The rumblings of Evergrande Group collapsing keep getting louder and louder every day with 42% of its staggering $88 billion in outstanding debt coming due in less than a year.
A mind-blowing $1 trillion in market value has been wiped off China Inc. since February.
Jack Ma went missing for three months after his controversial speech that criticised the Chinese financial system.
China’s $120B private tutoring sector transitioned to a non-profit-making industry overnight.
Children under 18 are only allowed to play online video games for three hours per week.
Sounds like madness, right?
For those of us who can see the whole picture, yes.
But for the average Chinese citizen who has blocked access to Facebook, Google, and BBC World News, life goes on and the chaos is pretty much just noise.
This is not the case, however, for Chinese who are rich enough to buy property overseas.
They have access to the outside world with a daughter or a son living abroad.
They have seen the world and in fact, do business with the world.
This means that they are not naive to think this was not going to happen.
They’ve seen this coming and have already diversified their portfolio.
And not just across stocks and property. I’m talking about across the globe.
In any case, this presents a massive opportunity for Australian property developers.
When international borders do open, these affluent Chinese will be the first to send their children overseas for education.
As of July, there were nearly 150,000 Chinese university enrolments, which is only a 2% decline from the same time last year.
In Australia’s elite universities, Chinese enrolments were even up by 6.4%.
So the million-dollar question is…
How can Australian property developers position themselves PC (Post-COVID-19) and capitalise on this forthcoming influx?
Also read : How To Sell Property To The Chinese After COVID-19?
Here are our top five tips:
1. Wellness Lifestyle Real Estate
Did you know that China is the second key player fueling the growth of the global wellness real estate sector?
The world’s second-largest economy comes next to the United States with an astonishing $19.9 billion market size.
Currently, a number of projects proposed or in progress in the country are on the cutting-edge of green, biophilic, and sustainable design.
By 2023, China is predicted to be the prime driver of one-third of Asia-Pacific’s overall growth in wellness real estate.
Wellness is the new luxury and with Chinese buyers loving this concept, you cannot miss learning the latest trends in this niche and understanding what it takes to successfully build a wellness-centric development that would appeal to your target audience.
2. Use WeChat
According to Tencent in early 2019, daily active users for WeChat had climbed to over 1.5 billion.
To put that into perspective, that’s roughly 60 times the population of Australia.
So while Facebook has 1.82 billion daily active users, WeChat is catching up. Fast.
While the sometimes unpredictable nature of the Chinese authorities means the risk of state censure is a persistent threat to any organisation that enjoys a high level of success, WeChat’s huge range of functions and integration with so many facets of physical as well as virtual life means there is a huge scope for property developers to use this as a marketing channel.
In fact, Harry Triguboff’s Meriton is using WeChat religiously to build his $14-billion empire.
To understand how to create a high-converting WeChat campaign, read this article.
3. Location
Properties are built by people for people and understanding what Chinese buyers want is key to developing the right properties and marketing them the right way. Addressing the underlying pain of buyers is crucial in outclassing competitors and for the Chinese, location is everything.
Not only is buying into an affluent suburb in close proximity to local landmarks a matter of convenience for them but more importantly, it’s a status symbol that conveys they are winners in society. The Chinese value prestige and emphasising the holistic and luxurious lifestyle living in your apartment offers is crucial in capturing their attention.
If you must also know, the Chinese are night owls. They love to meet up with their friends at 8 pm for bubble tea. They want to get their late-night supper with their friends at 1 am or 2 am after a night of dancing.
You see?
Selling how your project enriches their lifestyle and how it is an effortless stroll to milk tea shops and jam-packed bars where they can potentially meet a boyfriend or a girlfriend should be your priority.
4. 2-Bedroom Configurations
Asians value family and family is the base of Chinese culture. Chinese parents would want to visit their sons or daughters in college and 5th-degree uncles or aunts visiting their nieces or nephews is not something surprising or out of the ordinary in Chinese culture.
This only means that marketing 2-bedroom apartments to Chinese buyers and how spacious your apartments are would appeal to them.
5. Feng Shui
In a 2018 article by SBS Australia, it was revealed that some Chinese homebuyers could pay up to $300,000 more if a property has good feng shui. Here are some tips on how you can capitalise on this:
- Whilst the Chinese don’t really like to share, they would love to have a pool as a shared facility with “shui” in Feng Shui meaning water and water represents wealth.
- In Feng Shui, a home is like a human body where the middle is seen as the heart. This means that apartments with a kitchen or bathroom in the middle would deter Chinese buyers because it is synonymous with a “dirty” or “heated” heart.
- Numbers’ 6 and 9 are lucky in Chinese culture with the number 8 as the luckiest. These numbers are associated with wealth, prosperity, good health and happiness. Meanwhile, Chinese buyers avoid number 4 because it sounds like “death” in Mandarin.
You might also like : What Chinese Property Buyers Really Want?
Final Words
It is only a matter of time before Australia welcomes an influx of Chinese buyers with everything going on in China today. Knowledge is power and understanding Chinese psychology is key to crushing your competitors and having the Chinese choose to call your apartment home. Remember, build products with the consumers in mind. Profits will follow.
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