Young westerner in China forced to buy crappy apartment

[Rock]

Yep, this guy's Chinese girlfriend apparently set that as a precondition to getting married - that he buy a house. He sure seems to regret it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENLIGHXbGfE

[Adama]

I think I would have let her dump me if she put such a demand upon me. And if she insisted, why can't her parents buy it for them?

[Teal Lantern]

... with just a hint of humblebrag.

[Zambales]

He stated that it was part of the Chinese culture for the man to buy a house for his wife. Is this true? Because if it's not, he's been screwed by his wife as well as the property developers for selling him a poorly built apartment.

[chanta76]

Actually in Asian culture the man either has to have a house or has to pay rent. We speak about how western women are gold diggers but in Asia (CHina and South Korea, I don;t know about Japan too well) its more practical there. Part of the reason why young Asians are not getting married is because of fiances.

A young Chinese guy has to be able to buy or pay rent for a decent home to be consider a decent catch. The same goes for Koreans. I know this because I have family in South Korea where my relatives help pay for a male relative to buy a home just so he can get married. I know it sounds f***ed up but it does happen.

I think in some ways Asian women are worst than western women as gold diggers . It's no paradise out there.

[Adama]

... with just a hint of humblebrag.

There is not much to brag about.

[Rock]

Actually in Asian culture the man either has to have a house or has to pay rent. We speak about how western women are gold diggers but in Asia (CHina and South Korea, I don;t know about Japan too well) its more practical there. Part of the reason why young Asians are not getting married is because of fiances.

A young Chinese guy has to be able to buy or pay rent for a decent home to be consider a decent catch. The same goes for Koreans. I know this because I have family in South Korea where my relatives help pay for a male relative to buy a home just so he can get married. I know it sounds f***ed up but it does happen.

I think in some ways Asian women are worst than western women as gold diggers . It's no paradise out there.

There's a huge difference between paying rent and buying a house in countries like China or Taiwan where rental yields are extremely low. Paying rent is a piece of cake. A few hundred USD to say 1 grand will get you lots of great options, even in first tier cities. But buying a place may run you 50-75 years worth of rent or even more. And in China, you don't even get freehold ownership.

[chanta76]

Rock,

That's why you have Chinese men who lack the funds who don't get married. In South Korea if you want to pay rent. Sometimes they want the whole year up front. It depends really on which property. What this white guy is doing in China is nothing different from a local Chinese guy has to do being involved with a Chinese woman. Saying that..if he regrets what he did shame on him. There is always divorce to get out but I don't know how that works out with a foreigner married to a (is he married? ) local girl. Plus from watching that youtube clip he looks like his attach to his kid which means it can get messy.

[Kradmelder]

Actually in Asian culture the man either has to have a house or has to pay rent. We speak about how western women are gold diggers but in Asia (CHina and South Korea, I don;t know about Japan too well) its more practical there. Part of the reason why young Asians are not getting married is because of fiances.

A young Chinese guy has to be able to buy or pay rent for a decent home to be consider a decent catch. The same goes for Koreans. I know this because I have family in South Korea where my relatives help pay for a male relative to buy a home just so he can get married. I know it sounds f***ed up but it does happen.

I think in some ways Asian women are worst than western women as gold diggers . It's no paradise out there.

Blacks have it worse. The man must pay lobola, which is a huge sum, and still provide a home.

I wouldn't say it is gold digging. It has always been this way. Only the demands in terms of the size and location of homes has grown. And the demands for more consumer shit.

For whites if anything demands have decreased. Generations ago a man needed prospects. Now they marry with nothing and complain if women have expectations

[MrMan]

Bride prices aren't that uncommon. It makes sense, especially if the wife is appreciative and serves her husband well afterwards. The bride price helps the husband realize his wife is valuable.

