Understanding China's Real Estate Markets: Development, Finance, and Investment

China’s economy has been transforming rapidly over the last 25 years. As a result, Chinese conurbations have changed remarkably, with cities expanding both vertically and horizontally, and the physical environment acting as a medium for unprecedented urbanization. This has provided vast opportunities for investors, real estate developers, and service companies, but also presents huge challenges—as traditional city spaces have been reconfigured, environmental risks and the volatility of real estate markets increased. However, as engagement with China is becoming strategically important for many, forming a synthesized lens through which to read China across the vicissitudes of its real estate sector bears historic significance. By offering an insightful framework and structure for understanding China’s variegated real estate dynamics, players, and markets, Understanding China’s Real Estate Markets codifies the principles and practices of real estate development, finance, and investment in China and builds foundations for future academic research and practical knowledge in shaping and engaging the urban environment within China and beyond.

About the Author

Bing Wang is the Associate Professor in Practice of Real Estate and the Built Environment at Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD). She is Faculty Co-Chair for the Real Estate Management executive program, a joint program between Harvard Business School and Harvard Design School, and directs the GSD’s Advanced Management Development Program, the school’s advanced education activities for senior real estate executives. Wang obtained her doctorate and master’s degrees from Harvard University and her B.Arch. from Tsinghua University. On her industry experience, Wang worked at Lehman Brothers before founding her own real estate investment management firms, with Citigroup, Starwood Capital, Cargill, and Rockpoint as institutional shareholders. Wang acts as an investment advisor and developer for multinational companies in the USA, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore. She is also a design principal of her own design firm. Her publications include journal papers, book chapters, and the books The Architectural Profession of Modern China (2011), Prestige Retail Design and Development (2014), and Global Leadership in Real Estate and Design (2015). She is on the Steering Committee of Harvard China Fund, on the board of the Chinese Society of Urban Studies, and is an elected Board Director of the American Real Estate Society.

Tobias Just is the Managing and Academic Director at the IREBS Immobilienakademie and a Professor of Real Estate at the University of Regensburg (Germany). Prof. Just studied Economics in Hamburg (Germany) and Uppsala (Sweden). His doctoral dissertation was awarded the university science prize in 2001. He subsequently worked for more than ten years at Deutsche Bank Research. Prof. Just has published more than 160 papers in professional and academic journals and books and eight books on various real estate and economics topics. He is President of the German Society of Property Researchers (gif), and an editor for ZIÖ – the German Journal of Real Estate Research. In 2017, Prof. Just became a Fellow of the RICS. From 2012 to 2018 he was a member of the Executive Management Board of the German section of the Urban Land Institute.