After I wrote this week’s post about Chinese homebuyers in Vancouver, I was surprised to learn about the racism debate that flared up in the city / on Twitter. I guess this really is a touchy subject. (See: #donthave1million)
My reaction to the research was: Great to see someone (Andy Yan) putting in the time to try and better understand a market phenomenon. It’s painful how opaque real estate markets can be. Let’s get even more data so that we can make even better policy decisions. I didn’t read it as: let’s deliberately single out a race.
Because the reality is that we all knew this was happening.
Bloomberg recently published an interesting and related article that talks about China’s money exodus and how the Chinese logistically get their money out of the country. There are restrictions in place.
But first, here are two snippets from Bloomberg that describe the order of magnitude we’re talking about:
This flood of cash is being felt around the world, driving up real estate prices in Sydney, New York, Hong Kong and Vancouver. The Chinese spent almost $30 billion on U.S. homes in the year ending last March, making them the biggest foreign buyers of real estate. Their average purchase price: about $832,000.
In total, UBS Group estimated that $324 billion moved out last year. While this year’s numbers aren’t yet in, during the three weeks in August after China devalued its currency, Goldman Sachs calculated that another $200 billion may have left.
Now here’s how it is being done:
It works like this: Chinese come to Hong Kong and open a bank account. Then they go to a money-change shop, which provides a mainland bank account number for the customer to make a domestic transfer from his or her account inside China. As soon as that transaction is confirmed, typically in just two hours, the Hong Kong money changer then transfers the equivalent in Hong Kong or U.S. dollars or any other foreign currency into the client’s Hong Kong account. Technically, no money crosses the border – both transactions are completed by domestic transfers.
And here’s a snippet that stood out for me because it shows how easy this has become:
While the first exchange has to be set up face-to-face, customers can place future orders via instant-messaging services such as WhatsApp or WeChat, and money changers set no limit on how much money they can move.
Given the scale and complexity of this issue – housing affordability – I have to believe that cities and policy makers would be far better off with more, rather than less, information. I hope we can work towards that.
Earlier this week, a friend of mine shared this TED talk on my Facebook wall talking about the state of climate change in the world. The talk is by Nicholas Stern. And at one point he talks about the incredible urban transformation that has taken place in Beijing over the last couple of decades; specifically, the shift from a bicycle oriented city to a now automobile oriented city.
I knew that this was the case, but it got me thinking. Because alongside this mobility change, there’s also been – not surprisingly – pronounced changes to the urban fabric of the city. The most significant is perhaps the demolition of the city’s hutongs and siheyuan. Hutongs are basically narrow alleys (see above photo) and siheyuan are the traditional Chinese courtyard houses.