In the evening of 8th April, the debate competition on “Should Government Bailout be Taken under Worse Real Estate Market” held by Real Estate Association of SPEA was taken in Room 302, Phoenix Building. Undergraduates of Department of Real Estate Development and Management carried on fierce debate as two sides. A couple of new ideas and understandings were raised during their debate, which won warm applauds.
Professor Chen Jie and Associate Professor Ma Zuqi came to competition live and gave comments and guidance. Students gained much from their professional opinions towards the trend and development of real estate market in China.
Since 2014, even though the restriction of buying houses has already been relaxed except for first-tier cities, Chinese real estate market has been slumping. Compared to the same time last year and last quarter , housing price in most of cities both decreased by the first quarter in 2015.
Housing market slump brought some pressure to local finance and banks, so government took out new policy which relaxed the restrictions in aspects of down payment in loan for purchasing house, tax-free for purchasing house and accumulation fund for purchasing house. Within one week, volume of house trading was increased and part of housing market got better. Pros and cons side just debated according to recent government bailout action.
In this competition, undergraduates of Class 2014 acted as pros and undergraduates of Class 2013 acted as cons. They carried on fierce debate focusing on the topic that “Under current economic situation, whether government takes actions to change the falling real estate market”.
Pros thought that current downturn real estate market would bring pressure to local finance and banks. If we only rely on market regulation, the result would be bank crisis, or even financial crisis. However, cons thought that artificially high house price driven up by developers was because of government connived with them, so housing resources could not be allocated effectively. They emphasized the function of market, the invisible hand under the market economics. Furthermore, government’s shortage stimulated policy can only solve the problem on the surface, but could not relieve the overall trend of falling housing market.
At last, Professor Chen Jie concluded opinions from both sides and gave comments and suggestions in the aspects of debating skills and opinions. He also did brilliant additional analysis on the perspective of real estate finance and decision makers’ psychology. After that, he expressed that this debate competition gave students a deeper understanding towards real estate industry and market, improved their cognition of financial market, and broadened their views. Mr. Ma also discussed the social equality of house price with students, which expanded their angle of thinking.
