“Leaky house, endless rain,” is the more property-minded Mandarin equivalent of the English saying that it never rains, but it pours.
Zoomlion, maker of the cranes, cement mixers and pile-drivers building China’s property boom, warned this week that net profit might fall two-thirds this year versus 2013. Huatong Road and Bridge, a construction company, warned that it might be unable to meet interest or principal on a maturing bond. This in a market where public default is still rare.
A downpour, then. An endless one? Chinese property developer valuations are braced for it. Shares of Soho China, the largest developer in Beijing, trade below book value. So does Evergrande, third-largest by sales across the mainland. (Zoomlion, meanwhile, trades at