With 800 incomplete projects, 1.5 million devastated homebuyers, 3.8 million job losses, and more than 300 billion USD in liabilities, Evergrande has gone from China’s biggest real estate company to the most indebted one in the world. The question is what happened to Evergrande and what can we learn from it?
CHINA’S RELATIONSHIP WITH LAND
To understand what’s been happening recently, one has to examine China’s culture. For any Chinese person, land is an investment you can’t go wrong with, because everyone needs a home. The preference for real estate has been woven into social status and family heritage.
Here are two dates to keep in mind.
18th December, 1978 – Reform & Opening Up:
China’s economic revival prompted massive urban migration to coastal special economic zones like Shenzhen and Zhuhai. Today, 96% of all urban households own at least one home.
25th September, 1980 – One Child Policy:
This policy skewed the Chinese sex ratio dramatically, resulting in 35 million more men than women and marriage market that has become fiercely competitive. For a bachelor to have any chances, he must own at least one property. As of 2017, 70% of Chinese millennials owned at least one house and 94% planned to buy a property in the next 5 years.
So then – why are one-fifth of the houses in the country empty?
LAND – THE ECONOMIC BACKGROUND
Local governments use land as an alternate source of income, because tax revenue does not cover their budget needs. How do they do it?
They set up Local Government Financing Vehicles (LGFVs), which are investment companies that issue corporate bonds to finance the building of infrastructure
They rezone cheap rural land to urban land and lease it to property developers for sweet profits.
Since local governments maintain a tight grip on land supply, prices always stay increasing – and investors know this very well! This leaves the sector open to speculation. Entrepreneurs, white collars and blue collars are all invested in property to some extent. They just DON’T live in them. In 2017, 47.1% percent of mortgages in China were taken out for vacant units. In 2018, out of all home purchases, 44% were for second-homes and 25% for third-homes.
Furthermore, since China limits investment overseas, this forces everyone to funnel their wealth into the most valued asset in the country – real estate. All of these factors come together to make real estate such a huge industry in China, accounting for 29% of China’s GDP.
Everyone is affected by this industry. And that’s where Evergrande comes in!
INTRODUCING EVERGRANDE
Founded in 1996 by Xu Jiayin, Evergrande’s growth was set against the backdrop of China’s urbanization and economic rise.
To maximize expansion, companies like Evergrande have created a steroid cycle built on pre-selling homes:
Presale money pours in
Developers use it to take out a new loan
Developers purchase another piece of land
Developers start a new project
Developers put new project up for presale.
This cycle has been repeated endlessly. A top property developer can easily hold over 500 billion yuan of pre-sale funds and have over a thousand development projects under construction at any time. But all this changed.
THE FALL OF EVERGRANDE
August, 2020 – China announced the Three Red Lines, which bars real estate companies from borrowing loans unless they can meet all three metrics. Unfortunately, with their 300 billion dollar debt, Evergrande became unable to borrow anymore money.
September of 2020 – Evergrande was facing a credit crunch. Bit by bit, payment deadlines would be missed and project sales would halt. This was a liquidity crisis, meaning that Evergrande had no money to pay back its investors and no money to complete the 1.5 million apartments customers had already paid down payment for.
6th December, 2021 – Evergrande was declared formally default by Fitch Ratings.
THE AFTERMATH OF EVERGRANDE’S FALL
The Chinese property sector as a whole has debts totalling 5 trillion USD.
After Evergrande’s default,
Many other developers have started selling off properties to combat bankruptcy.
More than a dozen have already defaulted.
Bigger developers like Guangzhou R&F Properties Co. and China Aoyuan Group continue to face liquidity crises.
Demand has vanished as investors lose confidence in the real estate sector, and the impacts can be felt in the rest of the economy. China’s GDP growth in Q3 of 2021 slowed to 4.9%, which is the weakest rate of growth since Q3 of 2020. It’s still uncertain whether this financial contagion could spread out to the rest of the world!
