Warning: Chinese Homebuilders Begin Their Collapse

As per Bloomberg report below there are over 90,000 real estate developers in China. A huge number, even for a country of that size. With unprecedented credit growth in China over the last decade and over the last 5 years in particular (click here), this bubble is ready to blow up. Zhejiang Xingrun, the biggest developer in Fenghua, is now in default after having no money left over to repay any of the more than $500 Million in loans. According to some reports, tens of thousands of other developers find themselves in a very similar situation. 

Yet, that doesn’t not deter most of China’s real estate bulls. According to Andy Rothman at Matthews Asia, there is no property bubble and prices in China’s real estate will continue to increase. Right, I forgot. Millions of dirt poor Chinese form various provinces are about to move into the empty cities to buy all of those poorly build and highly overpriced apartments. The reality is, it’s never different and always ends the same way. Expect Chinese real estate market to blow up as soon as global recession of 2014-2017 settles in.  

China Homebuilders

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Bloomberg Writes: A Shakeout Looms for China’s Homebuilders

Amid a cluster of half-built brick townhouses surrounded by peach groves on the outskirts of Fenghua city, workers could be seen taking down metal scaffolding and hauling away steel plates last month. They had heard that Zhejiang Xingrun Real Estate, the company building the housing development called Peach Blossom Palace, was insolvent. “The developer owed us hundreds of thousands of yuan” for scaffolding and steel, said workers Xie and Wang, who would only give their surnames. “We are taking these materials back for now because there’s no work here.”

The collapse of Zhejiang Xingrun may signal the start of a shakeout among the nation’s almost 90,000 real estate companies. After China began allowing private homeownership in 1998, homebuilders binged on easy credit from banks and other lenders. Now many developers are struggling with debt as thousands of apartment buildings across the country sit empty and the government makes it harder to borrow. CBRE Global Investors says there are about 30,000 developers after small construction companies and those formed for only one project are eliminated. “That is far too many, even for a country as large as China,” says Richard van den Berg, country manager for China at CBRE. “Consolidation needs to take place.”

Home prices in China have climbed 60 percent since 2008, when the government began a 4 trillion yuan ($645 billion) stimulus program to counter the effects of the global financial crisis. Former Premier Wen Jiabao began trying to cool the property market in 2010, imposing higher down-payment requirements, raising interest rates on loans for second-home purchases, and increasing construction of low-cost housing. Li Keqiang, who succeeded Wen in March 2013, further tightened credit in June, in part by cracking down on nonbank lenders.

About 67 percent of housing under construction in China last year was in less affluent cities such as Fenghua, according to Nomura Holdings (NMR). About 120 miles south of Shanghai, with a population of 500,000, Fenghua is best known as the birthplace of former Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. The city is filled with pawn shops, textile and garment factories, and empty residential buildings.

Zhejiang Xingrun, the biggest developer in Fenghua, owes 2.4 billion yuan to banks, 700 million yuan to private lenders, and 400 million yuan to construction companies, according to Xu Mengting, director of the news office at the Fenghua city government. The company hasn’t declared bankruptcy, and the local government is holding discussions with commercial banks about the company’s debts, Xu says.

Authorities have detained Shen Caixing, who founded Zhejiang Xingrun 14 years ago, and his son Shen Mingchong for raising money illegally, according to Xu. Neither Shen nor his son could be reached for comment. Wu Xijuan, a property agent at Tengfei real estate agency in Fenghua, says Shen was a celebrity. “Everybody called him ‘Cement Shen,’ because he started out with a renovation and cement business,” Wu says.

Zhejiang Xingrun was one of the first companies in the property business in Fenghua “with no previous experience or professional sales teams,” says Zhong Yongjin, a researcher at Centaline Property Agency, China’s biggest real estate brokerage. “But these local developers usually don’t have risk controls,” he says, and they don’t respond well to changes in market conditions. Xu, who says the main reason the developer is insolvent is that it “wasn’t run well,” adds that “fluctuation of land prices also played a role.”\

With lending tight, more developers such as Zhejiang Xingrun will go under, says Johnson Hu, a property analyst at CIMB Securities Research (CIMB:MK). Premier Li “has already signaled that as long as there are no systematic regional risks, the government won’t do much because some cases of default are inevitable,” Hu says.

While real estate companies may founder, the property market isn’t in danger of collapsing, according to Andy Rothman, an investment strategist with money manager Matthews Asia. He doesn’t see signs of a property bubble partly because urban income growth in China has outstripped the rise in home prices in the past eight years. Also, Chinese buyers pay for homes either in cash or with significant down payments. “Is this the tip of the iceberg or a signal that there are serious problems in the Chinese real estate market? That seems highly unlikely,” Rothman says. What has changed is that the Chinese government is more willing to let private companies fail, and “that is a good thing,” he says. “If you are going to have creative destruction, some companies are going to have to go out of business.”

