After a five-year property slump, an increasing number of tenants in China\u2019s biggest cities are opting to buy small flats with their years of savings, betting on a turnaround in the country\u2019s home market that has yet to arrive.<\/p>\n
However, the recent buying spree \u2013 centred on low-priced pre-owned homes \u2013 did not give banks\u2019 mortgage loan businesses an effective boost because buyers raised their down payments to avoid interest costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore tenants are feeling that paying a few thousand yuan a month to rent a flat is not worth it given the current low home prices,\u201d said Li Tongqiang, a broker at property agency Lianjia in Shanghai. \u201cThey would rather spend 2 million to 3 million yuan (US$295,000 to US$442,500) to own a residential unit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most of the buyers were first-time homeowners, Li said, adding the small homes they were looking to purchase were typically of less than 50 square metres (538 sq ft).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe monthly instalment for repaying the mortgage loan now is 700 yuan lower than the rent,\u201d Pan said. \u201cI made the [purchase] decision quickly because of the gap.\u201d<\/p>\n
Centaline Property said homes priced below 3 million yuan made up 70 per cent of the company\u2019s total transactions in April, compared with about 64 per cent a year earlier. The trend persisted last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a five-year property slump, an increasing number of tenants in China\u2019s biggest cities are opting to buy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,131149,1657,218645,184,30881,85,46,218643,218646,218644,17460,8556,5733,97298],"class_list":["post-470263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-centaline-property","tag-china","tag-china-index-holdings","tag-economy","tag-home-sales","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-li-tongqiang","tag-lianjia","tag-pan-congqiang","tag-peoples-bank-of-china","tag-rent","tag-shanghai","tag-xuhui-district"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}