Buying A House in China

[rogerluli]

The retiring in China poll stands at 21 for yes or possibly and 1 no. So there is a lot of interest in this topic, but I already knew that by talking to some members and reading lots of posts. In October laopo and I will be going to China for 40 days and will be buying a house (in China, 'house'=apartment/condo, 'villa'=house). We are lucky to have enough RMB on the ground there now to be able to do this and we've both done a lot of research online, and laopo has spent a lot of time talking to friends and family in China about the current situation. There has been a lot of specualtion in the biggest cities and in places like Beijing and Shanghai prices are through the roof. In the next tier of cities like Guangzhou, Xiamen or Shenzhen prices are only high enough to cause terminal nose bleed. Here is the mother-of-all-websites for Chinese real estate.

 

http://www.soufun.com/

 

You can read Chinese can't you?

 

Other important points are that the Chinese government owns all the land in China. When you buy a 'house' you get a 50 or more usually 70 year lease. You own the house forever and you only must pay a nominal fee to renew the lease when it is up.

 

There are NO property taxes on houses in cities...

[jim_julian]

... and if you buy a new house (apartment) it is usually just a series of cement rooms (floor, wall ceiling ... all cement) with the utilities stubbed out at the front door. It can take quite a while to "finish" the apartment and it's adviseable to continuously supervise the various specialty contractors as they do their work.