ABC’s Lateline last night ran a segment entitled China’s bubble bursts, which briefly examined the rapidly slowing Chinese housing market, where sales have fallen by 10% on average across the country since the beginning of the year, and it now takes around 15 months to sell a property in Beijing compared with between six to seven months last year.
Given real estate construction accounts for around 16% to 20% of Chinese GDP, the strength of the Chinese housing market has direct implications for Australia, which provides most of the raw commodities (e.g. iron ore and coking coal), which feed into the construction process.
Worth a watch.
