Investment Property in Beijing

M

MMACK

Registered User
Messages
11
Has anyone thought of investing in property in Beijing? With the Olympics coming up and new infrastructure it could be a good investment. 25% annual growth expected but no guarantees in these times. Any thoughts?
 
MMACK said:
Has anyone thought of investing in property in Beijing? With the Olympics coming up and new infrastructure it could be a good investment. 25% annual growth expected but no guarantees in these times. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

One problem: communism. I don't think you can own private property in Beijing ,especially if you're a foreigner.
 
yes foreigners can own property.

by the way try google market is crashing there at moment... well two months ago it was..
 
The chinese government passed laws recently making it more difficult for foreigners to purchase property in China. The reason was to try and curb the rampant price increases that have been experienced in the past few years.
However it is still possible for foreigners to purchase, mainly via property funds and chinese companies. A google search should bring up more info.
 
there was an article in either the Sunday times or Examiner in the last 2 weeks about the changes in the law in China regarding foreign ownership.. from what i can remember it's much the same as Persius said above
 
Thanks for the advise. Read that article alright and had a look at Investors in Asia but think I may look a little closer to home. Hard to know what to invest your savings in these days.
 
do you actually have to invest your savings? What is wrong with saving your savings?
 
What specifically do you mean by saving them rather than investing them? If you mean keeping them on deposit then that's risky because inflation currently outstrips deposit rates so the money will lose real value.
 
If you exclude the cost of servicing a mortgage from Irish inflation figures (as most other EU countries do), then inflation is not outstripping deposit rates. On an ECB harmonised scheme, Irish inflation is running at 2.9% IIRC. Deposit rates with NR or RaboDirect are about 3.5 or 3.6%.
So I guess it depends on how you define inflation.
 
yes the money will loose real value over time but probably nowhere near as much as an investment property in a country run by communist dictatorship over a much shorter period of time. Investing is laudable and necessary for the (Chinese!) economy but I was agahst at what the original poster was thinking of doing - taking money from a low risk albeit low yielding situation and putting it in an extremely risky investment.

Yes the value of your capital will be eroded over time by inflation in a deposit account where the real return is less than zero; but sometimes cash best asset class to be in - especially if the alternative is speculating on Chinese property.
 
Persius said:
If you exclude the cost of servicing a mortgage from Irish inflation figures (as most other EU countries do), then inflation is not outstripping deposit rates.
Click to expand...
Perhaps but the whole point of the CPI is to reflect the average costs borne by people in general so including mortgage/housing costs in the calculations makes sense. Of course you could ignore lots of other costs that don't apply to some people and come up with your own definition of inflation but the CPI is the best standard that we have to deal with as far as I can see.

Note: "CPI" here means Consumer Price Index and not Communist Party of Ireland!
 
ClubMan said:
There are lots of investment alternatives to property (in a particular geographic region).
Click to expand...


Could not agree more but they are rarely a consideration for the average Irish investor that I can see.

To MMACK - there are lots of European companies operating in China and many of these will benefit from all the olympic infrastructure spending. Buying shares in these companies would be a cheaper, and lower risk way of investing in China. AAM rules preclude individual stock tipping but go to the DJ Stoxx website and download the constituents of one of the large pan-European indices. Sort the results by industry group (construction/materials etc) and then go to the indivdual company websites and see what they say about their Chinese exposure. Alternatively, buy an ETF that will give you exposure.
 
JohnBoy said:
there are lots of European companies operating in China and many of these will benefit from all the olympic infrastructure spending.
Click to expand...

How exactly will they benefit from this spending? I was there last year and most of the spending seemed to be going on cleaning up buildings and the tourist spots. Other money was being spent on trying to teach English to taxi drivers and giving people in public service ediquette lessons to get them to stop spitting in public etc.
 
China is a great country and having been there i still think it's not ready for capitalism yet,the wealth is still with the minority of people and even when it does get up to an economic level where the wages rise and the normal worker can start to afford property then most of the big companies there will move off to chaper countries .. India i believe being the next target
 

Lots of industries including construction, telecoms, logistics, banking etc. The point that I was trying to make was that there are cheaper and lower risk ways of accessing the Chinese economic boom short of buying a property there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register