Across China: Spring Festival brings rural property mini-boo
BEIJING, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- For many Chinese rural migrant workers, the Spring Festival holiday is a chance to buy their own home where they can eventually settle down in small counties.
This year, 43-year-old Li Yingrong decided to end a decade of rootless life selling snacks in the streets of Kunming and spend all of her and her husband's savings on an apartment in a small county in Sichuan Province in southwest China.
The couple and their two sons prefer to live somewhere busier than their nearby rural hometown and took out a 200,000 yuan (30,000 U.S. dollars) mortgage with a monthly repayment of 1,000 yuan.
The deal, Li said, included 15 percent discount on the price and two complementary household appliances. "It's a transient life as migrant worker, but there are many factories here now and we can find a job nearby," said Li. She estimates that about 90 percent of buyers in the area are migrant workers.
In Hubei Province, 1,200 km east of Sichuan, migrant workers were also found hectically viewing apartments during the holiday. Promotions specially tailored for them such as "zero down payment for returnees" were widely available.
In Laohekou, a small Hubei city, property consultant Gu Che said that although the local government had ruled that the minimum down payment should be 20 percent of the price for a first-time buyer, developers offered to pay on account to capitalize on the boom.
In Hong'an, a county of only 100,000 people, residential developers even gave free train tickets and red envelopes filled with money to prospective buyers, plus an offer of 10,000 yuan in cash.
HOME IS WHERE THE BARGAIN IS