In the end, it is still state-owned assets
Written by | Liu Xingzhi
Edit | Wang Jing
The pain of real estate tycoons, Ma Yun and Liu Qiangdong know best.
On December 26, 2023, Wuxi Sunac Mao was put on the shelves of Jingdong Auction Network, at ten o'clock in the morning, the countdown ended, and the silent auction hammer fell, and the auction ended in a failed auction.
The original owner of this mall was Wanda Wang Jianlin, who was taken over by Sunac Sun Hongbin in 2017. I don't know if the 20,220 people who watched this auction can remember Wang Jianlin's bold words when he entered the cultural tourism industry, and the smile of Ying Ying after Sun Hongbin's big transaction.
On November 16, the "Shenzhen-Hong Kong International Center" was reduced for the second time and was put on the shelves of Jingdong Auction. The auction attracted 31,085 onlookers, and the ending was still unsuccessful. This project once carried Shimao Xu Rongmao's dream of "China's tallest building", but until it was put on the auction table, only a few tower cranes stood alone on the skyline of the project site.
On December 29, the right to use a piece of construction land in Xiangcheng District, Suzhou City, was unveiled on the Ali auction platform, with a starting price of 1.85 billion yuan, and this land was held by Evergrande Real Estate Group. In the picture, the land is barren and overgrown with weeds, and his owner, Xu Jiayin, is in prison at the moment.
Since 2012, judicial auction information has been put online, and among the online judicial auction platforms identified by seven relevant institutions, the most well-known ones are Ali and JD.com.
There are a variety of Internet legal auction targets, ranging from cars and real estate to property, land use rights, and company equity, and the access of e-commerce giants has given buyers an additional channel to "pick up leaks", and ordinary people can get a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg of the myth of wealth.
When the "thunderstorm" of real estate enterprises has become the norm, the projects of billions and tens of billions in the foreclosure market have become a facet to observe the rise and fall of this industry.
There is a remake day for the unsold project, will the real estate tycoons still have a time to return?
Xu Rongmao, who made his fortune by building high-end residences, is known as the "godfather of luxury houses", but his real hobby may be building skyscrapers.
In 2001, Shanghai Shimao Plaza was unveiled, a 333-meter-tall skyscraper that became the "tallest building in Puxi" at the time, and in the years that followed, Xu Rongmao repainted the skylines of Shaoxing, Fuzhou and Yantai.
Renderings of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong International Center of the World Trade Center Source: Shimao Group's official website
Building skyscrapers has even been written into Shimao's strategy, which Xu Rongmao calls a "super landmark strategy", believing that Shimao's super landmarks can enhance its regional brand influence.
The Shimao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Center is the pinnacle of Xu Rongmao's strategy.
At the end of 2017, only 3 minutes after the start of the auction, Shimao included a plot of land in Longgang, Shenzhen at a sky-high price of 23.943 billion yuan. According to the original plan, Shimao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Center will rise from the ground here, and when completed, the building will reach 668 meters, surpassing the Shanghai Tower to become the tallest building in China.
Xu Shitan, vice chairman of the board of directors of Shimao and son of Xu Rongmao, declared with great ambition: "After this project is completed, it is expected that the supply value will exceed 70 billion yuan, and the rent collection can reach more than 3 billion yuan in one year." ”
In 2021, the skyscraper "height restriction order" was implemented, and the construction plan of Shimao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Center was cut to about 600 meters, and by July 2022, a US dollar bond with a principal amount of US$1 billion could not be paid as scheduled, and Shimao officially "thundered".
In November this year, the Shimao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Center plot was put on the auction shelves for the second time, with a starting price of 10.435 billion yuan, less than half of the original land price. In the foreclosure picture, the location above the ground where it should be a skyscraper is empty.
From Shimao's acquisition of land to the project's shelf, "China's tallest building" has been living in renderings, and the auction has torn off Xu Rongmao's fig leaf. Skyscrapers are no longer sexy, and the "godfather of mansions" has fallen off the altar.
At the end of the year, another eye-catching target, Wuxi Sunac Mao, was also put on the auction shelf.
Before 2017, its name was still "Wanda Mao". At that time, Wanda Cultural Tourism City and Wanda Mao blossomed all over the country, and Wang Jianlin became a soldier and a sword, determined to compete with international giants.
