Tag: Real Estate and Housing (Residential)

In China, More Single Female Home Buyers, Resisting Sexist Norms

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After she signed the contract for her new apartment in southern China, Guo Miaomiao, 32, ran through the mental list of what she would get to enjoy as a homeowner. A leather couch in the living room. A pumpkin pendant lamp that she’d been eyeing online. And, most important, a way to defy expectations in China about the role that a woman should play in a marriage. “I’ve seen too many cases, including among my relatives and friends, where the husband buys the house, and the minute the couple argues,…

China Evergrande, Giant Developer, Files for Bankruptcy

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China Evergrande, a behemoth property developer, filed for bankruptcy protection on Thursday more than two years after it defaulted on its debt. The company’s meltdown in 2021 was followed by the defaults of smaller developers and signaled the start of a slow decay of China’s real estate sector that now threatens to inflict damage on the country’s broader economy. Another giant developer, Country Garden, is staring down a default of its own after missing payments to lenders and holding $200 billion in unpaid bills. Evergrande’s bankruptcy petition, filed in the…

Country Garden: Why Its Financial Crisis Poses a Risk to China

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Country Garden, a Chinese real estate giant, has lost billions of dollars and racked up $200 billion in unpaid bills. It’s on the hook to deliver, by one estimate, nearly one million apartments across hundreds of cities in China. The privately owned developer, founded by a farmer three decades ago, is inching closer to default. In China’s housing market, there are plenty of deadbeat developers no longer paying their bills. The possible collapse of Country Garden is one to pay attention to. The company has tried to project confidence. “One…

Country Garden’s Stock Plunges After Report of Huge Losses

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It was considered the gold standard in China’s increasingly shaky housing market. Now investors are treating Country Garden, the giant property developer, like a ticking time bomb. The company, China’s last major real estate giant to avoid default, has hinted at its financial troubles for weeks. On Thursday night, it was more direct: Country Garden said it expected a loss of up to $7.6 billion over the first six months of this year. The company’s shares, which trade in Hong Kong, took a dive on Friday, dragging its value to…

Country Garden Is Latest Property Giant in China to Run Into Trouble

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Remember China Evergrande, that Chinese property behemoth whose mountain of debt sent global markets spiraling in 2021? Its collapse later marked the start of a crisis for China’s housing market, where sales of apartments ground to a halt and developers big and small found themselves unable to pay their bills. Now, financial troubles at Country Garden, another property giant, are raising fresh concerns. It is also a flashing warning sign about China’s economy. Country Garden, the country’s biggest property developer by sales, has been pummeled in the markets twice in…

How Much Debt Does China Have?

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China, which has lent nearly $1 trillion to some 150 developing countries, has been reluctant to cancel large debts owed by countries struggling to make ends meet. That is at least in part because China is facing a debt bomb at home: trillions of dollars owed by local governments, their mostly off-the-books financial affiliates, and real estate developers. One of the main issues for Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen during her visit to Beijing this week is whether she can persuade China to cooperate more to address an evolving debt…

China’s Economic Rebound Hits a Wall, With ‘No Quick Fix’ to Revive It

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When China suddenly dismantled its lockdowns and other Covid precautions last December, officials in Beijing and many investors expected the economy to spring back to life. It has not worked out that way. Investment in China has stagnated this spring after a flurry of activity in late winter. Exports are shrinking. Fewer and fewer new housing projects are being started. Prices are falling. More than one in five young people is unemployed. China has tried many fixes over the last few years when its economy had flagged, like heavy borrowing…

Nanchang, Once a Symbol of China’s Growth, Signals a Housing Crisis

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The rows of towering buildings crowding the banks of the Gan River are a testament to the real estate boom that transformed Nanchang in eastern China from a gritty manufacturing hub to a modern urban center. Now those skyscrapers are evidence of something very different: China’s real estate market in crisis, reeling after years of overbuilding. As China’s economy prospered the last two decades, Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi Province, erected sweeping apartment complexes and gleaming office towers to meet the increasing demand for homes and workplaces. It pursued urban…

Why China Doesn’t Have a Property Tax

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Across China, many local governments are on the brink of insolvency. Some cities have reduced pay for civil servants. Cuts to municipal health insurance have triggered street protests. Central government bailouts are a possibility to rescue cities from their deep budget problems, but China hasn’t turned to a source of revenue that would be an obvious option in other countries: property taxes. In China, where the government owns the land, localities almost never tax homeowners to support services like schools. Cities rely instead on selling long-term leases to real estate…

The Elusive Fix for China’s Budget Crisis

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Across China, many local governments are on the brink of insolvency. Some cities have reduced pay for civil servants. Cuts to municipal health insurance have triggered street protests. Central government bailouts are a possibility to rescue cities from their deep budget problems, but China hasn’t turned to a source of revenue that would be an obvious option in other countries: property taxes. In China, where the government owns the land, localities almost never tax homeowners to support services like schools. Cities rely instead on selling long-term leases to real estate…