夢想和現實 !
www.bloomberg.com
The dream of a Malaysian version of Shenzhen — largely funded by
Chinese developers and buyers — with hotels, offices, golf courses, tech
parks and thousands of ritzy new apartments, is having to adapt after
China’s government
clamped down on an exodus of money for investment in overseas property.
Developers’
sales offices in China that once brought in buyers by the hundreds are
now pushing developments in Chinese cities. Subsidized junkets that flew
in prospective buyers to development sites in the southern Malaysian
state of Johor have dwindled. And some buyers who paid deposits for
yet-to-be-built homes are considering canceling their purchases.
“I
feel I’m on the horns of a dilemma,” said Michelle Gao, who paid about
600,000 yuan ($87,825) toward the 1.2 million yuan cost of a two-bedroom
apartment at
Country Garden Holdings Co.’s
vast Forest City development. “If the project relies so much on Chinese
buyers like me, how on earth are they able to sell in future? Will the
construction ever finish?”
The crackdown on outflows of money from China has spooked some buyers.
While Chinese citizens are allowed an annual foreign exchange quota of
$50,000, the government said in December that all buyers of foreign
exchange must sign a pledge that they won’t use their quotas for
offshore property investment. Violators would be added to a watch list,
denied access to foreign currency for three years and be subject to a
money-laundering investigation.
The restriction threatens to take the wind out of residential
property sales in cities around the world where prices have been driven
in the past few years by buyers from China. Few projects are likely to
be affected as much as the Chinese-financed developments in Johor, some
of which had relied on mainland customers for as much as 90 percent of
sales.
Six Chinese buyers interviewed for this story said they
paid a 10 percent down-payment to Country Garden in showrooms in China
by swiping debit or credit cards or using payment services like Alipay.
They said the property agents are now telling them they need to go to
Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia or Macau to swipe their cards to pay the
balance of installments, or wire funds to Country Garden’s overseas
accounts.
賣樓處, 當年人山人海, 今年冷冷清清 !
Many are worried that would still make them
liable
under China’s foreign exchange rules. This month, the Chinese
government said domestic banks will have to provide daily reports of
clients’ overseas transactions of more than 1,000 yuan.
“I was
told it can still be done from Hong Kong, but I’m just scared now,” said
buyer Elaine Xiao. “I don’t know what punishment I may get.”
Country
Garden said the controls have not had a material effect on sales and
construction at Forest City is continuing. It has completed a luxury
hotel and handed over the first batch of 132 apartments on May 1.
The
Johor developments stem from Iskandar Malaysia, a government effort to
leverage Singapore’s success by building a new metropolis near the
causeway that connects the island state to the Malaysian city of Johor
Bahru. When the 20-year project was announced in 2006, it envisaged a
total investment of 383 billion ringgit ($87 billion) and much of the
early investment came from Singapore.
But then Chinese developers like Country Garden and
Greenland Holdings Group Co.
moved in with projects that dwarfed those of their Malaysian and
Singaporean rivals. Country Garden’s “Forest City” alone called for a
$100 billion high-rise town to be built on artificial islands within a
few hundred yards of Singapore.
The projects were marketed in
China, and thousands paid deposits for apartments that cost as much as
double the rate per square meter of homes for Malaysian buyers in Johor
Bahru.
A buyer whose family name is Yu said she doesn’t intend to pay the
next installment on her apartment when it comes due this month. She said
her agent advised her to swipe her credit card in Hong Kong to get
around the rules. “I asked the sales agent will you take responsibility
when I’m blacklisted in China?”
Yu, from Guangzhou, put down a
deposit on a 1.2 million yuan, 59-square-meter apartment in Phase III of
the project while visiting the vast landscaped sales gallery at the
construction site in December. She’s among those now considering walking
away from the agreement because of concern about breaking the rules.
Country Garden announced on June 20 it would proceed with stage 2 of
the Forest City development, a $280 million plan that includes golf
courses, an international school and another hotel. The developer said
in April it was in discussion with fewer than 60 Chinese buyers who
indicated their intention to cancel bookings. The company said it sold
16,000 residential units in
Forest City last year.
Country
Garden said earlier it had stopped marketing Forest City in its sales
galleries in China and ceased organizing tours to its Johor projects for
would-be buyers. Its agents in China are pushing domestic projects in
the country’s tropical southern resort of Sanya and the seaside city of
Beihai.
The developer said it has opened Forest City showrooms in
Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, and plans to open more this year in
Vietnam, Myanmar, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Dubai, the Philippines and
Laos.
Construction at Greenland’s Jade Palace development was
suspended in November while the company considered revising the project
density to build more, but smaller apartments, according to a sales
agent with knowledge of the project. No construction work was going on
during a weekday visit to the site in May.
In a response to written questions,
Greenland
said on June 3 that construction had not stopped and that the design of
the apartments will be optimized pending feedback from previous buyers.
It declined to give sales figures, but said it is looking for more
buyers outside China.
Samuel Tan, executive director at KGV
International Property Consultants, said approvals for all new serviced
apartments in Johor have been frozen since 2014 and existing projects
were introducing more affordable properties at around 600,000 ringgit
instead of 800,000 to 1 million ringgit.
“Given the oversupply, we
don’t foresee any recovery until 2019 for high-rise projects,” Tan
said. He said China’s capital controls were only significant to the
Chinese-owned projects.
The glut of properties being built in Johor has also affected local developers, Petaling Jaya-based
Tropicana Corp.
is giving a 25 percent rebate on the list price of homes they are
marketing an interest-free, 36-month deferred payment plan. Resale
asking prices of properties in Johor have dropped 2 percent in the past
two years, according to real estate listings website PropertyGuru.com.
Yu,
the buyer from Guangzhou, worries that the thousands of apartments
still to be built at Forest City will be hard to sell without Chinese
buyers.
“My home is still in the ocean,” Yu said. “Locals will not
buy homes with prices double the local rate. Without enough residents
from China, everything will change.”
