Chinese Villagers Jumped at the Deal of a Lifetime—Then It Turned Sour


中国的房地产危机对较贫困地区的房主造成了特别沉重的打击，其中一些房主曾用农村住房置换了几套新公寓，但后来却发现根本无法套现。


中国江苏省的一个房地产开发项目。

用一栋老旧的农村宅基地住房和一小块农田换来五套公寓和两家商铺，这在当时看来似乎是笔特别划算的买卖。 6park.com
It seemed to be a great deal at the time: Swap an aging townhouse and a small piece of farmland for five apartments and two stores. 6park.com
    
Bella Zhao一家在2009年抓住了这一机遇，那时候以万达集团(Wanda Group)为首的房地产开发商进驻了这个位于中国东北吉林省、人烟稀少且白雪皑皑的村庄。万达计划斥资28亿美元将这片地区打造成一处高端旅游度假胜地，其中包含了滑雪场、高尔夫球场、狩猎场和五星级酒店。这家开发商向当地居民提供了大量城里的新公寓，用来交换他们在农村的旧房，于是几乎在一夜之间就造就了一个地产大亨村。 6park.com
Bella Zhao’s family grabbed that offer in 2009, when property developers led by Wanda Group moved into their sparse, snow-capped village in China’s northeastern Jilin province. Wanda planned to spend $2.8 billion to turn the area into a high-end resort replete with ski slopes, golf courses, hunting spots and five-star hotels. The developer offered locals a large number of new apartments in town in exchange for their old homes, creating a village of property tycoons almost overnight. 6park.com
   
Zhao说，那时我高兴极了。当时她才十几岁，后来继承了这些房产。 6park.com
“I was so happy then,” said Zhao, who was a teenager at the time and later inherited the properties.  6park.com
  
现在，她的五套公寓都空着。持有的商铺中只有一家有租户。那个雄心勃勃的开发项目在数年前就停工了；曾经承诺的旅游业繁荣也从未实现。Zhao已经不抱任何希望了，现在只要租户愿意支付水电等账单和物业管理费，她就愿意免费出租这些公寓。 6park.com
Now, all five of her apartments sit empty. Only one of the stores has a tenant. The ambitious development project stalled years ago; the promised tourism boom never happened. Zhao has become so desperate that she has offered to lease the apartments rent-free so long as the tenants agree to pay the bills and management fees.  6park.com
   
她说，但是没有人愿意住在那里，即使是免费入住。她说，现在还住在城里的人都有他们自己的房产。 6park.com
“But no one wants to live there, even for free,” she said. “Everyone who still lives in the town has their own properties.”



中国房地产业崩溃后，大量目光都聚焦于国内房地产开发商身上，但房主们也同样陷入了困境。许多人迫切想要卖房，却找不到买家。其他房主就像Zhao一样，原本以为自己好运气凭空得了多套房子，却发现根本无法套现。 6park.com
While much attention has focused on Chinese property developers in the wake of the country’s real estate crash, homeowners, too, are stuck. Many are desperate to sell with no buyers in sight. Others, like Zhao, thought they had a winning lottery ticket, only to find it is now impossible to cash it in. 6park.com
   
他们的困境加剧了中国经济所面临的不确定性。这牵制了中国政府为促进消费、进而提振内需作出的种种努力，迫使政府再次把重心放在产业政策和增加的供应上。 6park.com
Their plight feeds into the uncertainty weighing on China’s economy. It holds back attempts to get consumers to spend more, which would lead to higher demand, leaving the government to once again focus on industrial policy and increased supply. 6park.com
   
在中国政府试图刺破房地产行业债务泡沫的政策引发恐慌之后，中国的房地产市场持续低迷已有三年时间。起初，即使销量下降，房价依然坚挺。但根据房地产中介机构中原地产(Centaline)的数据，房价在2022年开始下跌，在中国一些最发达的城市，房屋价值已缩水五分之一。 6park.com
China’s real-estate market has been in a downturn for three years after Beijing’s attempts to burst a debt bubble in the sector fueled a panic. At first, home prices remained resilient even as sales declined. But in 2022, home prices began a decline that has erased a fifth of their value in some of China’s most developed cities, according to data from property agency Centaline.   6park.com
   
26岁的Zhao说，房价开始下跌时，我感到很不安，我感觉自己的人生计划被打乱了。 6park.com
“When property prices started to fall, I felt upset,” said Zhao, 26. “It felt like my life plans were thrown into disarray.” 6park.com
   
自那以后，房地产市场就几乎没得到什么喘息的机会。今年第一季度，中国百强房企新房销量同比下降47.5%，目前徘徊在历史最低水平附近。3月份，一线城市二手住宅销售价格同比下降7.3%，这是自2011年中国政府开始发布该数据以来的最大降幅。 6park.com
There has been little respite since. New home sales from China’s largest 100 developers dropped by 47.5% in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, and are now around their lowest levels on record. The price of existing homes in China’s most developed cities fell 7.3% year-over-year in March, the worst decline since the government started releasing data in 2011.


