Houses Are Harder to Sell, Rents Harder to Collect
The author has a small 30-square-meter apartment in Xishuangbanna, listed for just over 100,000 yuan. However, the agency fee of 20,000 yuan must be added to the total price paid by the buyer. After sitting on the market for over a year, it still hasn't sold. (I checked and second-hand homes are going for around 5,000 yuan per square meter, down 40% from new listings.) The author's asking price is relatively low.
Another commenter mentioned an apartment in Tianjin bought for rental income. They didn't expect prices to drop so much, and are glad they sold early. Someone who sold a similar unit later is now seeing a 500,000 yuan drop in value. Rental income is also unstable—bringing in just over 10,000 yuan, nearly 20,000 yuan a year. The main challenge is finding long-term tenants, so they decided to sell. Recovering the purchase cost was too far off.