My House My Home
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FOR people like me in China, roughly 20 or 30 yearsago, the modest apartments allotted to us by the statewere our homes, and I took it for granted that mine"belonged" to me. At that time, all apartments allottedto people were state-owned, nevertheless we felt more assuredand confident than I think people do today, having to pay astronomical prices to put a house in their name, as verified bytheir property ownership certificates. The deed has a sunsetclause: it expires after a certain periodof time. Some are good for 50 years andothers for 70 years, whereas we couldoccupy the allotted apartments lifelongif we would. Above all, the state allottedresidence was a good bargain for ordinary people-the rent was negligible(several or at most dozens of yuan) forthe security of a place to live.
At the end of the last century, Chinabegan to roll out a market system forhousing, allowing people to buy the places they choose to live in, and leaving the price determined bymarket forces. Stoked by acute demand and frenzied speculation, housing prices have soared out of sight in past years. Evenfor public employees like me, who are eligible for governmentsubsidized apartments (a compensatory benefit of modestlypaid public service jobs), a home is now a huge expense, sohuge that we may well have to scrimp for the rest of our lives.
At the turn of the century, two huge affordable housingcommunities sprouted up in a northern suburb of Beijing, onecalled Huilongguan and the other Tiantongyuan. At first manypeople were scared away by the remote location and the lackof commercial services and public transport facilities. But thelow price tag on the units was really attractive for those whowanted an apartment but could not afford luxury. I myself belonged to the latter group.
In the summer of 2002, my employer organized a "homeshopping trip" to Huilongguan and Tiantongyuan, drummingup interest in their unrivaled price advantage: about RMB2,000 per square meter. Buying a home is certainly not a minor decision. After an excruciating amount of paperwork andlegwork, I finally settled on a split-level flat in Tiantongyuanwith floor space of 200 square meters. The design lookedgood, and more importantly, the price fit into my budget. After making a down payment of RMB 200,000, my husbandand I had mortgage payments that were extracted from ourPublic Housing Fund accounts; they were calculated as a pereentage of our salaries with a corresponding contribution byour employers.
After moving into our roomy new home my long-cherisheddream to have a big private reading room finally came true.But the downside was serious: The remote location turnedout not to be an insignificant objection; I spent three to fourhours commuting between home and office and sat in trafficjams every day. During these long tiring excursions the onlyidea I had in my head was "I WANT TO RETIRE NOW!" That, of course, was only a passing phase.
Several years later, with the public transportation systemcontinuously improving and various commercial service facilities being completed, Tiantongyuan has become a huge andpopulous residential community worthy of its name. In termsof its scale it is probably No.1 in the world.
The value of my home began to shoot up soon after ourpurchase. Since exactly when have housing prices soared?My vague memory suggests twice. The first was around 2005,when they jumped by big margins, but not so rapidly, andafter reaching a peak in 2oo8, they began to fall and reachedtheir nadir around New Year’s Day 2009. The market wasquite weak then, with few potential buyers visiting the SalesOffice of Tiantongyuan. The ratewas around RMB 7,000 /squaremeter for the time. Two monthslater the housing market bouncedback, with prices skyrocketing after the Labor Day holiday (May 1),doubling after the National Dayholiday (Oct.1), and exceedingRMB 20,000 per square meter bythe end of the year. Within a yearthe "cost of dreaming" tripled! Formy home is not an investment butfor sleeping and dreaming after a long day at work.
Perhaps it is human nature to be happy about a rise invalue of the things we own, but I can’t help feeling worried formy countrymen, those people who work hard for their livingbut can only stand by helplessly watching a housing marketescalate out of the range of wallet and hope.
Fortunately, the Chinese government is always on the sideof ordinary people. Though affordable housing is not a goalthat can be met overnight, the government has adopted various relevant policies to curb excesses in the real estate marketand has increased low-income housing project starts. At thebeginning of this year the central government demonstratedonce again its determination to rein in property prices bylaunching a new round of measures. The effects are now obvious: the prices of commercial resident housing have stoppedjumping and even begin to fall. Ordinary people expect to seereasonable and manageable prices, and the government istrying hard to meet such expectations. With more and morepeople owning a decent place to call their own, "living andworking in peace and contentment" will become a reality foreveryone in China.