14 km in a straight line from the city center, in Metro line 2 stop called Guanglan, there are some apartment houses and what looks like an abandoned part of the hightech park Zhangjiang, where I worked.
I will present some pictures here that may help to prove my point about RE bubble, but this may also be a relatively local phenomenon. Those of you that will say that this post suffer from success bias, i.e. that i went there just because there are empty houses there, are perfectly right.
Lets get to work:
All the pictures below were taken before 7pm on a regular work day – Tuesday, 13th of September. Bear in mind that this was the first workday after a 1 day Chinese public holiday (Sept 12th).
Near the park you can see the Pulman hotel that was supposed to open at 2010.
Pullman Shanghai Pudong Zhangjiang is scheduled to open in 2010. Located at the centre of Pudong’s Zhangjiang Hi-tech Zone, the 300-room hotel will be surrounded by more than 3,000 enterprises and factories and more than sixty Fortune 500 companies. In addition to being walking distance from the Metro Line 2 station (scheduled for operation in 2010 and linked to Pudong International Airport), the Pullman Pudong is also 10 minutes from Shanghai’s New International Exhibition Centre, 15 minutes from Jinqiao Hi-tech zone and the Lu Jia Zui Financial district. With a full range of facilities and services, it will be the perfect starting point for domestic and international travelers to explore the dynamic City of Shanghai.
Here is the hotel at the end of the third quarter of 2011:
The Pullman Hotel near Guanglan, was supposed to open at 2010
No signs of it opening soon, I am guessing it will probably not open in the coming year if at all.
Not far from there you can see the Howard Johnson hotel. It looks like it is having a weak evening as well:
The Howard Johnson Hotel having a weak evening
As you can see behind the hotel there is a pretty lively building (I don't know what it is). It shows the contrast.
Now see the park itself. The park is huge, same size as the park I was working in during this month if not larger. The park I worked in hosted 3-4 companies. It was actually scary walking there:
Park picture number 1
Park picture number 2
Park picture number 3
Park picture number 4 - Look at that tall building, over 20 stories high, completely empty
Park picture number 5 - those are 5 stories high buildings, completely empty
Near the park you can see some empty apartment houses (again, but much more severe).
This one is "not so bad":
Right on the exit of the Guanglan Metro station
Empty neighborhood:
Some more apartment houses down the road
Very long line stretch of houses, completely empty:
Some more apartment houses down the road
It is possible that some of these houses are empty because its a new neighborhood, but many of these houses are there for a long time now, finished. Maybe bought as an "investment"?
It is worth noting that I did not just take pictures of empty houses that were standing aside full ones (again, success bias), the entire area looks like it is completely empty, as far as you can see.
A gentle reminder- this is Shanghai, not some rural city in the middle of China. If this is the situation in shanghai, not very far from the center, what is going on in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities?