Sieren's China: Till the apartment do you part

At the end of August, from one day to the next a large group of people gathered in front of the divorce office in the Shanghai district of Jing'an. Whereas about 10 divorces a day used to be the norm in previous years, overnight there were now some 100 couples wanting to end their marriages. Situated near the French Concession district with its leafy roads and splendid villas, Jing'an is also popular with Shanghai residents because of its schools. A seventh-grader recently announced that his parents had bought an 80-square-meter two-room apartment directly opposite the school for 3.6 million yuan (ca. 486,000 euros) not only so that he did not have far to go to lessons, enabling him to sleep longer, but also so that he would have it as a marriage portion when he was old enough to take a wife.

For it remains the case in China that those who want to be a good match have to own at least one apartment in a good area. Traditionally, this still applies primarily to men. It is, however, becoming increasingly common for both sets of parents to join forces in helping a newly married couple buy an apartment at all. As the prices of real estate rise in China's megacities, the government is taking measures to ensure that the market does not overheat and a bubble does not threaten. In August, it was found that in 30 Chinese cities the average price of a newly built apartment was 14 percent higher than in 2015. The National Bureau of Statistics announced that the price of new apartments in China's large and medium-sized cities had risen every month since the beginning of the year.

Exploding real estate in big cities

In cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, the prices have risen so much that the authorities have decided to regulate the purchase of apartments by married couples more strictly. They are now allowed to buy second apartments only under more difficult conditions. Only singles can still buy a second apartment without large amounts of their own capital. The queue in front of the divorce office in Shanghai can be attributed partly to the fact that the authorities are rumored to be thinking about introducing stricter rules on divorced people buying apartments. According to the rumors, those who have just separated will have to wait for a year before being able to purchase apartments as official singles again. Or even worse, in the first year as divorcees, they will be able to buy apartments only at a severe disadvantage. For it has become common practice in many places to divorce in order to buy separate apartments more easily as singles.

In Shenzhen, for example, some 45 percent of apartments sold last year were bought by people who had divorced. The divorce rate was accordingly high. While single people have to pay only 30 percent of an apartment's price in cash, married people who want to buy a second home have to put up 50 or even 70 percent. The real-estate market is so tight that the Shanghai authorities are said to be wondering now whether to make this a condition for people who have been divorced for less than a year as well. While they deny this, and the real-estate agent who spread the rumor has been arrested, the rules could change at any time.

Marriage or good returns

Those unwilling to take risks and who still have enough capital to buy an apartment are acting pragmatically and divorcing. Some couples also simply do not have enough money to buy an apartment together. Moreover, many of China's one-child generation do not see the point of marrying. "Till death do you part" is no longer the case in China, and has not been for some time. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 3.8 million couples divorced last year - 5.6 percent more than in 2014. The real-estate market is one of the reasons.

Vanke, China's biggest real-estate developer by sales, recently confirmed that the size of the surfaces being sold for apartments in 14 cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, had increased by over 47 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2015. On average, an apartment in Shanghai's city district costs 45,000 yuan (6,000 euros) per square meter. Average returns in real estate are over 10 percent. This makes it easier for couples who can afford an extra apartment to decide not to remain together till death. Divorce no longer means that the love is not there. It can be just a question of wanting more returns.

DW's Frank Sieren has lived in Beijing for more than 20 years.