扬州某住宅项目。

中国房地产市场正面临一个简单的经济问题：卖家太多，买家太少。中原地产研究部主管刘渊说，更糟糕的是，那些通常为换取几套新公寓而将自己的宅基地住房卖给开发商的村民们，无疑正在增加潜在供应。 6park.com
The market is facing a simple economic problem: too many sellers, and too few buyers. Making matters worse, villagers who traded their homes with developers, often for several new apartments, are adding to the wall of potential supply, said Liu Yuan, head of property research at Centaline. 6park.com
   
南京的一位房主说，要卖出像样的价格是不可能的。她与丈夫和父母拥有八套房产，其中五套是拆迁补偿。 6park.com
“It is impossible to sell at a decent price,” said a homeowner in Nanjing, who owns eight properties with her husband and parents, five of which were compensation for relocating.
   6park.com
那些以宅基地住房换新公寓的房主的房产所有权数据很少更新。不过，根据智库上海金融与法律研究院(Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law)的聂日明和郭晓菁发布的报告，2017年约有6.8%的二手住宅是人们以老旧农村房屋置换获得的房产。 6park.com
Data on the ownership of properties by those who traded their houses for new apartments is rarely updated. But according to a report published by Nie Riming and Guo Xiaojing from the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law, a think tank, around 6.8% of existing homes in 2017 were properties that people received after trading in aging homes. 



河南省一名男子表示，他仍在等待2018年一家开发商进驻他所在小镇时承诺的六套公寓，当时该开发商以此换取了他的宅基地住房和一块农田。这些公寓原定于2021年交付，但相关楼盘项目的开发已停滞。 6park.com
A man in China’s Henan province said he is still waiting for the six apartments he was promised in 2018 in exchange for his townhouse and piece of farmland when a developer moved into his town. The apartments were to be delivered in 2021, but the development has stalled.  6park.com
   
他说，他对这些公寓最终将完工持乐观态度，但在其他方面就没那么看得开了。他说，可能其中两套公寓会有家人住，其余的会空置。 6park.com
He said he is optimistic that the apartments will eventually be finished, but he isn’t optimistic about much else. Perhaps two of the apartments will be occupied by his relatives, he said. The rest will sit empty. 6park.com
   
他说，不可能出售或出租，装修也不值得。 6park.com
“It’s not possible to sell or rent out. It’s not worth decorating,” he said.  6park.com
   
房地产业下滑对中国的小城镇和乡村造成了严重影响。根据被广泛引用的估计数字，房地产及相关行业在这场危机前约占中国经济总产值的四分之一，但对一些除了地皮之外没什么东西可提供的较贫困地区来说，房地产行业的重要性甚至更高。 6park.com
The real-estate downturn has had an acute effect on China’s smaller towns and villages. Real estate and related sectors accounted for around a quarter of China’s economic output before the crisis, according to widely cited estimates, but the sector had an even greater importance for some poorer areas, which didn’t have much to offer besides their land. 6park.com
   
香港中文大学（深圳）(Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen)教授陶然表示，这些城镇的经济和就业机会已无法维持住房供应的规模和价格。 6park.com
“The economy and job opportunities in these cities haven’t been able to sustain the scale of the housing supply and prices,” said Tao Ran, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.  6park.com
   
地方政府一直在加大力度鼓励购房。本月早些时候，河南省郑州市的官员下令一家国有企业购买多达1万套二手房，条件是卖房者必须用这笔钱购买新建房产。 6park.com
Local governments have been stepping up efforts to encourage home purchases. Earlier this month, officials in Zhengzhou, in China’s central Henan province, ordered a state-owned company to buy up to 10,000 existing homes on the condition that the sellers use the money to buy newly built properties. 6park.com
   
但是，这一策略对Zhao这类坐拥多套房产的人来说帮助不大，他们手中的这些房产在许多国家都会成为财富的来源。 6park.com
But that will offer little help for people such as Zhao, who are sitting on property portfolios that would be a source of riches in many countries. 6park.com
   
Zhao已搬离了她原先住的村庄，去到附近的长春市，那里有更多就业机会。她说，只要能找到买家，她手中的多套房产总价值可达50万美元。 6park.com
Zhao has moved away from the village, heading to the nearby city of Changchun, where there are more job opportunities. She said her property portfolio could be worth as much as $500,000, if only she could find a buyer. 6park.com
   
如果真的卖了房子，她也不打算把这笔钱再投入中国摇摇欲坠的房地产市场了。 6park.com
And when she does sell, she has no plans to put the money back into China’s shaky property market.   6park.com
  
她说，如果她能把这些房子卖了，然后用拿到的钱买美元、美国国债或比特币，那该多好啊。 6park.com
“How great it would be if I could sell them and use the proceeds to buy dollars, U.S. Treasury bonds, or bitcoin,” she said.