CHINA’S PLANS OF DIVERSIFYING INVESTMENT
The Chinese government understands that it needs to release the pressure built up inside the real estate sector. It has been trying to create diversity in investment. It’s “go global” policy has encouraged Chinese enterprises to invest overseas through construction and engineering projects. And very recently, it’s begun to consider lowering capital restrictions by allowing individuals to invest overseas at a cap of 50, 000 USD.
Already, many Chinese investors are invested in overseas real estate, interested in locations such as the UK, Canada and Australia. Perhaps, these are the beginnings of a large shift in the Chinese economy?
CONCLUSION – LET’S LEARN FROM THE PAST
Real Estate affects a big ecosystem and Evergrande is only the biggest firework to go off. 1.5 million homeowners have still lost their savings and halted construction has robbed many people of jobs.
So, we hope you take away two key lessons from this situation:
Wealth takes time to build but it can be lost at the snap of a finger.
It pays to be prepared. Do your due diligence by keeping up to date with the economy and looking ahead.
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The recent policy in 2022 will bring a small rise in the second-hand housing market in China’s first-tier cities, but it is followed by news that the rental market in Shenzhen has fallen sharply. Voices online have pointed out that rental prices have fallen back to where they were four years ago. In addition to Shenzhen, many cities such as Luohu and Futian are facing the phenomenon of falling rents. Many netizens make judgments from the macroeconomic and policy level, but we can directly understand the future trend of China’s rental market from the relationship between supply and demand.
Shenzhen
Base on China Market Overview | Which counties affected the most? when we released it last time, we can see that Shenzhen has always been a popular city for young people, because compared with other big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, Shenzhen has a low landing threshold, which has created a large influx of young people. Shenzhen is looking for opportunities, and it is true that due to the epidemic, a large number of people have lost their jobs. The relatively high-quality young people have accumulated enough wealth to buy a house in the past two years, while some young people who are unable to get a car have become the so-called “floating employment population”, and even renting has become a difficult thing.
At present, there are only two ways for investors who still hold Shenzhen real estate for investment to withdraw cash.
1. Reduce rents so that the floating population can afford to rent houses.
2. Put it on the market and let other capable investors buy the house.
However, how much does the rent reduction need to be in order to balance each other’s needs? At present, the market for selling second-hand houses has become more difficult, and even if they are successfully sold, it is difficult to convert them into international currencies such as US dollars.
How can we observe the future trend of China’s housing market from Shenzhen?
In the future, China’s first-tier cities will be more focused on absorbing new laborers, such as the “floating employment population”, who will be engaged in alternative jobs, which will lead to a further decline in the labor force. The property market in second- and third-tier cities and below will face a downturn, while first-tier cities will see a spike in housing prices. At the same time, the first-tier cities see the rise of the “mobile employment population”, who will also be engaged in alternative jobs, and one day in the future, they may be replaced by machines. At that time, they will lose their source of income and will not be able to continue renting, which will further cause the rental market to decline, causing China’s property market and rental market to face a polarized situation.
To sum up, from the perspective of the next 30 years, China’s overall housing prices will rise slowly, which will keep pace with the rate of inflation. It will not witness dramatic annual rises as in the past. In the future, housing prices will rise by 4%-5% a year. Yes, but the mortgage interest rate will be higher than this price increase. For real estate speculators, it is a stable investment channel. However, in the next 2-3 years, housing prices will still move sideways or even fall. First, the global economy will be dragged down. Second, the current inflation will be much higher than in the past few years, so only the housing prices in core cities and core areas will be firm or even strong. More and more real estate owners will have to cut prices or stagnate them for a period of time. But what is certain is that in the future, China’s housing prices will not have such a period of skyrocketing as seen in 2010-2018, but there will also be no plummets. In addition to paying attention to China’s real estate market, we should also focus on overseas markets. We will continue to update the latest news of real estate at home and abroad.
Whatever is your preference, Denzity is here to help you make a better decision. Our Portal lists many overseas properties managed by trusted real estate companies all over the world. If there is a place to find your dream home this would be it! Watch out for upcoming videos that will take a deeper dive into the area.
