Houses come in two categories: three-core and non-three-core. The three-core standard refers to properties in core cities, prime locations, and high-quality improved developments.

What exactly are you doing when you buy it? Hedging.

For an ordinary person, buying a house is essentially trading the next 30 years of their life in advance for that property. You yourself are the mine; your future 30 years are your ore.

The person selling you the house is doing the same thing—it’s also a form of hedging. Their house is their ore.

When both parties meet each other’s needs and exchange, they trade the house for your 30 years, and both feel they’ve gotten a good deal. So who actually wins? It’s simple: look at the price of labor, or what we might call “human value.”

If your income over the next 30 years rises significantly, the homebuyer wins. You’ve locked in a price—your mortgage is priced based on the labor value from 30 years ago. Imagine your monthly salary is 10,000 now, but 30 years from now you’re earning 1 million a month, yet you’re still paying off your loan at the old rate. Conversely, if your income doesn’t rise substantially, the seller wins. They’ve effectively locked in a high property price and cashed out at the peak.

When someone buys a “three-core” property, what are they really purchasing? They’re exchanging cash flow for the seller’s broken capital chain.

If this three-core unit is a resale property, its owner isn’t facing a liquidity crunch—they typically wouldn’t sell otherwise. In normal years, it’s very hard to buy a three-core at a fair price. Anyone familiar with the resale market knows this. In normal years, what you can actually buy tends to be subpar. The prime units are already occupied; the ones listed for sale always have some flaw. Usually, in the circulating resale inventory, properties without defects make up less than 3%. If such a defect-free three-core unit drops to a distressed-fire-sale price, what is the buyer really acquiring? A seller whose capital chain has snapped.

Knowledge, at its core, exists to solve problems. Stripped of specific, practical contexts and examined in isolation, it’s like scratching an itch from afar—ineffective and unsatisfying.