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it is hard to imagine that when the overall real estate market is in a downturn, the luxury housing market is extremely hot, especially the top luxury housing in the county, which has become the object of competition.

when business is good, wealthy businessmen want to use less money to invest in houses, which has high liquidity and low risk; but in difficult times, ensuring that assets will not shrink severely as much as possible has become the only option.

text | wang xiao

interview | wang xiaotian yun moxiao

edit | xin ye

operations | killer whale

18 seconds to empty out

until three months later, levi still could not forget that exciting scene. as soon as the countdown to the opening ended, the fingers of those who used their mobile phones to grab houses online flew. the empty space on the big screen was quickly occupied and filled with the names of buyers. in only 18 seconds, the good news popped up - "congratulations to wanjing guanyun." sold out successfully!”

more than 300 people have made reservations to buy houses in advance, but there are only 78 properties released in the first phase, which are "very easy to grab (empty)." as the marketing manager of yiwu's top luxury homes, levi's tone is full of pride.

it is hard to imagine that when the overall real estate market is in a downturn, the luxury housing market is extremely hot, especially the top luxury housing in the county, which has become the object of competition. on june 24, wanjing guanyun opened for sale. this is a luxury real estate located in the main urban area of ​​yiwu. the unit price of the townhouses developed in the first phase is 65,000 yuan/square meter, with a total price of more than 10 million yuan to more than 30 million yuan. each villa has a building area of ​​about 220 to 500 square meters and a floor height of 4 meters.

▲ the appearance of wanjing guanyun villa. picture/badu real estate

when the real estate was still under development, levi's was full of expectations, "this project will definitely not lose money." previously, his badu real estate had not set up a sales department. in march this year, the company spent more than one million yuan to build a temporary exhibition hall, which only contained simple house models. but even if it is only temporary, two to three hundred groups of customers come in every day to inquire, and there are even more people on weekends.

if you want to grab a house with a view of the world, you must not only use your hand speed when selecting a house, but also your connections. news has been released very early that wanjing guanyun will release a second batch of houses. the pre-sale certificates will be released in september. as soon as the first batch of houses were sold out, someone found levi's through connections and said, "you must buy the second batch." .

this is not the only top luxury property in the county that is up for grabs. in may of this year, another top luxury property in yiwu launched 88 courtyard villas to participate in the lottery. all were sold out in less than two hours, and sales exceeded 2 billion yuan for the first time.

compared to wanjing guanyun, the villas in fengqi chaoming are more expensive. the highest price is more than 40 million yuan, and the cheapest one is more than 15 million yuan. according to official data released by developer greentown, since its opening, although the number of visitors has been limited to 100 groups per day, the number of visiting customers has far exceeded expectations.

pre-registration is required to buy a house, and 2 million yuan of funds must be frozen during registration before you can become an intended home buyer. on the day of the lottery, 325 groups submitted applications, and the sales department also specially invited a notary office to notarize the applications. the winning rate of the lottery on that day was only 27%. in other words, most people who want to buy it can’t.

▲ real picture of fengqi chaoming villa. picture/yiwu greentown

not only in yiwu, but also in jiangyin, a county-level city in wuxi, jiangsu, the sales performance of villas is also quite good. for example, the number of sales of the high-end villa project "jianfa tianhao bay" in 2023 accounted for 32% of the number of villas sold in jiangyin city worth 5 million yuan, and accounted for 55.5% of the number of villas worth 10 million yuan.

in li lanlan's impression, luxury houses in the county seem to have always been in high demand. she lived in jianyang city, sichuan province and did various businesses, including opening a beauty salon and selling cosmetics. later, she gradually shifted her focus to selling sand and other construction materials. a few years before the outbreak, real estate investment was still booming, and many properties were built in jianyang.

unlike real estate investment in first- and second-tier cities, in county towns, there are often only a few reliable developers, and the house trading market in county towns is often a society of acquaintances. neighbors, relatives and friends gathered together and talked about the new trends in popular real estate projects.

li lanlan remembers that in 2019, a reliable developer in jianyang obtained a piece of land and planned it to be turned into a villa development. the purchase process for that property is as follows: interested buyers must first pay hundreds of thousands of yuan as a deposit, only then can they be qualified to purchase a house and "queue up." when the property goes on sale, people in line can automatically give up and not buy, but only those who line up in advance are eligible to buy.

