"Should I sell this house in my hand?"
Mrs. Lu, president of a wealth management agency that owns several suites across the country, asks this. She has bought several houses in the past few years. Because of her busy schedule, she didn't have time to "flip" properties. A few months ago, she wanted to sell her house in Hangzhou, but found that after the G20, Hangzhou's house prices went up again; her property in Shanghai, too, went up by several million dollars without her noticing.
She should be happy about this? Should she continue to watch the value of her house appreciate - even though it's gone up so much - and what if one day prices fall?
What else could she invest in if she sold the house? Outside of real estate, Ms. Lu has $6-30 million in investable assets. As a professional, she eyeballed the current performance of the stock market, funds, foreign exchange, gold and other asset classes, and then returned her attention to the housing market.
But, the heart is still not solid, some trepidation, some uneasiness.
This is not a feeling she has alone. It's not just these high-net-worth clients in the eyes of private banks. Even the average middle-income person is full of questions about it. They may have tens of thousands of dollars in investable assets, or more than $100,000 or even millions. They may already own a property that they are still paying off, or they may still be struggling to make a down payment, and they are located in the north or in a second or third-tier city, but the confusion seems to be the same: can they still buy a house? If you don't buy a house, how can the money in your hand - whether it's more or less - beat inflation and gain value?
A sense of unspeakable anxiety is spreading in different markets and among different groups of people. The middle class, in particular, seems to be "sick" and suffering from wealth anxiety.
"Asset drought" under the three things: housing prices, currency prices, gold prices
"Housing prices rose evil, no house of despair, have a house of panic; I did not expect that some developers are also so. " The market bemoaned; too much liquidity, the market is too crowded, institutions and capital are complaining about the quality of "asset drought".
Will house prices rise? In Nanjing, Hangzhou, in Suzhou, in Jinan, once long-forgotten words are back in people's eyes, price limits, restrictions on purchases, and crack down on muffled ...... some of the people who are thought to be maliciously speculating on rising house prices and false information were detained, rising house prices have triggered a new round of regulation, and are spreading to more cities.
In the face of high housing prices, the People's Daily also came out to shout, its WeChat public number issued an article "lose struggle, property more will be homeless". Explicitly: when hard work is not as good as speculation in real estate, it is possible to establish a wrong orientation and values. But the phenomenon of "real estate appreciation kills hard work" has made some people who have just entered the middle class frustrated.
Mr. Li, an infrastructure engineer, used to be in charge of safety in the project department of a state-owned enterprise. In his late 40s, he quit his job last year to start his own engineering business after accumulating a certain amount of wealth. He has just bought a new car and has five to six million dollars in savings, but anxiety plagues him at times.
According to Mr. Li, he has a property in his name for self-occupation, as well as a few hundred square meters of residential land in the suburbs of Beijing. He said he is not a smart man in his wife's eyes. In the process of rising prices in Beijing, many friends and colleagues have bought a house around 2010, although there was such an intention, but ultimately shelved for various reasons, on which the couple had been angry.
"I also wanted to improve the housing conditions of the family, but at present the price of this is too scary, do not dare to easily start." Considering that there are still suburban home base, all the way up the price of the house makes Mr. Li finally gave up the idea of changing the house.
After his resignation, Mr. Li has nearly one million yuan of income per year, but in the context of the economic downturn, the project is increasingly difficult to do, not only thin profits, triangular debt and other credit risk is constantly dampening his enthusiasm. And still have not returned to the capital of the stock investment makes him in this year's lukewarm market to maintain the rationality mixed with pessimism.
"It is true that now more entangled, but also more frustrated, has always felt that the domestic housing prices have been very high, but it is still rising, think of the experience of the United States and Japan, very worried about their own to become the last to take over the baton, and because of this, they missed a lot of the time to buy a house." Mr. Li said, their hands of millions of deposits is not much, how to preserve the value of the appreciation has become a headache, "is now basically in the purchase of short-term financial management, earnings annual interest of less than 4%, I'm really afraid that in the process of rising housing prices, and depreciation of the yuan was diluted not enough to live, especially when you see the square dance of the older women sitting in possession of several sets of real estate there will also be a sense of frustration. "
If the choice is wider, is overseas asset allocation a good idea?
Many high-net-worth individuals have chosen to buy homes overseas, with overseas media attributing the rise in home prices in some cities in countries such as Australia and Canada to the purchasing power of the Chinese. Even investors who don't have the strength to buy houses have chosen to convert some of their deposits into US dollars or invest in overseas stock markets and fixed-income products.
The risk of exchange rate fluctuations has undoubtedly added some heat to the heating up of overseas asset allocation.
A research conducted by Boston Consulting Group found that after the "811" exchange rate reform in 2015, the volatility of the yuan triggered the market's expectation of future depreciation, which set off a boom in offshore asset allocation for Chinese individuals. Including the sinking of the client base, more than 50% of ordinary private bank clients who have not yet started offshore investment said they would consider investing overseas in the next three years.
Zhang Yue, a global partner at The Boston Consulting Group, said the research also showed that 70 percent of HNWIs still realized a profit of about 10 percent despite the sharp stock market volatility in 2015. "The ability of Chinese HNWIs to manage their wealth on their own, or with the help of institutions, their investment ability is gradually improving."
Ye Chengkun, founder of Homer Financial, has the sense that there has indeed been a trend of overseas assets heating up in the past few years. This is a company that focuses on helping Chinese residents invest overseas. Based on observations over the past few years, Ye Chengkun said that most of the middle-class and high-net-worth people's overseas allocations are mainly of two types: basic allocations, like going to Hong Kong to buy insurance; and steady funds on top of the basics.
(The above answer was posted on 2016-11-28, the current relevant home-buying policy please prevail)
More real estate information, policy interpretation, expert interpretation, click to view