Beijing Olympics: the real estate boom in the eurozone PMI index failure 
"Empty," said Jack Rodman, a real estate expert, while pointing from the window of his office on the fortieth plan, a prism of silver rising toward the sky in Beijing. "A beautiful building, but not even a tenant is completely empty." "Empty". This is the refrain on her finger while jumping from one building to another, faster and faster, and only a few of them are barely occupied sparsely.
estate expansion began in Beijing before the Olympics, filling the capital's Communist serious angled architectural feats that excelled on the front pages of newspapers and design. Now, six months after the end of the Olympics, the city continues to impress at night, and thanks to the neon lights up the horizon spread. By day, however, it is clear that many buildings are "invisible" to use a term coined during the expansion of the 80 real estate in Texas.
Rodman According to calculations, 500 million square feet of commercial buildings have been built in Beijing since 2006, more than the entire office space in this Manhattan. It does not include large projects developed by the government. He claims that 100 million square feet of offices are vacant, an offer for the next 14 years if they were leased to the rhythms better, from 2004 to 2006, when they were occupied about 7 million square feet a year.
"The tremendous growth has been unprecedented in the world," said Roadman was born in Los Angeles but who lives in Beijing and runs a company called Global Distressed Solutions. "It 's one thing against logic, it makes no sense."
The cranes can be seen on the horizon yet, but more are still, waiting for new funding to resume work. The billboards announcing new attractions, "an iconic landmark" or "international Wonderland", which are still to be completed. A commercial area in a project called "The vibrant shopping street is empty.
In a country where protests are rare, immigrant workers find themselves faced with many projects under construction to give voice to their protests. "Our employer has escaped with the money and is now nowhere to be found," says Li Zirong, a worker immigrant from Shaanxi province, which was responsible for a spectacular building with windows shaped like portholes.
What differentiates this cycle of boom-recession in Western Europe and the fact that China has no private ownership of land, which makes local government partners that the real estate industry, with big profits arising out of the deal and from the sale of the land themselves.
Yasheng Huang, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, responsible for the crisis shows how the Chinese Communist Party and its resistance to a true market economy. "The lack of land reform has fueled the housing bubble and now it is reflecting negative," says Huang, author of "Capitalism with Chinese characteristics," published last year. "They should be more checks and balances in respect of land acquisition by the government."
The government spent $ 43 million for the Olympics, about three times more than any other host city. But many buildings have been too large, expensive and the most photogenic and practical.
The National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, has only one event this year in construction: an opera "Turandot" on August 8, the first anniversary of the initial ceremony of the Olympics. The football team has refused China's most important to play, saying it would be embarrassing to use a 91,000 seater stadium for the games that normally attracts 10,000 spectators. The building, which cost $ 9 million a year for maintenance, is destined to become a shopping complex in the coming years, the owner announced last month.
A baseball stadium opened this spring with a game between the Dodgers and the San Diego Padres has been demolished. The owner said he also wanted to use the land for a shopping center.
Among the buildings only the main Olympic National Aquatics Center, nicknamed the Water Cube, had a second productive life. It 'used to sound and light shows, with fountains of light dancing in the aisles of swimming where Michael Phelps won his gold medals.
All around the Olympic complex, there are empty buildings and dark, as the information center of the Games, still waiting for occupants. A shopping mall that stretches for about a quarter of a mile along the road from the complex is empty.
"They wanted to build 'the largest in the world this' and 'the largest in the world,' but these buildings have a long-term economic benefit equal to zero," says Huang.
addition, the holding of the Olympics Beijing has led to about a half million residents evicted from their homes, according to the Center on Housing Rights and Evictions in Geneva.
In this exciting city of 17 million inhabitants, there is an insatiable demand for housing, but prices remain out of reach for many residents. The American-style homes in gated communities with names like Versailles, testing, or Arcadia Riviera are on sale for more than one million dollars. Within the Fourth Ring Road, the road that borders the central part of the city, two and three bedroom apartments are offered at $ 800,000 in apartment buildings such as Central Park and Riverside.
"These prices are similar to those in New York, but we are in China. We do not have that amount of money," says Zhang Huizhan, entrepreneur aged 55, who owns a furniture company in China. For five years is looking for an apartment for him and his wife with $ 150,000 available.
The average wage in Beijing is less than $ 6,000 a year.
Kuijis Louis, an economist at the World Bank in Beijing, says that a lack of oversight by the government's real estate industry has led manufacturers to focus only on the luxury market while ignoring the mass market. "If you think that demand is infinite for any type of construction and you have only 200 square meters of land, build luxury apartments to derive greater profit," says Kuijis.
For its part, the government acknowledged in 2007 that meeting the housing market was a bubble, according to economists. In an effort to make buildings more accessible, the restrictions were introduced for properties and second homes for foreign buyers. But the measures came too late, speeding up the collapse in the market was weak.
The Beijing Municipal Office of Statistics has reported that sales of homes in the city dropped by 40% last year. Chinese economists predict that prices will fall further by 15-20% this year in Beijing. Shanghai has suffered a similar collapse.
"You can look at this process as a healthy correction for the market", says Kuijs. In the long run, he says, "urbanization China and its further development will lead to a very strong growth in demand for real estate in the city. "
Before this happens, the situation could get worse. Many of the buildings were financed by Chinese banks, who declined to rectify the loans. If they were forced to do so in the future, this would probably have a ripple effect throughout the economy.
"Finally, someone has to pay the consequences," says the real estate expert Roadman.
Beijing's Olympic building boom Becomes to bust see also: Construction market at the terminus Tower symbol of Dubai delayed between controversy and layoffs Shopping vacant
still negative economic data: New orders for durable goods fell in January by 5.2% over the previous month and 23.3% compared to January 2008, the latter figure is the record low since statistics in 1960. 