several of the neighbors i knew well had all paid their deposits and lined up early. even though li lanlan had no plans to change houses at that time, she decided to "line up first and then talk about it." when we arrived at the temporarily built sales department, we found that it was quite popular. there were more than a dozen windows open, and there was a long queue behind each one.

levis has been in the real estate industry for nearly two decades. he roughly divides people who buy townhouses into two categories - businessmen who are not short of money themselves, and ordinary people who have dreams of villas. whether it is the environmental setting or the details of the house, wanjing guanyun seems to have accurately targeted the customer group at the former.

generally speaking, villa properties have a demonstration area, where buyers can visit and understand the architectural style and living environment of the villa, which is also equivalent to the facade of the entire property. in order to create a facade with a view of the world, badu real estate spent nearly 160 million to create a top luxury demonstration area with a construction area of ​​about 28,000 square meters.

the details are also very particular. levis remembers that in order to select a tree worthy of the facade, the company boss took the landscape team to visit various places in japan. from more than 10,000 candidate pine trees, they repeatedly compared heights, branch points and other details, and finally selected 6 japanese mikawa trees. the price of each dragon scale black pine is around 850,000 yuan.

▲ viewing the clouds in a world of japanese black pine scenery. picture/yiwu eighteen tune

money flow

compared with the popularity of top-end luxury homes, the overall property market in the county once felt cold.

in addition to the wanjingguanyun project, levi's is also responsible for selling flat-floor, ordinary residences and other types of units. however, nowadays, it is difficult to sell ordinary residences in the county. "almost no one buys a house that is just needed." and those who have money want to investors are afraid to buy in the face of falling housing prices.

since the beginning of this year, housing prices in yiwu have been falling. take binjiang futianli near yiwu trade city as an example. previously, it could sell for more than 30,000 yuan per square meter, but now, "i don't have a detailed calculation, but i should be able to get it for 18,000 yuan." volume has also been falling. in the real estate circle, there is a saying of "golden nine and silver ten". these two months are usually regarded as the peak season for real estate sales. however, this year, the golden nine and silver ten that agents have been looking forward to seem to be a bit cold. house prices in yiwu have generally fallen by 25%, and "a down payment has been lost."

but at the same time, the people in the county who have the most purchasing power, especially the rich in the county in economically developed areas such as jiangsu, zhejiang and shanghai, are buying larger and larger houses.

hu yuxiao usually works in real estate self-media and takes clients to view houses. he has studied the changes in zhejiang people’s preferences for buying houses from 2018 to the present. zhejiang people like to invest in real estate to make money. before 2021, the houses with the most circulation in the entire zhejiang market are mainly small units. at that time, almost everyone felt that no matter how policies were adjusted, housing prices in the county would only get higher and higher. people who are doing business or have spare money will buy a house, and it is usually less than 120 square meters, and the maximum will not exceed 140 square meters, because "the total price of a house of this size is controllable, and it can be bought for several million." can make money.

2021 is a watershed year. hu yuxiao discovered that after that, large houses of 200 to 400 square meters began to appear frequently in zhejiang's county-level markets. many large apartment buildings were sold out immediately. there was one project with more than 300 apartments without any publicity. however, the first phase of the project was immediately sold out, with "even the first and second floors being snapped up."

nowadays, those large flats that were once popular are no longer easy to sell. some intermediary friends complained to him that “large flats cannot be sold at all.” occasionally, they would chat about the direction of housing prices. many friends thought, “it may collapse.” ". a considerable number of wealthy people have set their sights on larger luxury villas, and they must be the ones with the most advantageous geographical location. "no one will buy the villas located in the suburbs."

wanjing guanyun is the best example.

the core of yiwu is the trade city. countless bosses use the trade city as their starting point to expand their business nationwide and even around the world. the straight-line distance from wanjing guanyun to the trade city is only 1.6 kilometers, and the drive takes two minutes. "e-commerce bosses and big shots will definitely like it, and you can even take a nap when you come back." the same goes for fengqi chaoming, which occupies the core position in the old city of yiwu.

