For sale: 1,000 sq m of Palm Beach Central Villas, a suburban Beijing replica of an American McMansion looking on to a rubbish-strewn wasteland. A snip at $8m — the same list price as Sandy Cay, a resort island in the Bahamas, where the palms and are real and the vistas white sand.
Welcome to the world of Chinese real estate, where a combination of rapid riches and easy credit fuelled a decade-long boom in local house prices that only ended last year. From a country of almost zero home ownership just 15 years ago, more than 80 per cent of Chinese households now own their own homes.
Yet the price tags and exotic names often jar horribly with reality. Next to Palm Beach is the “Merlin Champagne town”, a gated community whose only nearby shopping amenities consist of a rundown mall where the main draw is a McDonald’s restaurant.