While first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen may be more resilient, some other markets are particularly prone to a downturn, according to the chief economist for Guotai Jun’an Lin Cai.

Lin counts down a list of the cities most likely to see property prices plummet. Some of the names aren’t surprising, such as the ghost city of Ordos, but the list also contains shocking examples of second-tier cities.

The list doesn’t include any cities from Guangdong, but does include four cities from Zhejiang, the most from any province.

1. Jinhua, Zhejiang
2. Wenzhou, Zhejiang
3. Yuncheng, Shanxi
4. Taizhou, Zhejiang
5. Ordos, Inner Mongolia
6. Zhangzhou, Fujian
7. Luohe, Henan
8. Hangzhou, Zhejiang
9. Datong, Shanxi
10. Longyan, Fujian
11. Handan, Hebei
12. Wuxi, Jiangsu
13. Quanzhou, Fujian
14. Anyang, Henan
15. Changzhou, Jiangsu

Photo: Anhui News

The post The Top 10 Chinese Cities Where Real Estate Prices Could Plummet appeared first on The Nanfang.

Sixty-seven large and medium-sized cities saw prices drop from the year before, while prices rose in only three cities.

The secondary market wasn’t much better. Prices of second-hand real estate dropped in 65 out of 70 large and medium-sized cities, rose in four, and remained the same in another.

Photo: Caijing, xiangboshu

The post Is China’s Real Estate Bubble Bursting? appeared first on The Nanfang.

Shenzhen implemented its new temporary parking system today, and has assigned 80 meter maids to write up tickets and listen to drivers complain how unfair their system is.

The pilot program to phase out live poultry markets in Guangzhou starts today. Under the new guidelines, all poultry including chicken, ducks, geese and doves are to be slaughtered in a centralized location, and then shipped out for consumption after being frozen. First affected will be 82 markets and 298 poultry sellers in the districts of Yuexiu, Liwan, Tianhe, Zhuhai New Area, and University Town in Panyu.

A meteor shower will be visible to Chinese residents from 2 or 3am early tomorrow morning as well as the day after. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a Chinese show called Let’s Go Watch a Falling Star Together so that you have something else to watch while hoping the smog clears in your neck of the Chinese woods. Check out the song above as you swoon along. Boy, kids in prep schools have it tough, don’t they?

Four people have been arrested in conjunction with the bridge collapse in the village of Liangping, Gaozhou that killed 11 and seriously injured two. Liang Ruibo, a spokesperson for the City of Gaozhou, said the village committee director, two people associated with the construction contractor and another official are to be held accountable for the bridge that was being built illegally.

A 7 year-old Panyu student was jabbed in the leg with a ballpoint pen by a teacher as an act of discipline. The student called Xiao Xuan (a pseudonym) was reportedly not sitting properly when the incident happened. The teacher has since apologized to the family.

Yeah, those Bitcoins are starting to look good right about now: China’s real estate bubble has already popped, reports Nomura, an investment house with a reputation for being particularly bearish. Normura points at a negative property investment in four of China’s provinces as the sign of things to come.

A four car accident in Dongguan on Zhangmutou Road resulted in a minivan coming to rest on the roof of a sedan and the road median.

The Guangzhou Transport Commission announced 300 new bus lines will be in operation by 2017, bringing the total number of bus lines to 1,200. New areas to be added to the public transportation grid include Guangdong Higher Education Mega Center, the Financial Town, Gualu Lake in Zengcheng, and Zengjiang River.

You know what’s nice? Being in love. You know what’s almost as nice, and in line with the “Chinese dream”? Said representation of love using two interlocking hearts planted in a rice patty field near Dongguan.

Tonight in TV: The Amazing Spider-Man on CCTV-6 at 9:58pm. Dubbed in Chinese with Chinese subtitles. Coming up on Friday night: Men in Black 3.

Photo: Yangcheng Evening News

The post PRD Today: Corporal Punishment, Meteor Shower Theme Song, Shenzhen Parking appeared first on The Nanfang.

The Yale professor, who successfully predicted the collapse of America’s housing market, drew similarities between the two countries’ markets.

Caijing has more:

The professor used the housing price to income ratio to support his concern. People were buying homes at prices far beyond their income level in major Chinese cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai, he said. Computer analysis done in California showed the ratio stood at 10 times, meaning buyers were buying homes at prices tem times their income, which he thought was way too high.

The excessively high housing prices were partly supported by psychological bubbles, according to Professor Shiller. People chose to believe in a rising property market and were too eager to reap from the sector. Such bubbles, however, would not exist in the long run, and if they burst, buyers would have to suffer titanic losses, Shiller said.

Having made numerous trips to the middle kingdom, Shiller is also not a fan of China’s state-owned banks, which have long struggled to get out of the habit of paying out non-market oriented loans, according to Shenzhen Evening News.

Shiller has a track record of seeing through popular optimism to predict more realistic outcomes. He also successfully predicted the bursting of the dotcom bubble in the late 1990s.

Another thinker who believes that blind optimism has damaged America and the world is Barbara Ehrenreich, who in 2010 published “Bright Sided” (published in the U.K. as “Smile or Die”).

In spite of widespread hope that a crash will be averted, the belief that housing prices are forbiddingly high in China’s major cities is far from controversial. In 2010, property developer Ren Zhiqiang had a shoe thrown at him for saying out-of-touch things like “Chinese people are too rich, and houses are too cheap.”

One netizen caused a stir on Sina Weibo this week when he asked the mayor of Guangzhou how long it would take a person on his income to buy a place, according to Yangcheng Evening News. The mayor is yet to respond.

The post Nobel economics laureate pessimistic about Shenzhen’s housing market appeared first on The Nanfang.