Evaluating the Risk of Chinese Housing Market: What We Know and What We Need to Know

Professor Yongheng Deng, Provost's Chair Professor, Professor of Real Estate and Finance, National University of Singapore

This lecture is co-sponsored by Cornell Institute for China Economic Research (CICER).

Real estate is an important driver of the Chinese economy, which itself is vital for global growth.  However, data limitations make it challenging to evaluate competing claims about the state of Chinese housing markets.  This paper brings new data and analysis to the study of supply and demand conditions in nearly three dozen major cities.  We first document the most accurate measures of land values, construction costs, and overall house prices.  We then create and investigate a number of supply and demand metrics to see if price growth reasonably can be interpreted as reflecting local market fundamentals.