Own Your Hutong Dream Home for Just RMB 600 Million
We knew Beijing real-estate was getting a bit out of hand, but this is just ridiculous.
Sotheby's International Realty are advertising a hutong residence near Gulou Dajie for a cool RMB 600 million. That puts each square foot of the five-bedroom, 17,286-square-foot residence at RMB 34,710. Wow.
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It’s the same old story in any real-estate market. First the skinny jean'd, craft beer-drinking hipsters roll in on their fixed-gear bikes, and next thing you know, Wendi Deng has bought up the neighborhood.
One expat family profiled in The Wall Street Journal rent out a hutong home featuring a sauna, a downstairs playroom, two kitchens and a master bathroom with built-in closets. Their two kids, aged six and nine, even have their own private building featuring a wooden bathtub. WSJ estimates the rent for that home is anywhere between RMB 50-60,000 yuan per month.
Prices are likely to keep rising as supply shrinks. The number of these traditional alleys formed by the outer wall of courtyard homes dropped from about 7,000 in 1949 to 1,350 as of 2008, according to the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, and has probably decreased since then.
