Housing Affordability Comparison of Chinese Big Cities

In recent years, housing is a theme that concerned by most Chinese citizens. There exist vast differences in house prices among different cities in China, especially in large cities. So this paper collects the dates of house prices and family income from 2000 to 2008 in ten large Chinese cities in order to analyze residential housing affordability. A new indicator for Surplus after Monthly Mortgage Payment and Basic Expenditure is introduced in this study. Most cities experienced a great increase in both housing prices and house price-to-income ratio during the period 2005-2007. All these cities experienced a house price-to-income ratio decrease in 2008. The results indicate that house prices in all the sample cities are a burden for their citizens. Average-income families from Nanjing, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Chongqing enjoy better housing affordability than those in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hangzhou. At last, some policy suggestions are also provided.