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China's 1.4 billion population isn't enough to fill the country's empty homes, former official says
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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This might be overkill:
That doesn't actually mean there are 65 million surplus properties. A vacant house isn't an unnecessary house. Children move out all the time, families sometimes break up, Chinese citizens currently living overseas or in Europe return home, etc.
I bet there's actually math for this - I wonder if anyone has calculated the optimal amount of vacancies?
That is a very good point. I still find it hard to believe that they are making the best use of labor and materials with situations like this:
Sometimes, you misspeculate. Some developers lost a whole fuck ton of money on the project, but that's more than made up for if you can turn a profit on projects near big cities (which demand is still sky high for).
Is anyone? If I have to choose between "housing shortage" and "housing surplus" I know which society I would prefer.
Sure. The point I was trying to make is that society might be better served by allocating resources to building hospitals or schools or something the community needs instead of housing that the community does not necessarily need because there is already a surplus of housing.
China isn't really limited by construction resources. There's a heavier constraint in terms of hospital staff and teachers than there is on construction resources.
Maybe they aren't running out of concrete and steel, but they are taking out loans for these construction projects.
They're also building hospitals and schools so...