Abstract
In this paper we address ‘ordinary’ Chinese buyers in London’s residential real estate market. We argue that current academic and policy analysis, particularly of elites, has focused on the higher-end of the market and over-emphasised the detached nature of international buyers. In contrast, building on, but departing from, existing analyses of the multiple classes of Chinese investors evident in London (see Glucksberg, 2016), we reveal the tactics and motivations of buyers with budgets of less than £500,000. We show that they are motivated by good schools, easy commutes and use similar technologies to mediate and understand the market to local buyers. Such aims and approaches, we argue, show the ordinariness of many Chinese buyers. Underpinning their aims is an aspirational, class-defined desire based on making sacrifices so their children can have a ‘normal British life’. This becomes an elective belonging, as they integrate into the norms of London’s housing market. In demonstrating how the realities of ordinary buyers contrasts with existing narratives of Chinese investors, we highlight plurality of experiences, strategies and aims of Chinese people buying homes. We argue such an understanding forces us to rethink the form and character of Chinese investment practices in western cities by de-centring London’s prime areas and purchasers when analysing property acquisition’s internationalisation. In turn this evidences the false binary of local and international demand and shows the complexities hidden behind narratives of international capital.
Highlights
Since the global financial crisis of 2008, much of the development in urban centres such as London has focused on the delivery of relatively standardized forms of housing, typified by larger and denser units that are seen as safe investment spaces targeted by international buyers (Fernandez et al, 2016; Lekander, 2015; Guironnet et al, 2016)
This paper argues that existing analysis of Chinese homebuyers in London is limited and misses an important, growing, dimension of the sub-market: lower-income, sub-£500,000 buyers
Following commer cial analysis, we demonstrate that international buyers, Chinese buyers, are not solely concentrated on the higher-end of the markets, but rather that they participate in the full range of the housing system in London
Summary
Since the global financial crisis of 2008, much of the development in urban centres such as London has focused on the delivery of relatively standardized forms of housing, typified by larger and denser units that are seen as safe investment spaces targeted by international buyers (Fernandez et al, 2016; Lekander, 2015; Guironnet et al, 2016). In the first section we address existing analysis of investment into London by Chinese-based firms and individual buyers, arguing that it focuses disproportionately on the higher-end of the market and re inforces binary distinctions between parasitic ‘external’ actors and territorially-bounded ‘residents’, whose lives and neighbourhoods are undermined by the presence of the former We follow this by looking at those with budgets of less than £500,000, a price more aligned with median house prices in London, to reveal how attention to everyday actions can facilitate a more in-depth engagement with the diversity of buyers who identify as Chinese in London’s residential market. Glucksberg’s (2016) ethnographic-based analysis of London’s housing crisis sketches out a similar focus on nonUHNWI and draws attention to the importance of differentiating be tween the agendas and attitudes of foreign investors (beyond just Chi nese or Hong Kong investors) She distinguishes between those who ‘shore up’ investment in high-end areas such as Mayfair and ‘middleclass Chinese’ who buy property to let out. Schools and other welfare and community institutions can act as powerful sources for the establishment of such networks
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