Wuxi Wanda Cultural Tourism City is Wang Jianlin's pioneer. In 2014, Wang Jianlin "declared war" on Disney in a speech, saying that Wanda was investing tens of billions of yuan in Wuxi to build a cultural tourism city. "Wanda wants to PK with Shanghai Disneyland, and compare the two core indicators of the number of visitors to the park and the scale of income to see who is higher." When Shanghai Disneyland officially opened in 2016, he said: "With Wanda, Shanghai Disneyland will not be profitable in 20 years." ”
Wang Jianlin
However, only a year later, in the transaction between Wanda and Sunac Century, known as the "strong man's broken wrist", Wuxi Sunac Mao was packaged and sold to Sun Hongbin along with other cultural tourism projects.
The madman Sun Hongbin's cultural and tourism ambitions are greater than Wang Jianlin's. In 2019, Sunac included Chengdu Global Century Convention and Exhibition Tourism Group, and Sun Hongbin said that "Sunac is invincible in the world of cultural tourism".
Sun Hongbin also responded to questions from the outside world at the acquisition site: "Everyone always cares about our acquisition projects, in fact, the total acquisition of Sunac over the years has been more than 100 billion, and I have sold 1.36 trillion in the past three years." ”
Three years later, three years later, Sunac here has just completed debt restructuring, Sun Hongbin has boiled his head, Wanda is in a gambling crisis, Wang Jianlin and PAC have signed an "alliance under the city", and Wuxi Sunac Mao, which is on the shelves and no one cares about, may imply that their fall has not stopped.
In 2012, a residential property disposed of by the People's Court of Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou, was sold at Ali Auction, which opened the prelude to the judicial auction of real estate in China. With the acceleration of the online access of legal auction information in various places, in 2016, Jingdong Auction was established and entered the legal auction market.
The original intention of online auctions and forensic auctions is very simple: to reduce the difficulty of asset realization, accelerate the acceleration of judicial enforcement, and improve the transparency of forensic auctions. However, with the development of social media such as Weibo and Douyin, some high-profile rich tycoons have another identity - Internet celebrities, and some of the foreclosure information has entertainment attributes. The rhetoric in speeches and interviews is the A side of the rich, and the foreclosure information and lace news make up the B side.
The first well-known bigwig who came out of the circle because of the law may be Jia Yueting.
Jia Yueting
In May 2016, Jia Yueting, who was in the limelight, won Shimao Gongsan in Sanlitun, Beijing, at a cost of 2.972 billion yuan.
But just over a year after taking over Shimao Gongsan, LeTV's ecological bubble burst, and Jia Yueting boarded a plane to Los Angeles, USA, single, one-way.
In 2019, in the expectant eyes of creditors, Shimao Gongsan was put on the auction shelf, and the 7% discount was unsuccessful three times, and the expectations of creditors were disappointed. In the fifth auction in July 2021, Shimao Gong's three starting prices were "cut in half", and it was not until the last five minutes of this auction that Zhongzhi Group appeared and took it into the bag, with a transaction price of 1.645 billion yuan.
The auction prices of these commercial projects are staggering, but the most popular thing for the people who eat melons is the "cheap" mansions. The capital operation is too complicated and not sexy enough, and the mansions of the bigwigs are somewhat pyrotechnic.
In August 2020, Jia Yueting and his ex-wife Gan Wei's three properties were put on the auction shelves, two of which were sold at a premium, while the office buildings were unattended. One of them, located in Oceanwide International near Chaoyang Park in Beijing, is a well-known luxury house in Beijing, the auction attracted 78,636 onlookers, 16 people signed up, and finally sold at a price of 24.2 million yuan, only 300,000 yuan lower than the market price.
Jia Yueting has caught up with the "good time", and latecomers rarely have this kind of good luck in selling houses at the original price.
After the failure of swallowing Vanke, Yao Zhenhua had a bad time in the past two years, and Baoneng in crisis also had to sell his property to pay off his debts. According to incomplete statistics, in 2022 alone, more than 500 luxury houses under Baoneng Group will be forcibly auctioned, and all the proceeds will be used to repay debts.
At the end of December, Baoneng Company was applied for compulsory enforcement due to a civil case, and released 8 sets of Hangzhou Linhu villas on the legal auction platform in one go, with starting prices ranging from 16.13 million to 22.18 million, with more than 20,000 onlookers, and no one was willing to bid.
Vanke failed, the "first brother" of the real estate company was not considered, and even the legal auction, some people wanted to steal Yao Zhenhua's limelight.
At the end of 2022, the "Young Master of Wanliu Academy" was out of the circle on Douyin, and in May of the following year, China Cinda transferred nearly 4.7 billion non-performing debts, including 75 sets of Wanliu Academy real estate. Behind the packaging and sale of top luxury houses is the financial situation of the developer Sinobo Group, Yao Zhenhua and Zhou Jinhui, the head of Sinobo, met unexpectedly in the foreclosure of the rivers and lakes.
