By Xinhua writer Han Qiao
BEIJING, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- Zhu Jianying feels lucky that he held off from buying an apartment in the first half of this year. The Beijing property he is looking at has fallen in price by around 80,000 yuan (12,600 U.S. dollars) since then.
"It is not a big amount of money compared to the total price of one of these apartments, more than 1 million yuan, but 80,000 yuan is several years of saving," says Zhu, 29, an engineer working for an IT company in China's capital.
Zhu is one of many young prospective homebuyers in China who are pooling all resources to buy an apartment. The money Zhu and others can save from falling home price are likely not just to ease strains on their family budgets, but to have profound implications to the Chinese economy and society as a whole.
Zhu and his newlywed wife stay in a rented one-bedroom apartment. They are looking for a second-hand two-bedroom apartment near a metro station with a budget of 1.4 million yuan.
They plan to loan 800,000 from banks, the maximum amount Zhu is eligible to apply for. To get the remaining 600,000 yuan, the couple and their countryside-dwelling parents have pooled all their savings, including their "emergency funds."
Falling home prices make Zhu relieved. "As I spend less, I can pay back some money borrowed from my parents. They are old and vulnerable to illness. They need the money," he says.
For Zhu, it hurts that his parents are saving up at their age to help him. "For most average people in rural China, 80,000 yuan is a huge amount of money," he says.
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