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Through the past years, China tried to tighten housing policies to prevent capital outflow, such as making the process of second hand mortgage loans reasonable. This prevents a large amount of the middle class people from selling their assets in the country to move out to foreigner countries.
As policies are established, the price of housing in China polarizes quickly, prices of housing start going different directions, but in common, volume in trades drop. First tier cities such as Beijing and Shenzhen continue rising, and second tier cities start to fluctuate, and third, fourth and fifth tier cities face a heavy drop. From the graph below about 2018-2021 10 biggest cities Central business districts second hand housing price rise (%), we can see that Nanjing and Guangzhou City is where the new rich goes, while Guangzhou and Shenzhen City have more young blood flowing in. Cities that might bring your attention are Tianjin City, which has a negative price growth on small and medium housing units; Shenzhen, which is experiencing negative price growth on big housing units, Wuhan, experiencing negative growth from all, and Chongqing, experiencing negative growth on medium and large housing.
Considering geographical and financial factors, we can make some hypotheses on why these cities listed above have such differences in terms of growth in big, medium and small types of housing price.
Nanjing
As one of the new first tier cities, Nanjing is different from Wuhan and Chongqing. With a special geographical location, mostly low mountains and hills and close to the Yangtze River, it has always been an important political place in Chinese history, so that businessmen or members of the political system would settle in Nanjing. Coupled with the current reduction in mortgage interest rates and the acceleration of bank lending, many investors have also taken action. This explains why Nanjing has such a huge growth in the price of large size housing.
Guangzhou
The development of Guangzhou could be seen in the eyes of all, in comparison to other first tier cities, Guangzhou has a lower living cost, and the environment is not that competitive, this is unsurprising that it has had steady growth in these three years.
Tianjin
Tianjin is one of the cities with negative growth of small and medium-sized housing in the past three years, which is in line with Beijing’s poverty alleviation policy. Due to the high housing prices in Beijing, many young people are looking for opportunities to work in Beijing, but because the rent and housing are too expensive, they will rent in cities close to Beijing and Tianjin. In recent years, we can see that young people in Tianjin have decided to return to their hometowns due to factors such as the epidemic, which has led to the collapse of small and medium-sized housing transactions.
Shenzhen
Shenzhen now reflects China’s overall wealth differentiation, with a large middle class and low-income grassroots, so small and medium-sized housing is showing positive growth. The failure to clear customs to Hong Kong has also led to negative growth in housing prices for large units, which can be understood as the wealthy who sold some of their assets and moved to Hong Kong.
Conclusion
Overall, investing in Chinese real estate is now a really risky move, as policies really affect how the trend goes. Whether or not you choose China as the next place to look for an overseas property, we hope these points help clarify what aspects of a country you should be clear about before investing in property. There is no one size fits all answer.
Whatever is your preference, Denzity is here to help you make a better decision. Our Portal lists many overseas properties managed by trusted real estate companies all over the world. If there is a place to find your dream home this would be it! Watch out for upcoming videos that will take a deeper dive into the area.
To receive more property information relating to the UK, Canada and Hong Kong, sign up to our newsletter at the bottom of this page.
Real estate is not only one of the most important sectors of economy, but it also plays a crucial role in our lives. COVID-19 has put a break on many countries’ real estate industry.
In today’s episode, alongside Alicia Mou, we explore the effect of the global pandemic on Chinese real estate market and more.
How did COVID-19 have any impact on the Greater Bay Area real estate market?
What measures did the PRC government take?
Has there been any changes in the overall market price?
What should you look out for as a foreign investor?
What alternatives are being utilized because of the travel restrictions?
As it can be difficult to catch some minor errors, transcripts may contain a few typos or inaccuracies.
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Alright, let’s get back to the transcript of the show. Enjoy!
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Darren Wong: So hey, Alicia, thanks for joining in.
Alicia Mou: Hi, Darren.
Darren: Hey. So thanks for joining the show. And then First of all, please it’d be great if you could introduce yourself to the audience.
