Two Apartments Wiped Out an Ordinary Person's Life Savings

In March 2021, I bought an apartment in Shiqiao, Panyu for 1.4 million yuan. Now it's listed at 1 million, yet there are still no takers.

Looking back, I bought at the absolute peak: peak housing prices, peak interest rates, and peak agency fees. It was a seller's market back then, with almost no room for negotiation.

The building was built in 1997, making it nearly 30 years old. The community is tiny, with just a few buildings standing there. There are no elevators, no parking spaces, and certainly no community environment to speak of. It's common to see casually discarded trash and spit stains in the hallways, and the school district is very poor.

But it did have its merits that made it worth buying: a square layout and excellent natural light.

Because it's a walk-up building, the usable floor area ratio is much higher than elevator buildings, making every room bright and spacious. It's a 20-minute walk to the subway station, or a 5-minute bike ride, and only half an hour to Guangzhou South Railway Station. Hospitals and large wet markets are all nearby; life is grounded and convenient, full of everyday vitality.

If my apartment is the sorrow of an old, rundown property, then my younger brother's apartment is the epitome of the housing bubble in new development zones.

In April 2023, he bought a small three-bedroom apartment in Nansha for 1.6 million yuan. The apartment is 84 square meters, but the usable area is only 66 square meters.

Now, the transaction price for the same layout is only 800,000 yuan—a direct halving.

Eight hundred thousand. An ordinary family couldn't save that much in three years even if they didn't eat or drink. And that doesn't even include the principal and interest already paid over the past three years.

At the time, he thought interest rates had dropped a lot and prices had retreated from their 2021 peaks, so it seemed like an opportunity.

Unexpectedly, that same 1.6 million yuan can now buy a large 120-130 square meter three-bedroom apartment in his community.

My brother's apartment is in a mid-rise building constructed in 2012, with four units per floor and a decent floor level.

But the fatal flaw is that it's 5 kilometers from the subway station. There are no decent shopping malls or wet markets nearby, lacking any everyday vitality.

The fate of these two apartments is strikingly similar, but the reasons aren't exactly the same:

My apartment lacks competitiveness due to its age and poor amenities; the absence of an elevator and good schools, plus its advanced age, are fatal flaws.

My brother's apartment was dragged down by its remote location and the broader environment. When the tide goes out, properties far from core functions are the first to be caught skinny-dipping.

Thinking about it carefully, the only ones who can laugh in this downturn are probably those who got on the property ladder back in the 2000s.

No matter how much prices fall, they won't drop back to the era when those people bought. We, on the other hand, happened to catch the last baton of the inflating bubble.

Every time I open a real estate app, it feels like a knife to the chest.

But I'm also clear that even if time could be turned back, returning to that atmosphere of universal anxiety and fear of missing out, I would probably still make the same choice.

So, let it be.

Perhaps the essence of a house is half asset, half home. When the market is good, it's like a money printer; when the market is bad, at least it's still a place with a light left on for you late at night.

Just consider the hundreds of thousands that vanished as the tuition fee for this life experience of struggle.

Otherwise, with the saving ability of ordinary people like us, if we hadn't bought a house, that money would probably have quietly disappeared into the messy expenses of daily life anyway.

As long as you don't sell, you haven't lost. This isn't just Ah Q spirit; it's the only way to cut ourselves some slack in an uncertain era.

Source: Ruirui's Forward Diary