A lot of "ghost cities" that were reported on in the Western press are now thriving communities. Although some major property development schemes do end up becoming white elephants (particularly in the poorer north), most "ghost cities" aren't abandoned, they're just in the process of becoming occupied. Properties in China are normally sold as a bare undecorated shell, which makes new developments look derelict to western eyes. Clearly many of these projects are of dubious quality, but that problem is by no means unique to China.

https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/09/24/chinas-ghost-...

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/apr/02/new-build-home...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47826166

> Clearly many of these projects are of dubious quality, but that problem is by no means unique to China.

The cases I saw were more than dubious quality, the houses have completely fallen apart in only 2 years, there's definitely some "get rich quick" resell scam business going on in some places.

I really don't understand property prices at all. There's a new Trump Tower coming up in Gurgaon, India. There is nothing around it but other large towers and empty land. Yet all the apartments in these towers are already priced in the $400,000+ range - money that even a Google software engineer in India would need 20+ years to save.

ADVChina is really entertaining. I'm not sure how reliable they are, but my impression has been pretty favorable so far.

its the only digestible news source for geopolitical stuff I can watch AFTER a day of intense programming.

> There's no underlying value to the property bubble

Feels just like home :)

wow! Quality has a lot to do but also a house no one lives in has a tendency to be run down. A small thing that can be noticed on day one will ruin everything after 3 years of rain, wind, snow etc.

Now their GDP will increase again, if they start repairing the ghost houses ;)

Actually, most buildings constructed in the last 10 years in big cities are expected to only last 20-30 years before being razed and redone. Chinese construction technique leverages cheap surplus uneducated labor, so they overbuild on concrete to compensate, meaning the buildings will fall apart faster anyways.

The officials see this as a feature: real estate is just a huge jobs program, and the fact that they have to do it again just means more jobs on the future. Incidentally, the same construction techniques are used in India for the same reason, and hence are exported to Singapore and the Middle East so they can leverage Indian migrant construction workers

I live in a HDB in Singapore and they are rock solid buildings. Way better than any of the apartment buildings I've lived in in the west. They are designed to be inhabited for 99 years (the length of the leasehold). I wouldn't be surprised if many are capable of lasting much longer.

Singapore mostly uses concrete, and it will crumble without the requisite maintenance (much faster than a western wooden, brick, or steel building). Overbuilding using cheap unskilled labor makes the maintenance problem worse, but not insurmountable.

Only tangentiao related but funny story. While visiting a college campus in China in 2012 our tour guide remarked about one of the dorm buildings... "This building is very old! Built in the 1980s!". I thought that was funny after growing up in New England.

I grew up in New England, visited historic sites like the Jamestown, Colonial Williamsburg, Castillo de San Marcos. I went to France and stayed in a house that was older than all of them, went to England and drank in a pub yet older.

Time is relative.

My first trip overseas was to the UK, during university, as a term abroad kind of thing. One night, some of my peers and I went round the pub, and I got to talking with an older local. I commented that it was a strange and perspective-shifting thing to be around human structures so old, "which we don't have back in the States".

He offered the counterpoint of, e.g., Chaco Canyon as something even older.

Time is indeed relative. That kind of perspective-check is awesome.

It's the same in Japan, homes aren't made to last, you're only expected to get a few decades out of them. My Japanese friends in Sydney always found it bemusing that I lived in a 100+ year old house. It was hard for them to fathom doing that, even with renovations. The newer the better.

Except in Kyoto, at least...

https://realestate.co.jp/forsale/listing?order=4&page=19&bui...

Not at all. first, real estate is the essential part of a grand urbanisation plan along with other infrastructure developments. second, concrete and steel buildings definitely last longer than plaster and wood built ones in U.S.. It's just U.S. people spend a lot of time maintaining their house...I think it's not economically sensible. The time spent on house maintenance and repair could be more valuable in productive activities.

>>Actually, most buildings constructed in the last 10 years in big cities

what cities? In China? I hard about that but frankly in Eastern European countries the aim to last 100 years. Same in USA AFAIK. Properly prepared concrete last quite a long time, if protected from the elements.

These are buildings put up by migrant workers, so properly prepared is relative. They make a trade off, it works for them.

> The officials see this as a feature: real estate is just a huge jobs program, and the fact that they have to do it again just means more jobs on the future.

And in the meantime they're scratching their heads trying to figure out why their tertiary sector isn't growing.

Yes! One side is the job program. And second is also because ordinary Chinese look at it as an investment. They also buy houses in EU for the sake of investment and leave them empty. So much in fact major EU cities are going to add empty house tax.

It's all concrete, they don't use wood.