P6 - Poem and House

“Mother, today I went to zhongshan with a friend to see an apartment, the compound is located in the city center of zhongshan, only 1 hour by bus to home, or 30 mins by car.”

“ennnn, seems good location.” Mother nodded her head.

“The price is only 4000 rmb per m2, including nice decoration.” I continued.

“You point is?” Mother asked.

“I was wondering if you can lend me some money to buy a small apartment?” I hesitated and asked unfirmly.

“Son, I’d like to give you money, but you see I just spent all the saving to buy this big apartment. Moreover, we already got big enough apartment to live, why do you want to buy an apartment?”

Good evening, ladies & gentlemen, this is a mother-son talk 8 years ago in 2009, from the conversation, you can tell that my mother refused my request of borrowing money. That time I just

graduated from the university for two years, my salary is too low to have enough saving to pay for down payment-首付. Frankly speaking, I was kind of upset that my mother refused to lend me money, but I could understand her, I understood the situation that she just bought this apartment for the family without any loan. At that time, I said to myself, come on, you are supposed to work hard to get salary raised, sooner or later you can buy your own apartment with your own saving.

April 2010, I jumped from my first company to the second company, most importantly I had my salary doubled. Wow, this is a big advancement for my career, I was so happy, because I am accelerating the savings, I am one step closer to buying my own apartment. But soon later, surprisingly I found that price of real estate was almost doubled as 3 years ago. For example, the price of apartment in Guangzhou Tianhe was around 20K per M2. OMG! How can a common white collar afford such expensive apartment? Even if you are able to save enough money for the down payment, it’s still hard to afford the monthly mortgage payment with such little salary. The whole society including the citizen, media were all complaining the ridiculous high price of real estate, the so-called professors & government were also criticizing the bubble of real estate and predicted the price would fall down to a reasonable level. The bubble atmosphere gave citizen a lot of imagination space for real estate price going down, so I decided to wait, which was a big mistake I made. 

I was too naïve to trust the media, the professor and the government, because the real estate price was still going higher and higher until 2013. I could wait no more, and decided to buy my first apartment. Even though the apartment was located in the far far away suburb which is not convenient for the commuting, at least it’s a home where I can stay. From then on, I became a tortoise carrying a house and working hard for the bank.

4 years later, early this March 2017, considering the inconvenience of transportation, we decided to sell the old apartment and buy another apartment in the city center. There is a saying that “Plan

never catch up with change”, last week Guangzhou government issued a strict policy to restrict the house purchasing. This policy was like a disaster to common family like us, because it’s pushing the so-called Guangzhou investors to buy apartments in Foshan, and price is going higher AGAIN! That night I lost sleep. Even I already paid the deposit for the new apartment, there is still a big possibility that the apartment owner may reject the contract.

Gao Xiaosong once said “life is not onlyabout the daily stuff, but also the poems and the far far away”, but I want tosay “life is not only about the daily stuff, but also the house and……. stillhouse.” With the 30 years of real estate development, the price is going higherand higher because of the inflation, house investment is deemed as one of thebest way to keep your asset. The housing affair has been one of the mostimportant decisions for most people, but when you look back after severalyears, you will find this is one of the best decision you made. So my friends,if you have enough money for the down payment, even you need to borrow some, just do it, because you won’t regret.