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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)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This might be overkill:

At the time, there were at least 65 million vacant properties in the country, which would have been enough to house the entire population of France, Insider previously reported.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That doesn't actually mean there are 65 million surplus properties. A vacant house isn't an unnecessary house.

That is a very good point. I still find it hard to believe that they are making the best use of labor and materials with situations like this:

Ordos, near the border with Mongolia, was meant to hold over 1 million people and become a cultural and economic hub. But by 2016, its population was only around 100,000, and it has been described as "the largest ghost town in the world."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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).

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I still find it hard to believe that they are making the best use of labor and materials

Is anyone? If I have to choose between "housing shortage" and "housing surplus" I know which society I would prefer.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sure. The point I was trying to make is that society might be better served by allocating resources to building hospitals or schools or something the community needs instead of housing that the community does not necessarily need because there is already a surplus of housing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

China isn't really limited by construction resources.

Maybe they aren't running out of concrete and steel, but they are taking out loans for these construction projects.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago

They're also building hospitals and schools so...