▲ location map of wanjing guanyun project. picture/badu real estate

for people in the industry, the gold content of this land is higher. in the past, row houses were built on the edges of towns or urban areas, and there was never a corresponding supply of land in the city center. in levi's view, the land now released by the government for low-density row houses is rare. "it is equivalent to the land on the edge of beijing's second ring road. it took 20 years to release such a piece of land."

for wealthy people in the county, there are deeper considerations when buying top-end luxury homes. this may be one of the few places where money can flow. although villas are relatively difficult to circulate, they are still resilient in today's real estate market. when business is good, wealthy businessmen want to use less money to invest in houses, which has high liquidity and low risk; but in difficult times, ensuring that assets will not shrink severely as much as possible has become the only option.

li jigang has been designing luxury homes for more than ten years, mainly for clients in jinhua, zhejiang and surrounding county-level cities. he often talks about the business trend in recent years. there is a customer who just purchased a townhouse in a county near jinhua not long ago. the business was very large in the past few years and the order volume was relatively stable. however, the profit has dropped significantly in the past two years. the original order of one million yuan could earn one hundred thousand yuan, but now he can only earn 60,000 to 70,000 yuan.

fortunately, he still saved some money, but after looking for a long time, he couldn't find a suitable investment track, so he simply bought a villa, "at least the value preservation effect is better."

although expensive, villas seem to be a "more cost-effective" option for some people who buy property in the county.

zhang hengyi runs a textile business in zhuji, zhejiang. his family of four originally lived in a three-bedroom and two-living house. as his two daughters grew up, he planned to upgrade to a larger house. his experience of looking at houses was a process of constantly raising his sights - at first, he only wanted to buy a large flat with a budget of about 5 million yuan, but after looking at a few houses, he thought that the large flat would still be on the same floor. you can buy a duplex by adding a few hundred thousand.

after looking at a few more duplexes, the agent keenly captured his thoughts and began to recommend villas to him, "it's also a matter of adding hundreds of thousands more, and it can still maintain its value." as he looked at it, he thought, "i might as well buy a townhouse in one step." in the end, zhang hengyi spent 6.8 million yuan on a townhouse in the second ring road of zhuji the year before last, which was nearly 2 million yuan more than the original budget.

there are also people who buy townhouses with an investment mentality. after queuing up and paying the money at first, li lanlan thought that when the house came down, the price might go up. she could buy one and then resell it, "and maybe make some money."

▲ townhouse villa. picture/visual china

circle

for those who buy luxury homes, the mansion itself is a business card and a piece of social capital. buying a luxury home in a county also means entering a new circle.

from the marketing stage, luxury houses in the county have attached great importance to circle culture. when selling ordinary residences, levi's, as the developer, only needs to contact intermediaries such as lianjia and i love my home. however, the marketing of luxury homes is a different set of logic, which requires strategies and connections.

when the wanjing guanyun project was first established, levi's found acquaintances from various chambers of commerce and associations in yiwu. he first inquired about the most profitable industries at present, locked in the circles to be opened, and then made targeted appointments with important sales targets. hold dinner parties to promote houses.

levi's often chats with customers about the current business situation. there is a client who specializes in foreign trade in the middle east market. in the early years, the business has been mediocre, but in the past three years, "the business has started to get better." as for those who mainly deal with the european and american markets, their business has gone silent. levi's came to a conclusion in his mind: in the field of e-commerce, the middle east circuit is currently making money. the bosses make money quickly and invest generously, while the european and american circuits are hardly interesting.

wanjing guanyun is different from other luxury houses. the price of the house is higher. "you have to find the most influential and powerful person in yiwu." there are more than 20 people at a dinner party. everyone will introduce themselves first and introduce the project at hand. there are also things to pay attention to when reporting one's family status. "the attitude should be neither humble nor arrogant, and it should be as high as possible."

before going there, levi's had a correct attitude: it was not to sell a few houses on the spot, but mainly to let everyone know that the future buyers of this project "all have a net worth of tens of millions" and sell it. every time he spoke, levi would only give a general introduction to the location and style of the ten thousand realms cloud viewing project, and then explain the origin in detail when someone really asked.

circle marketing does work. before the opening, many people found levi's through people at the dinner party and wanted to buy a house. "the relationship was obviously deeper." each dinner party is like a high-end private domain. since last year, levi's has had three or four dinner parties almost every week.

the circle of luxury houses in the county is also reflected in the decoration style.

li jigang recently received a business deal. while renovating a new mansion, he also had to renovate the original old mansion. the old villa was built more than ten years ago. as soon as he entered the house, he subconsciously exclaimed: "it's so magnificent." the entire house is paved with marble, and the pillars on the first and second floors are all made of jade. the european-style spiral staircase , a huge crystal chandelier, "it was estimated that one cost tens of thousands at that time." but looking at it from the current aesthetic point of view, the house is full of lines, and various complicated elements are stacked together, making it look both luxurious and messy. when dismantling the soft furnishings, some workers joked, "it's like entering a ktv."