Alicia: Sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Alicia. I am the senior legal counsel at import Anna, and also the head of governance and also one of the cofounders of Prop tech Institute. So InfraRed NF is a joint venture real estate private equity fund between InfraRed Capital Partners, which is formerly HSBC specialist investments, and for Vervain resources, which was formerly an app in China. So our focus is on mezzanine financing and also value add investing in Greater China. So born and raised in Hong Kong, Real Estate has always been a very big part of my life and career. So prior to joining InfraRed NF, I was a solicitor at Woo Kwan Lee & Lo where I worked closely with many prominent Hong Kong based real estate developers, such as Cheung Kong Hutchison in their restructuring, and also New World in their privatization of New World China land.
Darren: Actually now think on it, I have known you for so long, almost like 10 years now. This is a really impressive list of things you have done already. Wow. That made me kind of insecure about my own career. But then this is exciting because like, I’ve always wanted to know about Chinese real estate. So we have talked about this before is that like, you know, you’re just someone that’s really close in the market. So it’d be great to have your one two and then tell the audience more about what’s going on and then something that they should be aware of? So the first question I have is that so something that even I don’t understand, really, for Chinese real estate markets, right? There is different zoning, what does that even mean?
Alicia: Sure, actually, this is a really big theme, and the Chinese real estate market in these past few years. And this is the concept of mega city clusters, or sometimes called mega hubs. This is typically defined as a group of two or more adjacent metropolitan cities. And a well known example to many of our Hong Kong viewers would probably be the Pearl River Delta greater Bay Area, which Hong Kong is a part of. The other city clusters that people may have heard of is the jjj (jing-jin-Ji), a bit of a mouthful out there, which is the bay bay region, so the northern part of China, the Yangtze River Delta, so that’s basically Shanghai and the surrounding region. And maybe less well known as the western parts, doesn’t have a very fancy name coining it yet, but sometimes people refer to the CC like Chongqing and Chengdu, which are the anchor cities of the western part of China. And also the central part of China with Wuhan actually as its core.
So it is particularly interesting, actually, when you look at China at night on a NASA satellite map, you see the city clusters I mentioned just now are the ones that shine the most brightly at night. So meaning they’re the most active cities, despite already after office hours time, so they’re the most active cities. So sometimes in terms of investment thesis, our focus is definitely on these mega city clusters. And we sometimes say we’re chasing the stars.
Darren: That’s cool. I hope I can find that.
Alicia: So actually, I just want to build on to that. I think the investing in these mega city clusters would continue to grow. And the really recent, the two sessions held in Beijing the “Lianghui,” it was announced that the PRC government will continue to drive, and leverage the role of these leading cities and city clusters and driving the overall development of the PRC economy and also driving urbanization. And from that increasing employment and also economic growth. And because this theme is continually mentioned, I really do believe that this theme urbanization and investing in Mega city clusters will continue to be a driving force in the Chinese real estate market.
Darren: That’s good. That’s very informative, because I get there’s a lot of things going on. So it was something that I was curious about too, because we’re in Hong Kong, and we’ve heard a lot of things about the greater Bay Area, and in the future, the potential of it. So I kind of want to pick your brain about like— what do you think of the real estate market for the greater Bay Area? And also, do you think it’s like, too early, is it too overly dramatic? And what are the activities like at the moment?
Alicia: Well, definitely, there’s a lot of interest surrounding the greater Bay Area. I think in particular, people based in Hong Kong were particularly interested in seeing how we could gain exposure to the Chinese real estate market in somewhat more familiar areas, because it’s a bit closer to us. So um, well definitely for our companies and areas that we are actively looking into. And we actually see a lot of activities there already. Whether one of them is tuition or even from private buyers. So off the 11 cities that’s from part of the greater Bay Area, I think, definitely Shenzhen is the hottest and I think the city that most investors would feel most comfortable with being a tier one city, and with also a lot of growth. In fact, this may be a surprise, but despite the COVID-19 situation, in April, the residential prices in Shenzhen continue to hike up by 10%
Darren: Wow. 10% Really?
