Mish recently posted a synopsis of an article about things happening in China:
- Year-on-year sales in Q1, for all real estate, was down 14.6%.
- Residential property sales were down 17.5%
- Office sales were down -10.2%
- Sales in January-February were a disaster, falling 20.9% overall, compared to the first two months of 2011, -24.7% for residential.
- Total amount of floor space “for sale” was up 35.5%, compared to the same date last year
- Floor space of residential units “for sale” grew 47.4%.
- At the end of 2011, total floor space “under construction” was roughly 4.6 times the floor space sold
- A year and a half worth of excess inventory is hidden somewhere in the pipeline
- New starts in April fell 14.6% year-on-year and 27.0% month-on-month, for property as a whole
- Housing starts fell -14.4% year-on-year and -23.4% month-on-month
- Office starts fell -21.0% year-on-year in April, and -45.1% compared to March
- Retail property starts fell -18.7% year-on-year, and -36.8% compared to March
- Land sale revenues in April (RMB 27 billion) were down -54.7% compared to April last year
- Foreign funding for property development was down -91.4% in March and -80.8% in April, compared to the same months last year.
Clearly a crash is underway. The above stats also show the soft-landing thesis is written on toilet paper.
Clearly a big reset is happening in China.
Michael Pettis is betting on an average GDP growth of 3 percent over the next 10 years. I’m with him on that.
