Shanghai Limits Home Purchases To One Per Family

California and Shanghai reflect two starkly contrasting housing markets. While thousands of distressed homeowners in California attended an event over the weekend to find out how they could save their home, Shanghai has limited home purchases to one per family to cool the market. See the following post from The Mess That Greenspan Made.

It’s funny to see such diametrically opposed stories about housing markets in the U.S. and China being reported on the same day, but, this is what passes for the post-2008 crash condition of real estate around the world where the hangover is into about its fourth year in the former but the party still goes on in the latter.

The Modesto Bee reports that tens of thousands of “homeowners” showed up at the state fairgrounds over the weekend to try to retain their “homeowner” status, though, that appears to have been a misnomer from the get go.

Approximately 25,000 financially distressed homeowners had funneled through the gates of Cal Expo by sunset Sunday seeking mortgage assistance as part of a free, five-day “Save the Dream” event.
…
Spokesman Darren Duarte said bank representatives are on hand to meet with homeowners after the homeowners receive financial counseling from NACA. Duarte asked that people come as soon as they can today and early Tuesday. Counseling will continue through the night tonight.

Homeowners are asked to bring a pay stub from within the past 30 days. Self-employed people must bring six months of bank statements. Attendees are also asked to bring mortgage, property tax and insurance documents.

Attendees are wished good luck, but, with the U.S. economy in its current condition and the state of California faring even worse, the fate of most of them is already quite clear.

Meanwhile, in Shanghai, according to this story in Channel News Asia, the local government has taken the bold step of restricting homebuying to one per family.

The Shanghai government is restricting families to owning only one home, as part of new measures to cool the red hot property market.

The new policy means every family is entitled to buy only one home in the city “for a certain period of time.”

“One family, one home means a family unit consisting of parents and their child. An adult child is not included in this policy. Regarding the time length, the government will make a decision depending on market demands and trends,” said Song Hui Yong, director of Research and Consulting Department, Shanghai Centaline Property Consultants Limited.

“The ban (on period of time) can be lifted to stimulate the property market. But for the moment, there’s no specific timeline,” added Song.

The obvious solution here is for Chinese homebuyers to buy Central Valley California properties in order to bid up their prices and turn the 25,000 Cal Expo attendees’ negative equity into positive equity.

Why doesn’t anyone else come up with this sort of simple solution to a complex problem?

This post has been republished from Tim Iacono's blog, The Mess That Greenspan Made.