Alicia: Yeah, yeah. So you would imagine like everything would haul or slow down or plummet with the COVID-19 situation in China, but I think in core tier one cities, the growth is so strong the demand is still there. But other cities that I think investors are also actively looking into would be Foshan, Zhongshan, and Zhuhai. I think these are all very familiar names with Hong Kong investors. And what particularly drives interest and also, on course, this whole developments of the greater Bay Area is infrastructure. So you notice all the cities I mentioned just now they’re very well connected to one another, especially connected to the stronger, higher tier cities like Shenzhen, whether by high speed rail or other railways, bridges, whatnot, and the continued growth of these infrastructures. I think these are the kind of the fundamentals that’s really popping the growth of the greater Bay. area, and I personally feel quite optimistic about the growth of this adequate area.
Darren: That’s cool. So going back a little bit to when you said something that in my mind was like, is Shenzhen having a 10% increase? Does that mean the asking price went up to 10% or the transaction went up by 10%?I just want to make sure I remember that.
Alicia: From my understanding it’s more B, I think it’s the overall market price. Partially apart from the I think demand is one thing, but also it’s actually slightly influenced by government policy. Because of the COVID-19 situation, as you may know, the government is unleashing a lot of measures to help many sectors of the economy, including developers, and there’s a bit of speculation there, where people think that “Oh, once these policies are in place, the price would spike even more.” And so it just kind of drove up the prices.
Darren: That’s crazy for someone who doesn’t understand Chinese real estate and understands real estate in a way. That’s crazy. That’s impressive. So speaking of virus, right, as you mentioned just now, how does the virus really affect the Chinese real estate market? And I know that that’s something that a lot of people talk about. But I want to know, like your point of view on that too.
Alicia: Sure. Well, definitely the COVID-19 situation was a shock to everyone. And, of course, China was at the epicenter of this at the very beginning of the global pandemic, and it has been severely impacted. So, one thing that I heard recently that I really like, and I think is applicable to these times is “the only certainty is uncertainty.” And even in the two sessions that I mentioned just now, China, the government has said that they won’t be setting GDP targets this year, which is the first time that the government has done so since 1990.
Of course, this is a period of great uncertainty for everyone and also especially Chinese market. In my experience, the activity restrictions and also the market sentiment in the earlier phase of the pandemic meant that the sales have slowed down, construction of progress of projects have almost halted. And even a lot of your resources are restricted to working from home but actually not a lot of companies, or at least at all levels of the company, have very sophisticated IP infrastructure. So in our experience, in dealing with PRC developers, we do find that we just can’t reach the guys on the ground or etc. We can only reach management.
So I think overall, there’s definitely a lot of impact on the Chinese real estate market here. And not only the operation perspective, but also the outbreak and also the shutdown has placed immense pressure on the real estate developers’ cash flows and their ability to practice operations. This is largely due to the slowdown in sales and also delays in obtaining permits from the government. But state support has played a very important role in averting an immediate crash of these developers.
Basically, the government has told all the local, state bank lenders to support businesses and help them and we have a lot of the developers are actually able to get extensions on loans, and also even press waivers. So for offshore lenders like ourselves, From discussions with our peers and also advisors, we find that not a lot of lenders are actually calling loans and like grabbing assets but rather they take a wait and see approach and how to take a more supportive and just have helping kind of roll out with their counterparties.
Darren: I see. Wow. So since then right, how has the Chinese real estate market been recovered since the virus situation being under control so far.
Alicia: Yep. Well, activities have begun to pick up and I see some residential sales flowing in and as I mentioned, just now the prices in Shenzhen are like crazy given all the circumstances, of course, but all our activities definitely have not fully recovered to pre virus pace but we still, we still see things picking up from our personal experience like for example local blog real estate type of transactions, we see site visits come in. So local potential buyers and sellers, they’re happy to meet and all that. But I guess for foreign investors, there’s still the travel restrictions. And I guess there’s a bit of worry about traveling so there’s less. So like for them, it’d be harder to contact on site dB. But then I think people are looking around this, for example, by doing video tours. So really, you could help in this respect to and in terms of prices, generally stable, if not growing. So, this is how we see, how the market has recovered recently.
