The central bank recently mentioned "coordinating the study of policy measures to digest the stock of real estate and optimize the incremental housing", which in turn triggered further discussions on real estate.
Some media have given a convincing data, that is, the housing vacancy rate in the mainland is about 15%, and there are two main bases: first, Qiu Baoxing, former vice minister of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, has given data in 2022, and the mainland's "housing vacancy rate has reached 15%, and some provinces have reached 25% or even 30%"; Second, at the end of 2022, the vacant second-hand housing area in the mainland will be about 4.7 billion square meters, and the total area of the mainland's housing stock will be 31.3 billion square meters, which can also get a vacancy rate of 15%.
First of all, we must admit that the vacancy rate is difficult to accurately calculate. Combined with the deduction of the above observers, we can't help but ask, is there a vacancy rate for first-hand houses?
If we add the "investment housing" section, we have to consider the "rental vacancy rate", and it is clear that we have not seen any discussion of this aspect. Another question, the majority of netizens also questioned this data, some people think that the vacancy rate may be higher, we don't have to delve into this problem, after all, there must be differences in the vacancy rate in different regions and different locations.
One thing that must be explored is whether rural housing is included, after all, the vacancy rate of rural housing is very high, which is why the majority of netizens believe that the vacancy rate is much higher than 15%.
From the above simple statistics, it is not difficult for us to find that the "vacancy rate" of rural housing is obviously not counted, and the main statistics are the "vacant second-hand houses" of commodities.
Strictly speaking, rural housing may be counted in the "stock of housing", but not in the "vacant housing".
That is, it is counted into the denominator, but not into the numerator. If this is the case, it is clear that the housing vacancy rate in the country is much higher than the figure of 15%.
It should be pointed out that with the further advancement of urbanization in the mainland, the vacancy rate of rural housing will still expand, but the impact on the entire commercial housing market is not large.
This means that statistics on housing vacancy rates should exclude rural housing, because even if the overall vacancy rate is high, it becomes meaningless if housing per capita in the city is still scarce. After all, once the macro economy improves and the willingness to buy houses is strong, the vacant houses in cities and towns will be digested by a new round.
Next, we might as well make another hypothesis, if the 15% housing vacancy rate, the denominator and the numerator are all urban commercial housing, what does it mean?
Let's make a horizontal comparison, what is the situation of the real estate market in developed countries?
In the fourth quarter of 2023, the situation in the United States was as follows, with a housing vacancy rate of just 0.8%, the lowest since records began in 1956, and a rental vacancy rate of 6.5%, down from 66% of years on record.
The reason why the U.S. real estate market is "unprecedentedly prosperous" is related to the Federal Reserve's big release in 2020, and Americans have a strong willingness to buy houses. The rental vacancy rate is actually more indicative of the real state of the U.S. real estate industry. Needless to say, overall, the U.S. housing market is relatively healthy.
In October 2023, official data showed that the number of vacant homes in Japan was 9 million, accounting for 13.8% of the total number of homes, the highest since 1973. People simply use vacant houses to calculate, and there is no need to scrutinize the vacancy rate of any housing. Some people even bluntly said that this data is the highest in the world.
Now, China has a vacancy rate of 15%, which is really worrying, which is the reason why Idle Finance has repeatedly scrutinized whether the data is true and reliable.
The reason why the real estate vacancy rate in Japan is getting higher and higher is related to the aging of Japan, and the mainland is about to enter an aging society, which is obviously not conducive to the development of the real estate industry.
It is true that the housing vacancy rate of 15% still has a lot to scrutinize, and it is an unavoidable fact that the period of rapid development of the real estate industry in mainland China has passed, and structural optimization and improved housing will be the main tone of the development of the real estate industry in the future.