Haha, the news, always first and ahead of everyone
Shanghai housing prices to drop in ‘12: mayor
China Daily
Shanghai reported the first monthly drop in prices of new residential apartments in October. For the whole of 2011, new residential apartments were sold at an average of 22432 yuan ($3532) per square meter, according to estimates by real-estate agents.
Some interesting Reads I did this week;
Via Money Morning: China’s Real Estate Blindside could turn into a Real Buying and investment opportunity.
I usually do not follow outside opinions, because for china, looking at news, and research is basically useless.
It’s like reading the bible for a description of the universe (nothing against the bible, meaning you can’t get real facts about the other out of it), but this article seems well thought through.
Via Shanghaiist: Canadian Housing Scammer Ryan Fedoruk’s exposed, but not caught.
Via WSJ: Chinese Real Estate Tycoon Sells Gold buys property
now this kid’s got balls.
Via Wall St. Pit: Is it going to be the Year of the Bull (Rogers) or the Bear (Chanos)
rooting for neither! I’m a rabbit!
Over the years working in Shanghai Real Estate I have dealt with hundreds of leasing and sales offices, some of them run by large corporates like CBRE, J Lasalle, Colliers, DTZ and the likes, and the other half run by the developers themselves.
In terms of sales, well the market was great, all did great, now however, the market is slugging, and you’ll really start to see who provides real skill and value to the table.
Ask Wharf who is trying to sell the No 1 Xinhua Rd managed and sold (trying to sell) together with CBRE but mainly by themselves.
Sold a third in the first week and zero in all the months after that.
I have been going to view commercial and residenntial prime real estate in Shanghai with customers and it’s incredible, how often they will be alienated by the sales department who don’t realize that their name implies their purpose.
Today I called Sun Hong Kai properties to inquire about their mall space, with a customer who has worldwide destinations and defines locations.
The Sales lady picked up the phone, said: “wei, wei, wei” and hung up after muttering some swear words (maybe she thought nobody else was on the line but hey I did hear everything.
Called two more times and have been shoved off because she is “busy”.
The same developer though at another project in Pudong made another customer of mine wait nearly 3 hours a fortnight ago and re-scheduled twice before that.
Needless to say they’re furious, and actually only waited up for the sales people to show up so they can yell at them.
Developers have to realize that even though you’re in a red hot location, you need anchor points in Shanghai to make and define a location.
It makes the difference between the K11 which will never be anything else but an underground food court, and the Grand Gateway Malls in Shanghai which are a destination because of Element Fresh, Da Marco, Wagas, Colabo etc.
You see the people who sold the initial places, and their dedication to customer service and sales which are interlinked and you understand.
Please dear Sun Hung Kai, outsource it to somebody who knows how to sell.
Hmm, I would tell you I told you so (well I did) but I learned that after crying wolf long enough, sooner or later you’re going to be right, as long as you don’t change the course of your prediction. Forbes seems to think we’re heading down the rabbit hole a little sooner.http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2011/11/06/property-prices-collapse-in-china-is-this-a-crash/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-07/china-s-stocks-fall-amid-property-curb-concerns-greece-leadership-meeting.htmlhttp://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20111107-702266.html
This time I’m not going to cry wolf, I’ll just sit by and enjoy the show, too often, I saw it unwinding, only for the big boys to jump in and contain the fire to a sizzling memory.
Soufun.com’s researched arm just published that sales in Beijing fell 19 percent in the first three quarters of the year and prices dropped an average of 10%.
In the meantime, Shanghai’s transactions (on paper) are down 5% yet prices rose 14% in the period from January 2011 to September.
Hmm, heard this in different ways before, a lot of my friends actually predicted a double dip beck in 2008, and 2009, so, is this what’s coming?
For Some, the U.S. is probably already in a recession.
I’m not sure what this means for the chinese markets, yet I saw another post today on Ritholtz’s Blog, china’s the biggest
producer of Gold in the world.
Guess we’re preparing already 
.
These are some of the latest official numbers from the Shanghai Real Estate Market.
As of March 30th there were 18771 residential properties for rent in Shanghai, representing a total area of 2.5 Million square meters.
There are 99338 residential properties for sale (11 Million sqm), out of which 47523 qualify as ordinary residential properties (these properties are less expensive and smaller, and they only require a 20% downpayment).
In the last week of March 58 Units of Yanlord Town were sold at an average of 33323 Rmb per square meter in the Huamu Area of Pudong.
Aiya!
Is what most landlords, and agents are thinking these days.
A conversation during a pokergame (chinese poker, somewhat different) last week revealed to me what many were actually thinking.
Why the hell does this U.S. Financial thingy affect us so bad?
I think an answer to this actually requires more insight and general knowledge about the economic links between the countries than I can offer.
So I will resist the tempation in trying so here.
..but! I can give you some hints that i got yesterday….
Further down the poker conversation, I found out that many of the big companies actually had a fantastic November.
Dooioo beating them all with more than a hundred luxury real estate sales. 21st Century, and Hope all did well too.
Very revealing to me was that my friend at Dooioo actually told me that all of the sales were real bargains, and somehow almost everyone of the sellers actually was either a foreigner with loan, overseas chinese with a loan, or a chinese working overseas with loan.
All of them sold way under price (sometimes 30% off), and usually jumped on the first offer they got.
It just shows how interlinked markets worldwide are right now, and america’s worst bear market since the great depression (see chart from barry ritholtz blog here), or potentially the worst ever is getting under the skins off landlords on this side of the pacific too.
And with no end insight, i’m sure I’ll be blogging about more.
If you remember one of the earlier posts this summer I actually pointed out that there are units in one Park Avenue available at 35 and one even at 32k a square meter, which was roughly 25% of it’s spring prices.
Everybody thought that’s it, how much further could it go?
Now there is a unit available selling at just 28′000.
It’s a drastic image, and it’s the same in many other compounds where there is a lot of foreign ownership.
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