Darren: Okay, wow. What do you see as a more long term impact of the virus situation?
Alicia: Yeah, well, I personally think that the COVID-19 situation will accelerate sector consolidation. Worry will become more of a, like a survival of the fittest. With higher quality and well established companies, developers being able to weather the storm, whereas the smaller players in the market may not be able to make it or get eaten up by the bigger players. Because I think the bigger players generally have better credibility. And also, they buy their power banks in terms of their lending, whereas these smaller guys, they’ve always struggled already, they’re already the banks don’t really like to lend to them so they often have to resort to financing by trust companies or other non banking sources and they’re paying in capital cost at like 8% to 15%. And with this crunch in the market, generally from the lending side of things, and also the cash flow, we probably would think that the bigger players would find this as an open opportunity to consolidate and take over some of the land banks from these smaller guys and really, you could see this sector consolidating. So I think the wheels of motion have already been set in place prior to the COVID-19 situation. But this virus really just increased that pace of the winds of evolution of the market.
Darren: I see. So what if smaller guys like me, you know, still brave enough to go into the Chinese real estate markets, what are some things to be aware, you know, like people like me like, or other investors I tend to make when investing in Chinese market.
Alicia: Yeah, I think for foreign investors, the first thing would be repatriation, you need to think about what currency are you investing into China? Are you for example, using US dollars, Hong Kong dollars? So for us, as an US dollar investor we always use an offer transaction structure. So, for example, when we buy a property, we would buy it through an offshore company rather than say buying an asset or buying a PRC holding company or for a lending business, we also always lend to an offshore entity like a Hong Kong company or BVI or Cayman company, which ultimately have presence in the PRC through its subsidiaries. So, yeah this is something that we’re very careful of. So if you’re a foreign investor, I think this is one of the big things that you need to be aware of.
Darren: Hmm, okay. So, are there any tips or tricks that you could share with our audience in terms of doing property sales and purchase in China because I think I remember this is something that you work really closely with in your company. So it would be great to have your insights on that.
Alicia: Sure, in terms of acquiring a property, the biggest thing you need to be aware of is title. So for what you have in mind for the property, make sure you have the right title for it, for example, if you want to make it a hotel, then make sure it has the hotel title or it has commercial title, or if it’s an office, make sure it has a commercial title, etc. So this is the first thing that you need to check. And the other thing I think you need to— oh and in relation to title is that if you think that you need to convert the title, you may need to make sure you have local counterparties that have the experience of taking up title conversion in that are area, because they would have experience with dealing with the local officials there and their processes. And this is something that’s very important. So you need to be aware of that.
As a seller, what you really care about is that the buyer pays you right, so I think the general I guess tip, is to make sure you get the buyer to show you a funds proof or even better is to get them to pay you in earnest money. So in Chinese it’s “____”so like get them involved and then make them put a commitment to it. I think this is not just China, I think it’s something universal, but it’s what I see a lot in our Chinese deals.
And whether you’re a buyer or seller, you would definitely want to do counterparty due diligence to make sure you’re not dealing with a fraudulent party. And I think maybe for companies, you would also have a part of compliance and the whole governance process. I think one thing that I found useful in doing deals in China is an app called Tianyancha. So this app would give you a brief overview of a company, director or shareholder or individuals— some basic information, especially whether this person has some lawsuits or blacklisted, for example, the (失信被執行人名單). For example, if they have some credibility issues. I think this would be an initial gloss of like, who this kind of party is, and if we want to dig deeper. But I think ultimately, of course, the best thing is to hire a third party investigator to look into this. There are a lot of companies that do these things but I think as a first step Tianyancha app is quite a useful app that we use.
Darren: Yeah, so is Tianyancha accessible for anyone because it seems like an universal credit score kind of checking then. Am I correct? for Chinese?
