I’m sorry I’m so late with posting these clippings, but I have been traveling a lot recently. Last month Time Magazine featured my photographs from The Ordos Real Estate Bubble: An Empty Chinese Metropolis series in a piece on China’s precarious real estate market. Property prices have been skyrocketing over the past three years thanks to mass speculation by developers and government support of infrastructure development. For some time it was easily one of the best investments in the country and people would camp out on streets in order to buy apartments in especially hot markets in Shanghai and Sanya. Now it seems like the tide is finally going to turn. The real question is whether or not there is going to be a soft or hard landing for property prices. The China real estate sector might be most important financial market in the global economy, and a sudden pop would send international markets into a downward spiral. I don’t think this is going to happen, but people are starting to wake up and realize how overheated housing and commercial markets are in major urban centers. Many of these newfangled luxury developments remain empty and prices are starting to drop. It’s going to be interesting to see how this story unfolds over the next few months.
