Author: stlplace

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Business China

Introducing Vanke

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Vanke is No. 1 home builder in China. Today. Vanke A share (000002) went up 10% in Shenzhen, after it moved sideways for about two months. Note today is the first trading day after China national holiday break.

Real estate companies in China don’t get much respect these days. No matter how many new homes they built, how much tax they pay and how many jobs they create. This is similar to the US big oil companies. In this case it’s because the housing prices in China cities spiked again. The hot topic in China these days are “why the new home prices increase so fast”, “why those guys bid the land at such a high price (down the road, they will sell the homes at price even higher”. The “conclusion” is the developers must make good money off home buyers. This is certainly not accurate. I’m not saying the banks are making all the money, while the real estate companies are getting nothing. They certainly get a fair piece of the pie so that they can feed their families.

Front sign of Vanke Baima garden in SH:
Vanke_BaiMa_3

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Stocks

Another typhoon

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This one is for real. Here in Shanghai it started to rain yesterday afternoon; today the heavy wind sometimes make it impossible to walk. I saw numerous people flipped their umbrella. Just as I was thinking I’m lucky, my umbrella did the same thing.

Zhongshan park (Kaixuan Rd.)
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Zhunyi Rd. & Changning Rd.
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Categories
China

Shanghai south railway station

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We went to the new (new to me) Shanghai south railway station yesterday. I was very impressed by the structure. It’s in deep constrast to the older Shanghai railway station (built in 1980s). The lights and landscape around the station are also very nice. Since I did not bring the camera, here are some pictures I found on the web.

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Categories
China Stocks

Buying house in Shanghai Series: II

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First a little background. Like the Chinese stock market, the Chinese real estate market has a brief history and I talked it a bit in my previous E-House post. Also, China is a big country and the real estate market varies by region, for instance, the Shenzhen market is cooling down lately while Shanghai market is becoming hot. Very much like in the US we could see Dallas and Seattle are still doing ok, while California, Las Vegas etc. are cooling down now.

Vanke_BaiMa_1

The picture above is taked from Vanke White Horse Garden in Shanghai (courstey of soufun.com, for more pics click here).

With that in mind, I am talking about my understanding the Shanghai housing market, in Q&A style.

1) Why the price went up so much lately?
It’s mostly supply and demand. The new supply is very limited in 2005 and 2006 because: the prevailing prices did not spur interest from developers to build new homes; the new supply of land is very limited.

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Categories
Stocks

Holiday reading etc.

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The Chinese market closed for a week during this national holiday. The HK and US market is still open. There are lots of actions of Chinese stocks in those markets. From the blue (red) chips (such as LFC), to more speculative ones (such as EFUT). It appears to me the valuation of FXI, LFC etc are no longer attractive anymore. But at the same time we can not ignore that the new money is continuing pour into those hot stocks.

My job is not to predict the market, nor am I an expert on FXI and LFC (although I did talk about those two a while ago). I picked up Philip Fisher “common stocks and uncommon profits” instead*. Phil wrote the book more than 50 years ago, but the 15 points to find the great stock still holds: product service, R&D, profit margin, sales, management,…

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China Stocks

National day holiday

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National Day (the birth date of PRC) Oct 1 is coming. I saw lots of flags on the street. Pretty neat, huh?

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Seriously, this is a good time for the travel industry to cash in. Because people will have a week off. Many people are doing some tour: from Sanya, Li Jiang to Bali or Bangkok…This is also a big test for the airline and railway system, because they need to move millions of people: some go on tour; some visit family. We will be the latter group.

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China

Survey for new down-payment policy

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From Sina:

Q1: Do you like (agree with) the new policy which raised down-payment for 2nd or 3rd home? (My answer: Yes).

Q2: Do you think this policy can combat the speculation and contain the home price? (My answer: No).

Q3: Will this policy affect your home buying plan? (My answer: No).

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Stocks

Buying house in Shanghai Series: I

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I have thinking about this for a while. But I was not convinced to buy, until this week our new landlord wanted us to move out sooner than we would like to. Here comes the inconevience of renting. Another reason (make me consider buying) is the rapid rise of home prices lately. You know we all like to buy stuff when it goes up, not when it goes down 🙂

I did a little homework: mostly pay attention to the listings outside broker’s office; talking to brokers or developer sales people. Now I have an idea about the apartments around Zhongshan park. Those are two apartment complex in the walking distance (2 or 3 mins) of Zhongshan park metro station. Not surprisingly the ave. price is more than 20,000 Yuan per square meter. There are not many small units (I mean one bedroom apartment) in those two. A two bedroom apartment usually takes 100 sqr meters, or more than 2 m Yuan. It’s no small amount considering annual salary of 120 k (or 10 k per month) is considered high for white collars here.

Zhongshan Apartment

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Categories
China

Another ditch to cool housing market

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It’s not the last ditch, but the goverment (China bank regulation commision, or CBRC) is raising the down payment for 2nd or 3rd time home buyers. They will need to put down 40% or higher (compared to 30% in the past). Obvioulsy we can understand the good intention of the goverment policy: contain the speculation in the housing martket. More importantly, I believe this move is to help the banks control the risks in the home loans. After all, most banks in China are owned by the goverment; and housing loans made up a large percent of bank lending and bottom line (profit). Nobody wants to see a “US subprime style” crisis in China. But can the housing market really be regulated? Or can this new policy be implemented to all the stake holders’ satisfication?

(The following is some home listings at a broker near Zhongshan Park. Full size pic can be seen here).

Shanghai home listing pic

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Categories
China Stocks

Recent Chinese IPOs in NYSE and Nasdaq

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From the bbs at world famous mit. Thanks to Author: capcase (gotmail). I’m putting my comments at the end.

Here is the original article in Chinese, the original title is “china IPO stocks”. For English, cnanalyst.com has a nice table which tracks Chinese ADRs YTD performance. So check out from there.

下面是一个简单的表格，列出了2006年12月20日至今在美国上市的中国企业的名单和大致情况。更详细的情况无法在这里列出，有兴趣的读者可以查询Bloomberg, Yahoo! Finance和China Analyst,即可得到比较详细的英文资料。

橡果国际(ATV), NYSE上市，融资1.19亿美元，IPO总回报9.5%，主承销商为美林、德意志银行；

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