Alicia: Yeah, you can just download it off the App Store. Yeah it’s very easy, and I think you pay a very small fee if you want to access more information. But otherwise, I think just basic information is pretty much for free. I think one thing I would like to add is that in our experience, sometimes a lot of counterparties if they want to hide the ultimate beneficial owner, they would do so through a very complicated web of shareholdings and also nominees, like in Chinese authority. So that’s when ultimately, you want to find a third party investigator firm to look into this for you.
Darren: Hmm, I see. It seems like we’re doing advertising for the app. I think we should have some advertising fee for that. Well, so because like, obviously, like we’ve known each other for a long time, I kind of want the audience to know your background, because talking about due diligence is your background coming up to what you do right now. I think it’s all linked together. So it’d be great to tell the audience more about your role in the firm and what does is it like to be in your role?
Alicia: Sure. Well, as I mentioned, I’m the senior legal counsel at InfraRed NF. So my role is really to provide legal coverage to the full lifecycle of transactions from the deal origination to negotiation and execution, and also an asset management type of work.
Apart from the transaction specific, my role is also quite broad in a sense that also looks internally so from the fund establishment, from corporate to corporate governance and to compliance I also look into those as well.
Darren: I see. So how’s it like from serving other professional real estate firms from the outside to working at one in the moment? How do you feel? What’s something that if someone for example, someone that looked at this and went like “hey, I kind of want to get into your role. How’s it like? I just want to know.
Alicia:Well, I think definitely being in the real estate firm brings me much closer to the deal making process, which is something that I really, really enjoy. And also you get to appreciate more of the nuances of the commercial dynamics and also bring it closer to the market. And I think this for me has been a very fruitful experience. I think when I was in private practice, my main clients are a lot of big Hong Kong developers as I mentioned. So back then I served a lot of companies apart from real estate transaction needs, also capital market transactions. So why is it now that I’m in a private equity fund? Well, the type of transactions are slightly different in a sense and for me, especially the debt side is something that was new. So overall, I think it also brought me to a different spectrum of real estate and the type of companies that there are in this field. But overall it was very interesting. And I really enjoyed my current role.
Darren: That’s great, that’s great. Have your experience, working in the professional real estate firm, made you change the way you look at real estate?
Alicia: Not really, in a sense that one thing that attracted me to a real estate is that no matter how our needs as human beings change, whether we move to co working, co living, or working from home, I think as a human being, at least for the foreseeable future, we definitely need roofs over our head. So I think that sense, you always need real estate, and which in turn means that there will always be demand for this product, no matter how it develops, and transforms. And I think being from a law firm to a real estate firm didn’t really change that view for me. But being in the real estate firm means I’m much closer to the market than being the legal services provider. So which is a personal growth and personal professional development that I really appreciate.
Darren: That’s good. I remember a while at the property tech prop tech institute a video that we did with a brand consultant Tracy Ho. And she said that one thing people keep forgetting is that real estate is something that’s so close to our daily life. I mean, literally, we live in one, we interact with one. People forget how emotional it is. And he keep forgetting the industry because a lot of times we just see it as like stocks here and there. Back and forth. Trade, it’s yours now, it’s the other persons now. So when you talk about your thoughts about it, it reminded me of that moment as well. It’s kind of cool. Yeah. So what kind of take away would you like the audience to have from this video?
Alicia: In terms of takeaways, I think, um, well, let’s talk about the market side first. So I personally think that mega hubs would continue to be a key investment theme in the Chinese real estate market. And in terms of the COVID-19 situation, this has significantly impacted the Chinese real estate market, but it’s looking like it’s recovering. And from a long term perspective, perhaps it will accelerate the consolidation of the market. And in terms of tips and tricks for investing in China, for foreign investors, repatriation is a key risk that you should look into. And always be careful who your counterparty is, and be careful of your land title. And with a fear of this sounding more and more like an add for Tianyancha, you can use Tianyancha as an initial step of counterparty due diligence.
Darren: Tianyancha if you hear it, please give us advertising cost, that’d be great. Actually, um, I mean, like, I actually have so many things I want to ask you and I thought maybe next time we will have like a long discussion or mezzanine loan because something that a lot people don’t understand is why would real estate needs like different types of loan, and even our side projects project prop tech Institute I want to talk more about that next time. And something before that, if people want to reach out to you to find and talk to you more about real estate or you know about this whole industry and so on, how would you suggest people to find out more about you and talk to you about it?
