The management of my apartment development has my cellphone number. They either sold it or gave it to their friends who work in the real estate business, so I get a lot of “unsolicited” text messages, i.e. spam, from these monkeys. Text messaging is much more popular in Asia than in the US, I think. Spam text messages are a big problem, but they can be useful as indicators of the mass mood through both their tone and volume. Let me explain.

Six months ago I got a lot of text spam begging me to sell or rent our apartment. The agents had lots of desperate buyers and renters, and could I please please please consider selling or renting the apartment.

The tone of the text spam changed a couple months ago … there were still buyers but they didn’t sound as desperate. Now the worm has turned and I get lots of messages about distressed sellers who will do anything to get rid of their apartments. Not a word about buyers.

China Mobile, since they’re monitoring the content of messages anyway, should make up some real-time stock and real estate market indicators based on text spam content and volume. I’m serious! :)

Related posts which are darned interesting:
Comrades in ARMs
Sample Beijing Apartment Sale and Rental Prices
A Sense of Belonging
Beijing Property — Haves and Have-Nots
Guangzhou R&F Properties Co., Ltd.

Here’s the 2008 home loan repayment schedule for our apartment in Beijing. As I’ve mentioned before, there are no fixed-rate home loans available in China. You can see that we borrowed RMB1,550,000 from ICBC for 15 years in October 2005, originally paying interest at 5.814%. I believe the loan will reset in February 2008 to 6.65% (I’m eyeballing it), which means the monthly payment will jump by RMB464.52 ($64.43). Comrades in ARMs, I feel your pain. :)

Click to enlarge

A rising middle class and the awakening of a sense of real citizenship

“… the coalescing of homeowners here around issues like property values, environmental safety, urban planning and how their tax money is spent is being seen as the strongest sign yet of rising resentment among China’s fast-growing middle class over a lack of say in government decision-making … what most distinguishes this wave of demonstrations from other recent protests is a new insistence that the government seek the public’s consent in decisions that directly affect people’s lives … With its tradition of top-down decision-making, secretive deliberations and little tolerance for dissent, the Chinese government has almost no practice of real popular consultation.”

See how a little bit of private property changes everything?

That precious subject line above and the excerpt below are both from this week’s interview with Scott Blasdell in Barron’s:

“When subprime troubles began looming, banks everywhere started to tighten their lending across all real-estate sectors. So where you could get 90% loan-to-value in 2006, later in 2007, it was closer to 65% — and the spreads are also wider. As a result, prices, which were driven up dramatically in the U.S. and also in Europe and Asia, look set to fall … if you’re thinking maximum downside in the U.S., I see a possible 15%-20% correction in property prices, which translates into a 30% correction in REIT prices. We’ve already experienced about a 20% correction in stock prices so far, so we are getting there.”

Note that among the total returns for selected Vanguard funds in calendar-year 2007, the REIT Index fund performed worst, down 16.46%.

(If you’re wondering how I’m able to read Barron’s without paying for it, read this post.)