As for the future trend of housing prices, every expert, scholar and the general public have their own unique views and arguments. Some friends optimistically speculate that housing prices may have a phased decline, their reason is that after twenty or thirty years of rapid development, China's real estate industry housing resources are now extremely abundant, and the level of housing prices is also slightly too high, so it seems that housing prices should obviously be adjusted from a high place to conform to the economic law. However, we can't ignore the firm belief of our friends on the other side - house prices still have the most momentum.
Taking urbanization as an example, there is still a lot of room for development, they pointed out that in the coming years, there will still be an endless number of rural laborers stationed in the cities every year, and these people are bound to turn into home buyers at some point in the future, so the demand for housing is still strong, which in turn will push housing prices higher. In addition, they also highlighted that the rising cost of construction raw materials and labor costs is also one of the important reasons for the rise in housing prices. It can be seen that although everyone has their own opinions, there are still unique opinions and bases for the expectation of future housing prices.
Housing prices, as a hot topic in society, undoubtedly deeply involve the hearts of countless people. The substantive factors behind this driving the trend of housing prices, including supply and demand, construction costs, etc., of course, the impact of the policy environment cannot be ignored. In particular, it is worth mentioning that those investors who play an important role in the property market, they are either self-employed, or have gathered multiple investment teams to form a real estate speculation group, or come from major enterprises. For example, the Wenzhou real estate speculation group has long been widely known, while the traces of enterprises are relatively low-key. In fact, the company can be described as the largest "real estate investor" in China. According to the figures, A-share listed companies alone hold more than 1.3 million properties, which is enough to provide housing for nearly 4 million people, almost the same area as a medium-sized city. However, it is important to note that the vast majority of companies are not publicly listed, and they also hold a staggering amount of property.
It is precisely because of the active participation of these speculators that China's housing prices have maintained a continuous trend in the past 20 years. Although according to statistics, the national average house price has fallen slightly in the past two years, as of the end of 2023, the national average house price is still as high as 9,600 yuan square meters. For some hot cities, housing prices are incredibly high, making people sigh. According to the data of the E-House Research Institute, the house-price-to-income ratio in 100 cities across the country reached 92. The house-price-to-income ratio in 70 cities across the country is as high as 133. That is, in these cities, a family needs to spend a full 13Buy a house for 3 years. However, considering that life in these big cities is already difficult, and many young people are unable to even solve the basic problems of survival, how can they afford such a sky-high cost of buying a house? Therefore, many young people can only watch the high-rise buildings in the city but lament that they cannot afford to buy a small world of their own.
Although most people feel the pressure of buying a home, or even homeless, it is important to remember that there is no shortage of ** in the market. To be precise, the number of homes in the market is growing at a booming pace, and there is even a situation where supply is outstripping demand. In fact, a large number of properties are deliberately hoarded by a small number of people who have neither intended to move in for themselves nor to rent them out. At the end of the day, it turns out that the original intention of their choice to invest in real estate is to obtain high returns, and new houses and quasi-new houses that have not stayed overnight are often sold at a higher price. At the same time, many investors have accumulated a large number of properties, but do not have enough time to rent them out one by one.
In our country, with the passage of time, there is a phenomenon, that is, the housing vacancy rate is increasing year by year. Many newly built houses are not being used efficiently, resulting in a lot of resources being wasted. According to a detailed report by the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, the nationwide housing depression rate reached about 22% in 2017, meaning that almost 65 million homes were unoccupied or underutilized. What's even more worrying is that this number is still growing at an annual rate, especially in the past five years, when more than 7 million new commercial homes have poured into our country every year.
It can be seen that China's existing housing is not a shortage, especially in many cities have achieved basic saturation of housing, and there is even a surplus. However, housing prices remain at a high level, leaving many people feeling financially stressed. Therefore, we hope that those property speculators can put the hoarding ** in their hands on the market, so that housing prices may gradually fall. However, it is worth noting that it is difficult to completely solve this problem by relying only on the current purchase restriction policy, because many ** have been accumulated that have been mastered by property speculators, and they often have various ways to escape these restrictions.
In fact, the solution is very simple – a vacancy tax is imposed. Wang Jinzhao, director of the Industrial Economy Department of the Development Research Center, once expressed his views on this: "We can take measures such as setting thresholds to gradually resolve market risks step by step, such as introducing a consumption tax to curb large-scale investment and consumption, a turnover tax to prevent property speculation, and a vacancy tax to control the waste of resources." ”
It is worth mentioning that the vacancy tax plays a key role in the whole regulatory process. In France, for example, the residential depression rate has been significantly reduced due to the introduction of a high vacancy tax. In fact, not only in France, but also in other countries like the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Germany, Japan and Spain, which have effectively reduced the vacancy rate of residential properties by implementing property taxes and setting higher tax rates. In this way, it is crucial to levy a vacancy tax on vacant dwellings, both to solve the problem and to avoid waste.
Do you have your own unique opinion on this issue? Are you for or against the implementation of the vacancy tax?