China's Legions of 'Housing Slaves'

Sherry Sheng permitted herself one final splurge before joining China’s swelling ranks of homeowners: a 4,000 yuan ($642) black fur jacket. “I could never afford such a luxury after I start repaying my housing loans next month,” says the Shanghai policewoman. Servicing the two mortgages on the 1.1 million yuan one-bedroom Sheng bought on the city’s western outskirts will eat up about 70 percent of her salary.

Sheng is a fang nu, or housing slave, the popular name for a generation of middle-class Chinese who will need to work a lifetime to pay off their debts. A 1,076-square-foot apartment in one of China’s most affluent cities today costs about 40 years’ annual income, according to data supplied by the government and SouFun Holdings, a company that operates a popular real estate website. “The ‘housing slaves’ term is quite reasonable because it will put a lot of burden on home buyers if housing payments are more than half their incomes,” says Liu Li-Gang, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group.