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| A Survey on "House Salves" Born in the 1980s |
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2008-01-03 15:19:06
CRIENGLISH.com |
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House slave/ cartoon by He Ying
No mater single or newly married, employed or not graduated yet, young people in Beijing find that the more they are longing to buy a house of their own, the harder it is to turn their dream into reality.
Xiao Wang came from eastern China's Shandong Province and settled down in Beijing after graduating with a master's degree. He has been planning to buy an apartment in Beijing since 2005 when he left school. However, as a finance major, Xiao Wang has been particularly watching the government's policies for a long time, from which he deduced that housing prices might fall in 2006. So he decided to wait and see.
At the beginning of 2006, the average house price in Beijing was a mere 6000 yuan/sq metre (about 857 USD). Xiao Wang had every confidence that the price would be lowered. But till the end of 2006, Xiao Wang surprisingly found that the price had been raised to 8000 yuan/sq metre (about 1,143 USD) on average. What's more, the price of some developments around Yayuncun area (a prosperous business area near Beijing 4th Ring Road) had reached to 20,000 yuan/sq metre.
At the beginning of 2007, with a budget of 800,000 yuan (with 500,000 garnered from his parents), Wang decided to buy a second-hand apartment in the Shaoyaoju area of Beijing. At that time, he could buy a 90 to 100 square metre apartment with that amount of money.
Soon, Wang found his favourite type of apartment with the help of a real estate agent. It was a 110 square metre house located quite close to Wang's company. However, the young man again told himself to think seriously for some time as the Spring Festival was coming and the apartment wouldn't be sold during the festival¡ªor so he thought. To his surprise yet again, before he returned to Beijing from a hometown visit, he was informed by the agent that the house had been sold.
Several days later, Wang had his second chance, an affordable house at 86 square metres. The total price of the house was 760,000 yuan. Wang began to deal with the procedure of getting the qualification to buy the affordable house at once. But two months on, after all the work was completed, the house was again swept out from under his feet by somebody else.
It was already April of 2007 by this time. According to statistics released by the Golden Keys Investment Group, one of the biggest real estate agents in the capital, the transaction price of second-hand houses had reached 10,000 yuan/sq metre in April. This was indeed a record-breaking peak amount, as it was under 9,000 yuan/sq only two months earlier.
In this instance, Wang realised that he could not buy the house in his mind with a poultry budget of 800,000 yuan. Finally, he decided to raise the budget to 1,000,000 yuan.
Even despite this, he couldn't find a house to his taste near Shaoyaoju, which is in downtown Beijing. Wang decided to go further out where the houses are relatively cheaper.
In June 2007, Wang found an apartment in northern Beijing's Wangjing area. It was a 90 square metre apartment with the total price at 900,000 yuan.
To be frank, it was not Wang's dream home. He wanted to buy an apartment where most of the rooms would have good sunlight. But this was not that kind of house. After carefully mulling over every aspect of the house, Wang decided to lower his requirements.
"Can I wait any longer? All my requirements are meaningless in the face of soaring housing prices," said Wang.
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