@@DW-op7ly The developers and the government is the same in the Chinese model.

Djibouti is a sea harbour, when you fund/build railway connection you connect to the nearest harbour first.

@@DW-op7ly the quality of the buildings is questionable, not sure how many will last 20 years. Cheap buildings is a problem everywhere not only in China btw

It reveals capitalism subprime mortgage wont happen in China. China government will break it before uncontrollable like US.

Nothing the CCP does would surprise me.

@@frankthefkintank it depended on the level of corruption. But if a state did not subtract the population of their cities from the state population, it looked like there was a large rural population. The developer collapsing this week specifically targeted large rural populations, which were counted twice and already lived in the cities.

Since the population does not live close to the new housing, they are unable to sell it.

So are you saying China's 1.3bn population is actually much lower?

@@antihypocrisy8978 One of the other Chinese news sites on youtube said that china has 1.4 billion new apartments becoming available in the next 3 years. That is larger than their entire population. It does not look like the majority of the Chinese population is currently homeless. I don't know who they expect to occupy these new apartments.

I think that government problem,not all those company

It is really interesting but understandable. In the U.S. there are a lot of zoning laws that, to my knowledge, basically make it impossible to build housing for more than one family most of the time. That contributes to things like heavy urban sprawl, unwalkability, and a shortage of the housing we need I believe. Meanwhile in China they often build those hugeeee buildings that can fit tons of people and families inside them.

These properties often fall apart within a few years due poor materials and construction practices. I have seen videos where Chinese contractors poured concrete over cardboard.

​@@jybrokenhearted造谣你是最厉害的等战争爆发的那条让你知道谁才是真的爸爸

Yes, in China itself, everything is just fine!

Or the costs of Nusantara are unrealistic and reflect why there has been no private investment commitment which is what the govt is relying

@@TheAp9er That could be a possibility, even forest city which is a commercial project doesn't have that much investor so idk if nusantara would attract much investor. I do think that forest city would've been much more valuable than nusantara if completed tho.

Inflated cost to fund kickback to malaysian politicians

扯淡一样。一带一路是政府行为，森林城市是企业行为。

​@shaozhihao China gives loans and grants for Chinese companies to build in other countries. So yes, it is B&R connected.

@@Jabberstax 你懂个几把的中国。

@@shaozhihao 靠！你就懂个屁啊。寻搜 Forest City 到处都说是 BRI

Yeah, how's that working out 😂

1994 as a partial start of commercialization of houses. 1998 in full blow. However mass investment didn't come until 2008

@@serena-yu 👍exactly

@@serena-yu thank you!

It’s ask for the propaganda anyway lol

All*

Tofu dreg was a term coined by the Chinese themselves to describe buildings which collapsed during the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, most of which were constructed prior to China's economic boom. The fact that you think modern buildings in China are constructed similarly betrays a typical ignorance, especially with how much China has built all over ASEAN. Where is the news of Chinese construction collapsing from Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar? I also wouldn't be laughing at Chinese build quality when you live in the Philippines. All it takes is one change in weather patterns and thousands of you die each time.

As a former resident of Forest City, I can tell you that at least the unit exterior is falling apart at the seams. The drainage clogs up almost instantly in the shower, even before moving in, and no amount of drainage cleaners could deal with it. The bathroom lock is a pivot hook on a sliding door and on my second night moving in, it locked itself from the inside and its near impossible to jiggle something to unlock the hook from the other side. The insulation is horrendous in the lobbies of buildings, and their central air-conditioning was probably either not operational or for budgetary reasons not considered even in their hotel lobbies. The bedside lamp in one of the hotel rooms was knocked completely off the wall when a foam ball made slight contact with it, it was hollow beside the wiring and the lamp not screwed in properly. WiFi infrastructure was also terrible because for an entire half of the island's towers called Ataraxia, there was a whole network outage and none of the landlords or management would inform us about the reason why for half a day it was out. And on another day when a considerable part of the bridge that connects Forest City to mainland Johor Bahru collapsed because of its shoddy construction, island residents could not leave for a day while they worked to build an alternative dirt road and ramp to connect the working lane of the bridge. Because of the bridge collapse, we were notified that they had to shut down the island's power for several hours to divert it to the building of the alternate road and minor repairs of the bridge.

@@mao_zedong1921 there is no operational hotel there. Only residences. I just find it amusing that he called his condo lobby a "hotel lobby".

@@mao_zedong1921 I was a former resident that also worked at the hotel. I was living there over this summer but have since returned home to Korea.

@@huaiwei What? There are two operational hotels in Forsst City. You obviously dont know what youre talking about. There is the Phoenix Hotel and the Marina Hotel both on the eastern side of Forest City's island. There are both residential condominiums and apartment towers and two operational hotels in Forest City, all of which have lobby levels.

nah, maintenance cost will be higher than what the rent can cover

they have no 'living in mom's basement' culture in malaysia

@@rollinghippo2940 and what they have? "living directly on the streets"?? I am sure there is also poor people there.

Most Malaysians have a roof over their head and the culture here is different from the West. Extended families are normal with 3 generation within a household. Homeless are probably the migrant neighbours who came illegally.

You can count on that.

living there it was generally safe just inefficient. The insulation in lobby areas is lacking so its so humid and it didnt seem like they built an AC system to accommodate the tropical weather in areas where its absolutely necessary. I had once closed the door to my units bathroom and the medieval hook latch lock locked my bathroom door from the inside. The plumbing also was ridiculous. Not even a day living there, my shower needed some drainage clog liquid.

Bit of a stretch to try and work in the word McMansion. Apart from the copy/paste aspect they are in no way similar. One is a finished home, built to standards, that appreciates in value. At a minimum at least the property it is built on would. Those apartment complexes in 60 years will have a value of exactly 0 dollars.

McTofu 💩

You have plenty of empty houses in America too, which the homeless can't afford.

It's our crazing zoning in the US. If we relax zoning and have more multi units building, there will be no housing crisis. It is bc of the NIMBYs and legislation.

Debt fuels expansion. Firstly if these developers can’t repay their debts to investors and consumers that hold bonds or shares these folks are SOL. If developers suddenly stop building homes all the downstream suppliers that are involved in supplying materials and labor will suddenly need to cut costs and layoff staff due to drop in demand. A failure to repay debt also creates a massive loss in confidence hurting markets and creditors will demand more interest to loan hurting debt markets, if it’s harder to borrow, its harder for other companies to grow or finance existing debt. The death spiral continues until demand picks up again.

I lovee home depot

Maybe the central government has given up the idea of capitalist communism? And will return to real communism?🤔

Er... No that not how it would work. The CCP would need to find the money from somewhere. And yes money is made from nothing but they amount of debt they'd need to cover would instantly devalue their currency. China entire property market is one big Ponzi scheme

You mean putting scummy, selfish illegal immigrants into shipping containers? Yeah, we've seen it.