A Ghost City – One Million Square footage of Commercial Real Estate in Beijing Vacant
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 
Posted by OP-Mall in 
Stories of Beijing being a ghost city are surfacing all over the Internet. They tell of a city which less than a year ago was prepped to bustle in anticipation of the Olympic Games and yet, a few months after it is all over the city looks deserted and half of the city center’s sky scrapers stand desolated and empty.
This is the story of Beijing, formerly glorified as the new “glitz town” of China and host to the Summer Olympic Games of 2008.
But fast forward less than one year and the outlook for the city is very gloomy indeed.
Take the example of a brand new baseball stadium that has just been demolished after opening last spring with an exhibition game between the Dodgers and the San Diego Padres. Those are sad stories that make us wonder what happened behind the scenes and why in the world big projects like these are being granted without checking their longevity.
Then there is the story of the million square feet of commercial real estate that sits EMPTY in the middle of the city before as mentioned . Just to give you an idea, 100 million square feet make up the better side of 14 years of commercial real estate supply in a good year.
Right now, the inner city of Beijing is home to a vast amount of eye catching and awe inspiring skyscrapers that are empty.
The question remains to what will happen to these buildings when no one pays rent? Plus as more and more corporations have to scale back their enterprises it is highly unlikely that this situation will change for the better real soon.
So what IS the Chinese government going to do with all these brand new, empty buildings? And where does this leave all the workers who are left on the streets, often without getting paid for their work since many developer simply went underground to avoid paying their wages?
We think we can all agree that the situation in Beijing is not a pretty one. In fact it is a very sad one. It makes one wonder how on earth it could ever get this bad.
Are our egos so big that we continue to build just for the sheer pressure of delivering better and bigger cities to host Olympic Games, giving no consideration to realistic demand and the environment?
You tell us.
Related Posts
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Beijing Property, China Property. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
4 Responses to “A Ghost City – One Million Square footage of Commercial Real Estate in Beijing Vacant”
-
Ian Jackson Says:
March 4th, 2009 at 3:03 pmI think we do overbuild and overdo things at the moment, looking at the growth in places like here and dubai its clear to see sometimes people are just spending money and developing insanely expensive projects simply for the sake of it.
I think people have to do it though because it challenges them to do more and in a way, evolve.
-
Investing abroad Says:
March 4th, 2009 at 4:41 pmIt is a huge shame that the properties aren’t being used, the amount that was invested in this at the time was huge. Investing in property abroad can open create endless opportunities. I think as a country they should be pushing for outside investment.
-
Overseas Property Mall Says:
March 6th, 2009 at 7:34 am@Investing abroad – the problem of over-construction stemmed from the fact that the was too much artificial money (debt) flowing globally in the last decade that really needed to be spent.
As most of this construction was from the private sector, there were certainly no plans for these buildings to lay vacant.
This is a result of pure speculative construction gone bad. Some of these building are architectural marvels – lets hope and wait to see if they would be put to good use soon. -
Overseas Property Mall Says:
March 6th, 2009 at 7:39 am@Ian Jackson – alot of the over-construction was on the assumption of never-ending economic growth. This is especially true in commercial property construction.