▲ european style luxury decoration. picture/visual china

nowadays, the styles favored by the rich have obviously changed. those who originally advocated european style want to switch to new chinese style or modern style. the core purpose is to reduce complex lines. the decoration styles of prefecture-level cities and county towns are also different. when li jigang was renovating luxury homes in jinhua city, he discovered that many of the owners were young rich second generation people who wanted to adopt a minimalist style. it would be best if the sky, floor, and walls were the same color, and the furniture only had two or three elements. "look." go up and the whole house is spotless”.

but when i arrived in the county town, although i also wanted to be simple, i had to "simple yet luxurious". li jigang found that the owners of luxury houses in the county are generally older and cannot accept the simplicity of "nothing". moreover, the owners have different requirements for "luxury" in different regions. yiwu's small commodity industry has developed the best. many owners have very high requirements for furniture accessories, both in terms of texture and aesthetics. dongyang's mahogany is the most famous, and owners there like to move mahogany furniture into their homes; and yongkang is most famous for its as for stone, yongkang’s customers also pay more attention to the high-end feel of stone, which has many marble elements.

▲ mahogany furniture. picture/visual china

buying a mansion also means squeezing into the circle, but at the same time, people are also being disciplined by the circle the moment they buy a mansion. when zhang hengyi first renovated, he set a budget of two million in advance, but when it came to the actual decoration, he found that two million was simply not enough.

although he is decorating his own house, zhang hengyi always considers "what others think" unconsciously. take air conditioners as an example. at first, zhang hengyi looked around at domestic brands. a whole-house central air conditioner plus an on-hook unit only cost more than 70,000 yuan. but then he thought about it. the neighbors who lived around him were all respectable and had decent jobs. if they came to the house as guests, the brand of the air conditioner would be obvious. he had to use a big imported brand that was worthy of a row house. this adjustment would not be enough. the price of air conditioners suddenly rose to 180,000.

this kind of consideration runs through almost the entire renovation process. when choosing a sofa, the total budget for a whole-house sofa was originally 150,000 yuan. a sofa from a well-known brand costs more than 20,000 yuan and has good quality. but when i looked back, i saw that the custom-made sofa worth more than 50,000 yuan was obviously higher-end. "we have already lived in the townhouses, and if it exceeds the (budget), it will exceed the limit." after upgrading, another 270,000 yuan was spent.

zhang hengyi felt that there was always a voice echoing in his head, "now that we are living in terraced houses, the brands (brands used) should not be too bad." under this concept, an additional 70,000 to 80,000 yuan was added here, and an additional 50,000 to 60,000 yuan was added there. there are already many decoration projects for the townhouses, and zhang hengyi has already spent two million on the more detailed customization of the whole house.

changes happen too fast

it usually takes several years from buying a luxury home to handing over and decorating it. many people did not expect that the environment would change so quickly.

when he first bought the villa in jianyang, sichuan, li lanlan just wanted to get a spot. when the house went on sale, there were new members in the family. after his son finished his studies, he decided to go back to his hometown to develop his career. he married a wife and had children, and the number of people suddenly increased. the house that li lanlan originally lived in was quite old, with outdated water pipes and other facilities, and there was no elevator. she thought about it comprehensively and decided that she happened to have a quota to buy a house, so she might as well just buy it and live in it.

li lanlan and her son sold their two houses and bought a townhouse together. but at the same time, li lanlan's business has also changed. she mainly sells construction materials such as sand and gravel. during the epidemic, many projects faced suspension or even completion. the orders in hand were reduced by more than half. it became increasingly difficult to pay the final payment, and customers kept delaying. in order to save overall expenses, li lanlan decided to strictly control the decoration budget to 3 million yuan.

