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| China's real estate sector has been weak since 2021 when real estate giant China Evergrande Group defaulted on its debt. (Source: Reuters) |
That is the opinion of Mr. He Keng, former Deputy Director of the National Bureau of Statistics of China. Speaking at a forum in Dongguan city in southern China, he said there are many different figures given about the number of vacant apartments in this country, including the opinion that the current number of vacant houses could be enough for 3 billion people.
This means that China's population of 1.4 billion people cannot "cover" this number, although the above estimate is somewhat exaggerated according to Mr. He Keng.
China's property sector, once a pillar of the world's second-largest economy , has weakened since 2021 when property giant China Evergrande Group defaulted on its debt after the government tightened regulations on new borrowing.
The risk of debt defaults is still looming over other big-name Chinese real estate developers such as Country Garden Holdings, weighing on homebuyers' sentiment.
The latest figures from China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that as of the end of August, the total floor area of unsold houses had reached 648 million square meters, equivalent to 7.2 million houses, according to Reuters estimates based on an average house size of 90 square meters.
That does not include many housing projects that have been sold but are still unfinished due to cash flow problems, or many houses bought by speculators during the market boom in 2016 that are still vacant.
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