06/22/2010
From the LA Times:China’s housing boom has created a woefully frustrated class of bachelors.Home prices in major cities including Beijing and Shanghai have easily doubled over the last year as families and investors rush to grab a piece of the Chinese dream. A typical 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bath apartment in the capital now costs about $274,000. That’s 22 times the average annual income of a Beijing resident.
Unlike in the United States, where home buying traditionally takes place after marriage, owning a place in China has recently become a prerequisite for tying the knot. Experts said securing an apartment in this market signals that a man is successful, family-oriented and able to weather challenging financial circumstances. Put succinctly, homeownership has become the ultimate symbol of virility in today’s China.
"A man is not a man if he doesn’t own a house," said Chen Xiaomin, director of the Women’s Studies Center at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law. "Marriage is becoming more and more materialistic. This is a huge change in Chinese society. No matter how confident a woman is, she will lose face if her boyfriend or husband doesn’t have a house."
… "People’s values have changed," he said. "It doesn’t matter if you're a nice guy or you're fun or good natured or have a sense of humor. They don’t care. All they care about is a house."I don’t know, but, somehow, I suspect marriage has always been a little materialistic in China. By the way, housing prices have been inching upwards for about a year in Southern California, and they were still way too high a year ago in most of California for locals to afford them. I wonder if the Chinese housing boom is spilling over into California? It apparently is spilling into Australia, so why not California?
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