It doesn't sound like this westerner was forced to by this apartment which he might call a 'tofu' apartment. He made bad choice. Maybe he didn't have the skillset to do his homework. I'm not a building inspector either. I've had the cracked wall problem in a fancy, high end apartment building in a unit provided by my employer in Asia. He chose the unit. He chose to marry the girl.

The Chinese ghost town developments are interesting. I wonder if they are financed like a lot of Indonesian apartment buildings. The cost of capital is expensive in Indonesia. Either they may not be enough capital to go around or the banks just don't want to invest, or maybe the developers get a better deal doing it this way, but they sell units before the apartment is built. They start selling units before they break ground. But this has been a good way for investors to make money. If you can invest in an Indonesian apartment, you might make 20% per year, or even double your money. Or you might make 20% after three years. Those scenarios do happen. One scarey thing is that people say the price of real estate always goes up. That's probably true, except for the monetary crisis when the currency dropped, when prices went down from the perspective of other currency holders, though they started going up in rupiah.

I suppose it is possible that builders in Indonesia may overbuild with the speed at which apartments and houses are going up in Jakarta and the surrounding areas. But Indonesia also has a growing middle class and a young population, a growing working population. How can you track and predict whether growth in building will outdo growth in demand? That would be good information to have. A good strategy would be to invest in a specific area that will need more housing, even if the rest of the metro area, region, etc. does not. Another way of reducing risk is to invest with very well established, experienced constuction companies that have enough capital to carry through with the project.

[Teal Lantern]

... with just a hint of humblebrag.

There is not much to brag about.

If I heard him correctly, he's
late 20s / early 30s ...
on the property ladder with either TWO places or UPGRADED from one to another ...
Has a wife & kid...
Has patreon sponsors...
Doing better than his friends back home.

The whi.. um.. yellow picket fence dream, no?

Sure, she may make him want to jump off a bridge 10 years from now, but that's later ....


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... n-cry.html

According to the new law, residential property is no longer to be regarded as jointly owned and divided equally in the event of a divorce.
Instead, whoever paid for the apartment or house is the legal owner and gets to keep it in its entirety.

[Rock]

Bride prices aren't that uncommon. It makes sense, especially if the wife is appreciative and serves her husband well afterwards. The bride price helps the husband realize his wife is valuable.

It doesn't sound like this westerner was forced to by this apartment which he might call a 'tofu' apartment. He made bad choice. Maybe he didn't have the skillset to do his homework. I'm not a building inspector either. I've had the cracked wall problem in a fancy, high end apartment building in a unit provided by my employer in Asia. He chose the unit. He chose to marry the girl.

The Chinese ghost town developments are interesting. I wonder if they are financed like a lot of Indonesian apartment buildings. The cost of capital is expensive in Indonesia. Either they may not be enough capital to go around or the banks just don't want to invest, or maybe the developers get a better deal doing it this way, but they sell units before the apartment is built. They start selling units before they break ground. But this has been a good way for investors to make money. If you can invest in an Indonesian apartment, you might make 20% per year, or even double your money. Or you might make 20% after three years. Those scenarios do happen. One scarey thing is that people say the price of real estate always goes up. That's probably true, except for the monetary crisis when the currency dropped, when prices went down from the perspective of other currency holders, though they started going up in rupiah.

I suppose it is possible that builders in Indonesia may overbuild with the speed at which apartments and houses are going up in Jakarta and the surrounding areas. But Indonesia also has a growing middle class and a young population, a growing working population. How can you track and predict whether growth in building will outdo growth in demand? That would be good information to have. A good strategy would be to invest in a specific area that will need more housing, even if the rest of the metro area, region, etc. does not. Another way of reducing risk is to invest with very well established, experienced constuction companies that have enough capital to carry through with the project.

I think there are a couple of issues with urban pre-sale properties which drive ultimate appreciation or deprecation in places like urban Philippines or perhaps Indonesia.

1. The general condo market - one reason investors of pre-sale properties enjoyed appreciation of the so-called market price of their units was that the overall market was climbing. So if you had instead purchased a ready for occupancy (RFO) unit or second hand unit, the value would still have climbed along with the market. If instead the market remained stagnant or depreciated, you would have been exposed to this dynamic as well.