when renovating, li lanlan would save as much as possible as long as he could save anything. the business didn't pick up, so she kept an eye on it all day when she had free time. from hiring workers, finding materials to supervising the construction period, she did a lot of the work herself, saving some labor costs. in addition, materials should also be saved. li lanlan is in the construction business and knows many friends in the construction industry. buying bricks or stones is much cheaper than others, "you can get it at a 20-30% discount."

when there is plenty of money on hand, many difficulties will not arise, but with a tight budget, li lanlan has to make a difficult balance between her own preferences, high-quality materials and low prices.

the most frustrating thing is the choice of wood. li lanlan likes solid wood furniture. at first, she wanted to make all the pillars and doors in her home from solid wood. however, the cost of wood is too high. in order to bring down the price, li lanlan took advantage of her career and went to the timber markets in guangdong, zhejiang and other places to compare prices one by one to make sure she knew what she was doing. but after asking in several markets, the cheapest original wooden door cost more than 10,000 yuan. as soon as li lanlan heard the price, she knew that "it couldn't be done."

▲ villa log door. picture/visual china

in the end, li lanlan had no choice but to choose composite panels as an alternative, saving thousands of yuan per door. calculating the whole house, it can save hundreds of thousands of dollars. even though the luster of the composite board cannot stand up to closer inspection, and "the texture and layers are obviously different from the original wood," li lanlan can only comfort herself that the money saved can be used for other purposes.

but even though the budget was strictly controlled, li lanlan still failed to anticipate changes in the environment. she originally thought that the cash flow from her business could last through the renovation period. unexpectedly, the big orders in the past two years have almost disappeared, the business is very tight, and the cash flow is simply not enough to pay for it. as a last resort, li lanlan sold the last house in her family. after the decoration was completed, she still owed money to the decoration company.

zhang hengyi once felt that he was very lucky. he has been in the textile factory business for more than ten years and has been steadily rising. even during the epidemic, when many industries shut down production, his factory's production of elastic straps for masks soared, with large quantities of goods shipped every day. "during the epidemic, we also made three million."

unexpectedly, after the epidemic, the business was greatly affected. in the past two years, the foreign orders zhang hengyi has received are not as good as before. especially this year, they have dropped by 90%, which is "almost equivalent to none." the domestic textile business is also in a slump. people seem to be less interested in buying clothes than before. this has also affected every link in the chain. "there is no business" for zhang hengyi's upstream and downstream companies.

he also began to consciously control the decoration budget, mainly to strike a balance between appearance and cost-effectiveness - considering appearance when visible, and considering cost-effectiveness when invisible. for example, for floor tiles, he bypassed the high-end floor tiles that cost more than 400 yuan a piece and chose the ones that cost more than 200 yuan a piece because the floor tiles "have no logo and are too expensive for others to see, so there is no need."

li jigang has seen more luxury property owners whose businesses have been affected. change happens faster and harder to predict than imagined. some clients who are not short of money start to save their decoration budget, but still want to use high-end materials, so they ask li jigang for more discounts, and try to save more on other places. "they are obviously more cautious about spending money."

in addition to reduced budgets, buyers of luxury homes in the county seem to be paying more attention to their health. one customer pays special attention to the decoration of the bedroom and has extremely high requirements for air conditioning. not only must the temperature and humidity be controlled, but the air supply mode also has requirements. "the wind should caress the body like a feather." after li jigang chatted with his client, he learned that he usually uses his brain a lot, and it has not been easy to make money in recent years. he often suffers from neurasthenia and has difficulty falling asleep at night.

more uneasiness needs to be settled through some mysterious methods. li jigang found that in recent years, almost all customers believe more in feng shui, or the power of metaphysics. once, he decorated a client's house halfway, but he hired a feng shui expert to take a look and found that there were problems with the entire house. the client immediately tore down the half-finished decoration and sold it.

as business shrinks and the environment becomes increasingly uncontrollable, people's expectations become more concrete and realistic. zhang hengyi now hopes even more: to safeguard the remaining domestic market, take every step steadily, and that customers can pay on time. as for whether the house will rise or fall in the future, he no longer thinks about it.

▲ luxury living. picture/visual china

(except for hu yuxiao and li jigang, all interviewees in this article have pseudonyms.)