Housing, solid as a bank- Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein

Stories about the collapsing real estate market in China might often miss the point. Housing is often the only place for increasingly wealthy Chinese to invest their money, tells business analyst Shaun Rein in CNN.

CNN:

While the Western world has plenty of available options for investors to park their money, housing is considered one of the few relatively safe investments to most Chinese. As incomes rise and as more of the country's population is expected to move into urban areas  (in January, China's urban population surpassed that of its rural areas for the first time in the country's history), demand for housing is expected to remain robust, says Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group, a Shanghai-based market research firm. 

The demand, however, isn't just coming from the growing middle class but also the very rich. With tighter lending rules placed on Chinese buyers at home, many investors have gone abroad. Rein points to the formation of property bubbles in other parts of the world, as Chinese investors buy up homes in places such as Canada and California.

More about housing in China in CNN

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Shaun Rein is publishing soon his book The End of Cheap China: Economic and Cultural Trends that will Disrupt the World. More on Shaun Rein and his book at Storify.  

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