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China's 1.4 billion population isn't enough to fill the country's empty homes, former official says
(www.businessinsider.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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65M is what percentage of 1.4Bn? It's about 5%.
5% oversupply is pretty reasonable, especially given that the housing isn't fungible and the populations are more mobile than the houses are.
That doesn't actually mean there are 65 million surplus properties. A vacant house isn't an unnecessary house. Children move out all the time, families sometimes break up, Chinese citizens currently living overseas or in Europe return home, etc.
I bet there's actually math for this - I wonder if anyone has calculated the optimal amount of vacancies?
Sometimes, you misspeculate. Some developers lost a whole fuck ton of money on the project, but that's more than made up for if you can turn a profit on projects near big cities (which demand is still sky high for).
Is anyone? If I have to choose between "housing shortage" and "housing surplus" I know which society I would prefer.
China isn't really limited by construction resources. There's a heavier constraint in terms of hospital staff and teachers than there is on construction resources.
They're also building hospitals and schools so...