coming crack-downs, especially in China
I have a feeling that you meant something a little different than this, but I'm not sure very many people are aware of real estate regulations in China (specifically Beijing) and why there is this big draw for Chinese to invest in real estate in other countries.
For a little background, my wife and I moved to Beijing about a year and a half ago. We rented a little apartment in a nice neighborhood with the intention (and some cash for a downpayment) to buy in that neighborhood. We ran into a few problems:
My wife is not a native Beijinger. She has not payed taxes in Beijing long enough to be eligible to buy an apartment in Beijing. Typically a Chinese person has to have payed taxes in Beijing for at least 4-5 years before they can buy property in Beijing.
I am a foreigner. The regulations last year were that I had to have been working and paying taxes in Beijing for at least one year before I would be eligible to buy property in Beijing. Also, no bank at that time would finance a foreigner buying an apartment in China.
You cannot actually buy property in China. It is all on longterm lease. There are 50 year contracts and 70 year contracts. It is rare in Beijing that these actually run to term. The growth rate is such that you can expect your building to be replaced within that timeframe at which point the leases will be renegotiated. Points 1 and 2 above usually only apply to 70 year leases.
It is not worth it long term to buy property anywhere except for in 1st tier (maybe 2nd tier) cities. Anywhere that is cheap now is going to continue to get cheaper.
These points are just the basics of Beijing real estate. The reality is much more complex as the regulations change all the time. For example:
We finally found a 50 year apartment that we could get at a great price in a great neighborhood. We signed a contract for A square meters at X RMB (purchase price) and put down a deposit. Construction started on the building and everything was going well. Several months later, we got a call to talk about our contract. They had apparently "made a mistake" about the size, but it would "be in our favor". They wanted us to sign a new contract for A + B square meters at Y RMB (current market value). This in practice meant that we owed them a lot of fucking money if we wanted to keep the apartment. We had already put any other cash into other long term investments.
However, during our negotiations, the city district decided that not even being a Beijing native was good enough to buy in that neighborhood anyway. You had to be a native of that district to buy anything in that district. The sales company basically shit themselves because they had already sold what we found out were temporary sales contracts for every unit in the entire apartment complex. Those contracts became null and void anyway. In fact, a number of smaller construction companies had to completely stop construction in that district because they had to pay back all the deposits that were financing the construction.
Understand that my Chinese wife was dealing with this in China. I can definitely understand the draw to spend your money elsewhere.
TL;DR Fuck Chinese real estate.