Excellent Article On Shanghai's Housing Boom/Bust Except....

.... for the minor detail that the first line is... sorta completely wrong....

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-chinabubble8jan08,0,7585034.story?track=hpmostemailedlink

Don LeeTimes Staff Writer January 8, 2006 SHANGHAI

American homeowners wondering what follows a housing bubble can look to China's largest city. Once one of the hottest markets in the world, sales of homes have virtually halted in some areas of Shanghai, prompting developers to slash prices and real estate brokerages to shutter thousands of offices....

And...

"The entire industry is scaling back," said Mu Wijie, a regional manager at Century 21 China, who estimated that 3,000 brokerage offices had closed since spring.....

And...

Although the city's 20 million residents represent less than 2% of China's population of 1.3 billion, Xie says, Shanghai accounts for an astounding 20% of the country's property value. About 1 million homes in Shanghai alone - about half the number of housing starts for the entire United States in 2004 - are under construction.

That demonstrates how little relationship there is between the housing markets of the United States and Shanghai.

Now here's an illustration of how little relationship there is between the housing markets of California and China; in Shanghai, a city of 20 million, about a 1,000,000 homes are built per year while in California, with over 37 million people, we are only building little more than 200,000 homes a year.

That means in Shanghai, they are building one house for every 20 people and in California we are building one house for every.... 185 people, and that does not even cover population growth.
Two dramatically different markets.

Other than that, though - it's a great article!