Alicia: They can just give me a message over LinkedIn and Darren, if maybe you could share the link to my LinkedIn
Darren: Sure, that’d be great. Yeah, I really want you to join next time again, because I think just now like even for the first like 10 minutes I got so much out of it. Like wow, this is something that we wish at Denzity insights where everyone could share ideas. We just want to know what’s the best investment or best kind of insights out there. So I really want to say thank you folks for joining in. And I hope the audience took a lot out of this.
Alicia: Thank you Darren. Thanks for having me.
Darren: All right, until next time then. I’ll see you next time. Thank you.
Alicia: See you next time! Bye.
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Darren :嘿,Alicia,感謝您的加入。
Alicia Mou:嗨,Darren 。
Darren :嘿。因此,感謝您參加演出。然後,首先,如果您能向觀眾介紹自己,那就太好了。
Alicia:好的。嗨,大家好。我叫Alicia。我是import Anna的高級法律顧問,還是治理負責人,還是Prop技術學院的聯合創始人之一。因此,InfraRed NF是InfraRed Capital Partners和Vervain Resources的合資房地產房地產私募基金,InfraRed Capital Partners是前HSBC的專業投資,而Vervain資源以前是在中國的應用程序。因此,我們的重點是夾層融資以及大中華區的增值投資。房地產在香港出生並長大,一直是我生活和事業的重要組成部分。因此,在加入InfraRed NF之前,我曾在Woo Kwan Lee&Lo擔任律師,在那裡我與許多香港著名房地產開發商(例如長江實業和記黃埔重組)以及New World私有化New World進行了密切合作。中國土地。
Darren :實際上,我已經認識你很久了,差不多十年前。這是您已經完成的事情的令人印象深刻的清單。哇。這使我對自己的職業感到不安全。但這令人興奮,因為就像我一直想了解中國房地產一樣。因此,我們之前談論過的是,您只是一個真正接近市場的人。因此,擁有兩個孩子,然後告訴聽眾更多有關正在發生的事情以及他們應該注意的事情,將是很棒的。所以我要問的第一個問題是,對於中國房地產市場,我什至不了解,對嗎?有不同的分區,這甚至意味著什麼?
Darren :嗯,我明白了。似乎我們正在為該應用做廣告。我認為我們應該為此支付一些廣告費。好吧,因為很顯然,就像我們彼此認識很久一樣,我有點想讓聽眾知道您的背景,因為談論盡職調查是指您的背景會隨著您現在的工作而變化。我認為這都是聯繫在一起的。因此,很高興告訴聽眾更多關於您在公司中的角色的信息,而擔任您的角色又是什麼感覺呢?
Darren :很好。我記得在房地產技術道具技術學院有一陣子,我們和品牌顧問Tracy Ho一起錄製了一段視頻。她說,人們一直忘記的一件事是,房地產與我們的日常生活非常接近。我的意思是,從字面上看,我們生活在一個之中,我們與一個世界互動。人們忘記了它有多激動。而且他一直忘了這個行業,因為很多時候我們只是把它看作是到處都是股票。來來回回。交易,現在是您的,現在是其他人。因此,當您談論自己的想法時,它也讓我想起了那一刻。挺酷的是的那麼,您希望觀眾從該視頻中獲得什麼樣的收穫?
Darren :天眼cha,如果您聽到了,請給我們廣告費,這太好了。實際上,嗯,我的意思是,就像,我實際上有很多事情想問你,我想也許下次我們將進行長時間的討論或一團糟,因為很多人不了解的事情是為什麼會真正房地產需求,例如不同類型的貸款,甚至我們的附屬項目項目支持技術學院,我想在下一次談論更多。在此之前的事情,如果人們想與您聯繫以找到有關房地產的更多信息,或者您對整個行業有所了解,等等,那麼您如何建議人們找到更多有關您的信息並與您討論它?