The Secret To Chinese Real Estate

Chinese Real Estate is in a league of its own. Unlike the US/Canada/UK/Australia where real estate is a function of simple overvaluation and speculation, China took real estate to a whole new level of ridiculousness. Massive developments, empty cities and massive empty shopping malls.  In fact, real estate speculation has became a nationwide pass time. Last time I was there I heard the same thing from many very well to do and very smart Chinese “Our government will not let real estate collapse or even decline and because of that our real estate market will continue it’s climb….forever.”  You can read my previous post here. 

Sure, whatever makes you sleep better at night. 

Now, the Chinese Communist party is delusional enough to believe they can control the real estate market (or any market) and let it slow down “Softly, Softly”. With the Chinese economy finally showing major cracks and with the US bear market just around the corner, I highly doubt that Chinese real estate sector can escape carnage. Oh, and don’t forget the following numbers for China

  • $21 Trillion Debt Mountain. Roughly the same size as the entire US Banking Sector. It took the US 220 years to get to that number, it took China just 5 years of explosive credit growth. 
  • $6 Trillion In Shadow Banking. Actually, no one knows how large this number is. I have read good data/reports putting this number at $10-15 Trillion range.  

 

china empty cities

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The Secret To Chinese Real Estate Google

China Premier Li Chooses ‘Softly, Softly’ Approach to Property Market

China’s property moguls probably sighed in collective relief when the curtain came down on the annual session of parliament Thursday and there was no announcement of any new measures to keep real-estate prices from spiraling higher.

While the annual event is known more for ceremony than substance, it does give the senior Communist Party officials—the ones who really run the show—a chance to make important pronouncements on policy matters.

The parliament session opened with much fanfare but it paid only minimal attention to the housing market, where prices have continued to march higher despite more than four years of government-control measures.

The last chance for an unpleasant market surprise was the premier’s news conference Thursday morning, which traditionally is the final event on the parliamentary program. Premier Li Keqiang was asked directly whether there were any new policy measures planned that might affect the property market. He trotted out a time-worn line about ending speculation and building more affordable homes.

He could have said a tax on property values – now being used on a trial basis in Shanghai and Chongqing – would one day be rolled out more widely. But he didn’t.

He could have threatened a host of other tightening measures if there are more price advances like the nearly 11% year-on-year gain in February, according to a major private-sector survey. But he didn’t. And he could have vowed to get tough with speculators who ignore government efforts to curb price rises. But he didn’t.

The premier’s quiet approach followed the remarks of Finance Minister Lou Jiwei, who told reporters during the parliament session that a hefty tax on profits from home sales—one that has encouraged some people to divorce just to avoid paying it—was “defective.”

The policy shyness probably reflects the fact that the property sector is a key source of economic growth, which is now showing signs of flagging. Beijing has set a target of about 7.5% growth this year, and Premier Li said Thursday he is confident growth will be in a “reasonable range.”

But a raft of economic data released Thursday suggests that growth at the start of the year was fairly lackluster. Industrial production, retail sales, fixed-asset investment data and even property construction figures were released later in the day, and all looked disappointing. New construction starts—measured in terms of area—were down 27% from a year ago.

“[Decision makers] recognize a key role investment plays in boosting growth,” said ANZ economist Liu Li-gang, noting the softer tones of the premier’s remarks.

Others agreed.

“The officials are signaling that they do not want to intervene in the property market, but this doesn’t come as a surprise. They have been doing that quietly for the past year,” said Rosealea Yao, an analyst at GaveKal Dragonomics.

While the premier’s rhetoric was “softly, softly,” it was loud enough to be heard on the stock market. Property stocks eked out a 0.6% gain Thursday on the Shanghai bourse and they were up 1.5% from March 5, when the parliament session began. Analysts said that reflected relief that no new property measures were in sight. The Shanghai bourse as a whole, by contrast, fell 2.5% over the parliament session.

Chinese Real Estate Is To Go Up Another 1 Million Percent

Bloomberg Writes: Chinese Still Prefer Property Over Stocks

china-empty-cities-investwithalexhousing 

Matthew Zhou and his wife spent 1.6 million yuan ($261,000) to buy a two-bedroom apartment in eastern Shanghai in August because they saw no potential to make money in China’s financial markets. “Home prices keep rising, so I’d rather buy a place now than put the money in the stock market,” says Zhou, 30, an information technology engineer at a state-controlled bank in Shanghai. Gains in equities “could never outpace the growth of home prices,” he says.

Okay Mr. Zhou, that’s quite a believe. Perhaps you should study history in order to see that over the long run capital markets appreciate much faster than real estate. In fact, real estate shouldn’t (outside of artificial stimulus) appreciate faster than the rate of inflation.

Real estate has attracted “the lion’s share” of household investment in China, according to a July report by Standard Chartered (STAN:LN). It has made up more than 60 percent of household assets since 2008, compared with 48 percent in the U.K., 32 percent in Japan, and 26 percent in the U.S., the report says.

That is massive. Another indication of a bubble.

Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man and owner of Dalian Wanda Group, the country’s biggest commercial land developer, says the property market is “definitely” in a bubble, though it’s “controllable, not big.”

Ok, Mr. Wang Jianlin,  which one is it. By definition bubbles cannot be controlled.  At least in this case you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If controlled, by whom? You, Chinese government or millions of Chinese citizens speculating on real estate. Will they be rational?

Michael Chang, a 33-year-old investment manager in Shanghai, isn’t concerned about bubbles. He spent 1 million yuan on a 215-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment in Beijing in August last year and 5 million yuan on a 1,400-square-foot unit in a Tishman Speyer Properties development in Shanghai this year. “You see home prices rally even when the curbs are in place, not to say when the bans are lifted,” says Chang, who expects Shanghai prices to rise 50 percent in the next five years. Citing a recent ranking of global housing prices in which Shanghai placed sixth and Beijing did not appear, he says: “Let’s talk about bubbles when Beijing and Shanghai rank among the world’s top five most expensive cities.”

Read The Full Article Here

If the statement above doesn’t scream “Bubble” nothing else will.  Mr. Chang anticipates 50% rise in 5 years in an already overpriced market while there are literally hundreds of empty cities all over China.

Perhaps Mr. Chang is right. Perhaps it will go up 100% over the next 5 years. Who knows. Perhaps you should even invest with Mr. Chang. Markets tend to be irrational at times. However, make no mistake. This market will blow up and when it does millions of Chinese families will lose everything.

How do you say Revolution in Chinese? 

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China Is An Economic Disaster Waiting For Implosion

CNBC Writes: Why China property is immune to tapering

china_real_estate_bubble_debt_collapse

China’s property market is unlikely to take a hit from tighter liquidity when the Federal Reserve finally pursues the much-anticipated tapering of its bond buying program, said Wang Jianlin, chairman of Dalian Wanda, a commercial property-to-karaoke-outlet conglomerate, as well as China’s richest man according to Forbes (Bombay Stock Exchange: 502865-BY) magazine.

“The tight liquidity will push up interest rates. But I don’t think interest rates will go up by too much,” Wang told CNBC in an exclusive interview, adding China’s economy also doesn’t move in lock-step with global markets.

“Because the profit margin for China’s real estate industry is above the global average, a 1 percent to 2 percent rise in interest [rates] will have very limited impact on the profit margins of bigger property players,” added Wang.

China property developers’ gross margins were around 34 percent in the first half of the year, UOB (Singapore Exchange: UOBH-SG) Kay Hian said in a recent report on the developers it covers. It noted the second half is usually stronger.

Wang also expects Beijing to re-focus its sector cooling measures, with property firms to soon be allowed to refinance after a nine-year hiatus on the segment’s IPOs, in a move set to spur further development.

The Shanghai Securities Journal reported last week that detailed regulations on refinancing approval would be released in a couple of weeks at the soonest.

“China’s economy now needs the property industry,” Wang said. “Given the decline in export and investment, China’s economy has turned from high growth to moderate growth with further downside risks.”

Deutsche Bank (XETRA:DBK-DE) also expects Beijing’s drive toward urbanization to offer a long-term fillip to the property sector. The “new form” of urbanization will include developing big city-clusters, rather than just a few big cities, with more urban retail properties in Tier two, three and four cities, it said in a recent report.

“We expect domestic consumption to pick up given higher urbanization and higher productivity,” the investment bank said.

Wang is also bullish on China’s consumption outlook in the longer term. “This will be key for the country’s future economic development,” he said. Wang’s Wanda Dalian conglomerate operates 57 department stores. “By 2015, China is set to become the largest consumer market in the world at over CNY30 trillion ($4.9 trillion).” 

Immune? Sure, just as I am immune from dying.

If you have been to China over the last couple of years you have seen it firsthand.  There is so much real estate development that it is a site to behold. There are literally entire cities coming up all at once in the middle of nowhere.  I was impressed and I am not that easily impressed.

The problem is, most of these developments are driven by speculation and capital misallocation. The majority of these developments are empty, bought by Chinese speculators using multi generational savings and loans.

What surprised me the most is that not a single Chinese person I talked to (and I was mostly talking to very intelligent business/government folk) even remotely worried about this issue. Every single one of them said something to the tune of….”Real estate will always go up in China, if market begins to decline our Government will backstop it to prevent losses. There is no risk, it’s an easy way for us to make money.”

I didn’t want to argue with them to prove my point, but such a statement by itself is a clear indication of a speculative bubble.  Any reliance on the Chinese Government to prevent or stop a collapse from happening is just an illusion at best. Those who study financial markets know that there is no way to prevent or to stop a collapse when it happens. I don’t care what kind of a government it is. Not even GOD can do.

China is a fiscal time bomb that will eventually go off.  I believe that time is coming up very soon. When that happens Chinese property bubble will implode, millions of Chinese families will lose their multi generational savings and that in itself will lead to political instability and a possible revolution.  Simple as that.     

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