There are more and more luxury houses on the shelves, the rich are running out of points, and there may be many problems in the property rights of foreclosure houses, in the past two years, only absolutely scarce properties can be auctioned at a good price.
In March last year, a set of nearly 600 square meters of duplex at COFCO Seaview No. 1 in Shanghai was auctioned, and after 121 rounds of bidding, under the watchful eyes of 59,183 people, a auctioneer named "Wang Qinying" won it at a unit price of more than 300,000 yuan per square meter and a total price of 177.9 million yuan.
Bidding for this property is booming due to its prime location and scarcity. COFCO Seaview No. 1 is facing the Huangpu River, close to Tomson Yipin, and the prosperity of Shanghai is in full view, if it is not for the company's thunderstorm, it was also rewarded by the Qingdao police, and Chen Jianming, the actual controller of Sansheng Hongye, one of the top 100 real estate companies, will not give up this out-of-print mansion.
The windows of the mansion on the auction shelves are bright and clean, and the decoration is luxurious, and from the lake and mountains outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, you can vaguely see the glory of the former owner. This form of auction not only witnessed the shattering of wealth myths, but also made luxury houses that were difficult for ordinary people to reach become a passing cloud in a blink of an eye, but also greatly satisfied the voyeuristic desires of the people who eat melons.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg of the fall of the real estate tycoon.
Since the beginning of this year, a number of Wanda Plaza and the equity of Wanda Film, a listed company, have changed hands through public transactions, and the buyers are both insurance capital, asset management, and private enterprises. In March this year, several of Mr. Hui's luxury homes in Hong Kong were put up for sale, attracting dozens of buyers' inquiries.
Even if the luxury housing market has cooled down, there will never be a shortage of buyers for scarce targets, and they are the first-aid blood bags for bigwigs to prevent crises, and they are rarely covered by the time of the foreclosure.
But since the beginning of this year, the situation has changed again. As the real estate market began to take a sharp turn in the second quarter, large-scale projects worth tens of billions of dollars became more and more common, and unsuccessful auctions have become the norm. According to statistics from Leju Finance, as of July this year, 43 large assets have been auctioned, with a cumulative starting price of 48.2 billion yuan.
At a time when the market is in a downturn, buyers are hesitant to take over large projects. Shimao was dragged down by skyscrapers, Sunac was burdened by cultural tourism, and Wanda Plaza eventually became a burden to Wang Jianlin. The real estate tycoons are no longer able to support it, and potential buyers who still have the strength to take over the market also have to weigh whether they have the strength to carry the burden through the cycle.
Sellers are eager to get rid of it, buyers are waiting for the price to sell, and state-owned assets have become scarce "white knights".
In June this year, the Wuhan Aoshan Hankou Surging City project was taken over by Wuhan Airport Wanggu Real Estate, behind which was the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of Dongxihu District, Wuhan City;
The Evergrande Suzhou plot that has just been put on the shelf, 4,503 onlookers, 87 people set reminders, but only 1 person signed up to bid, and finally the transaction was completed at a starting price of 1.85 billion, and the receiver was Suzhou Yuxing Real Estate Co., Ltd. After the equity penetration, Suzhou Yuxing was only established in September last year, and the controlling party is Chongqing International Trust Co., Ltd., and the shareholders include Chinese Life and Chongqing State Investment Corporation.
State-owned assets frequently make moves, which has the meaning of "bottom-up", among them, the eagerness of insurance funds to try, perhaps to see the signal of the bottom of the market. However, it should not be ignored that insurance capital has always been a "friend of time", and when they make investment decisions, they often see opportunities in five or even ten years.
In the ever-changing business world, such opportunities are so expensive and extravagant for other buyers that these foreclosure assets, which once carried the dreams of real estate tycoons, are now not applauded.
Resources:
"Real Estate Law Auction Liangliang" Leju Finance
"Foreclosure House "Wild"" into the deep news
"15.2 billion! Sunac acquires Chengdu Convention and Exhibition Sun Hongbin: Sunac is invincible in the world of cultural tourism" Daily Economic News
""Wanda Mao" to "Sunac Mao" Wang Jianlin and Sun Hongbin's Cultural Tourism Dream No One Applauds" opinion network
"Yao Zhenhua's 8 sets of mansions are auctioned, and there are only 2,600 yuan left in the car factory's account, and Baoneng is a sad song" Yi Jian Finance