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Property marauders!
By Zhou Yan (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-30 15:50

In 2003, he decided to march into the country's capital Beijing with cash in hand to buy into more estates. He one-off pocketed 8 suites worth at least 8 million yuan at Yang Guang Du Shi Garden perfectly situated across the East Second and Third Rings, each occupying around 117 sq m.

"Again, the price unsurprisingly ran upwards of over 20,000 yuan from 8,000 yuan per-square-meter," Huang notes, adding that he leases his Beijing apartments to foreigners working nearby. "The rental payoffs are pretty good," he says with a mysterious smile, but refuses to disclose the exact earnings.

Huang is not alone in Wenzhou. Unofficial statistics show that as many as 100,000 Wenzhou people have successively dove into China's real estate market up until now.

"Around 10,000 to 100,000 (Wenzhou) people have been speculating in real estate, as far as I know, but it's only a conservative and loose estimate," says Ma Jinlong, professor at City College of Wenzhou University.

"We have 2 million Wenzhou natives doing business outside of here," Ma says. "The purpose of buying houses was originally not to make money, but for the sake of their children's development in big cities or just for the purpose of having a nice place to live in during their vacations."

New rich

Wenzhou, an 11,784 sq km city, pushed the development of private economies since the reform and opening-up policies began, and has since nourished some 300,000 privately owned enterprises engaged in a broad range of manufacturing activities.

The official 2006 Wenzhou Yearbook says that the private economy accounted for 95 percent of the city's gross domestic product in 2005.

Wenzhou businesspeople have an evitably large amount of cash but they have to go outside for opportunities as there is a dearth of land and resources in the city.

According to the Shanghai branch of the Wenzhou Chamber of Commerce, there are now roughly over 200,000 Wenzhou natives living in Shanghai, with 20,000 businesses run by Wenzhou people, which have invested 200 billion yuan in Shanghai market. On top of its Shanghai office, the Wenzhou Chamber of Commerce also has set up 126 other branches nationwide.

But it wasn't until the real estate market began rising out of control that Wenzhou property buyers began swarming into every corner of China for the purpose of pure investing.

"There was no what-you-dub the 'Wenzhou house speculating group' until a huge profit potential emerged," Ma says.


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