Remember, real market prices are sometimes not so transparent. Developers will generally raise list prices modestly as the unit progresses. But what really matters to a buyer who might later wanna unload is what selling prices are liquid (buyers will actually offer on in reasonable period of time), what the fees, taxes, costs of transfer, etc. plus perhaps broker commissions (frictional costs) are. It's very possible that total frictional costs can approach 15-20% or more, especially since some of them are incurred twice (round trip).

2. The added risk of buying something not yet started or not yet completed - Often, you also get a risk discount when you buy early, especially from a less established developer with fewer projects under belt and/or issues with track record. There are indeed risks when you buy early. Project may not get completed for one or more of various reasons (eg Waterfront in Pattaya due to regulatory disputes, or ghost building in Bangkok due to the Asian Financial crisis back in late 90s). Project may get suffer serious multi-year delays. Quality of end product may be a far cry from what was promised. Or, the developer may stay on to manage building and do a poor job. Since developers are so powerful, it's not easy to mitigate these risks, even if you add protective clauses in the sales contract.

With RFO units, things are much more transparent. Of course means you generally miss out on the risk discount of pre-sale units. But you can also get lucky sometimes and find someone who for whatever reasons wants or needs out of owning his completed unit, sometimes while he is still in process of paying it down. Motivated sellers can offer discounts too, sometimes very attractive ones if they desperately need cash. And with RFO units, you can enjoy the immediate benefits of ownership - moving in the unit or renting it out immediately.

[Adama]

Yes, maybe he is living the dream. Maybe just that it isn't my dream.

[Yohan]

[
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... n-cry.html

According to the new law, residential property is no longer to be regarded as jointly owned and divided equally in the event of a divorce.
Instead, whoever paid for the apartment or house is the legal owner and gets to keep it in its entirety.

It is true that the Chinese property law changed a few years ago, however this definition is not exactly correct. It's a bit more complicated.

Nowadays the Chinese property law is quite similar to those in Thailand. It is gender-neutral.

It says about the following:

The person, who is buying a property, like a house or condominium for own use as residence and registers it FULLY PAID in own name only in the land-title before marriage will be the owner after divorce.

Please note, if the property is not fully paid, women are often clever to lure the fiance/husband and even his parents into a small additional loan signed also by her, and after divorce she claims she contributed to create this property and gets away with 50 percent even if she was only housewife and never worked a single day and never paid a single Yuan or Baht into it.

-----

Housing, which is company controlled by Ltd. setups are considered differently:

Even if her name is not in these shares - holding nothing - she still is considered to live together with her husband within the same property and related to this property as her livelihood and will receive the half of the shares of her husband (but not of other shareholders) regardless if the company was created before or during marriage.

However, in case the company is not related to the ex-wife at all (I remember a man who managed with some partners a company renting and leasing out construction machinery, company created before marriage, she never contributed anything to create it) - his part of the company's shares remained to him after divorce.

[yick]

Yes, maybe he is living the dream. Maybe just that it isn't my dream.

Who cares what your dream is, except to you.

If you marry a Chinese woman, buying a place is important, in fact, you can look like the back end of a cows scrotum but if you actually have property as a young, eligible bachelor (thanks to mummy and daddy) you have your pick of a lot of young Chinese women.

Same rules apply for Chinese men as well as laowai, not seen the video as I am actually in China without a VPN but he is lucky that the parents and her families accepted him in the first place, a lot of Chinese families will not allow a marriage or a courtship to take place if the prospective partner comes from another part of China.

There's lots of great women in this country, there are lots of rules too and it is a bit of a minefield, even if you like her and she likes you. I knew of a mate who bought a nice, new apartment in a Henan city for around 400000 RMB - he married a local woman and is content there. The apartment is near his workplace, it can work out depending on what you want out of it.