Chinese Ghost Towns

[Capt Worley PE]

Intesting photos and article.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13...y-deserted.html

 

[goodal]

Incredible. And we thought America had problems.

 

[snickerd3]

wow thought it would be the sad shanty town ghost town stuff, not the brand new entire community stuff....wow,

 

[Supe]

I wonder how close they are to non-ghost towns. You could buy an entire high-rise to live in for pennies on the dollar!

 

[wilheldp_PE]

There seems to be a disconnect between the pictures and the article. The article is about a housing bubble in the big Chinese cities. The only mention of the ghost towns is saying that speculators have tried to take advantage of a real estate bubble by building these developments. But the government has to be involved since these are fully functional cities (with government buildings, utility infrastructure, roads, etc.). WTF are they building entire cities with nobody interested in living there? The only way they could fill that much real estate is to offer free homes to all of the village-dwelling Chinese people...even then, they'd probably have a hard time convincing those people to leave the only way of life they have ever known.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

WTF are they building entire cities with nobody interested in living there?

Just a larger version of what went on here after the crash. Locally, I can point to at least 10 big developements where the housing units have been 50% or less sold since 2007. And the vacancy rate has actually INCREASED the past year or so.

Speculated slums is what I call them.

 

[cdcengineer]

I'm sure they did some projections of housing demand. The scary thing is that these cities may be full in less than 10 years. Yikes - that's uncontrolled growth.

 

[Dexman PE PMP]

The ones who do those demand forcasts are cut from the same mold as those who "speculate" on oil prices in Wall Street.