Who wants to buy a house in Shanghai?

Witnessing first-handedly the Shanghai real-estate price taking a ten-year long rocketing trajectory, I have developed an obsession of price-comparison between the housing price in Shanghai and what's like in the desirable places across the developed world.

I was at this tiny Swiss town Ascona on the shore of Lake Maggiore in September 2006, just had a most lovely stroll along the Lake and a very enjoyable dinner in a courtyard with Palm trees and I was waiting for the bus to go back to my hotel at Locarno. By the bus stop, there was a real estate agency whose windows adored with housing advertisement. I was at leisure and thus made a good study of those advertisements and to my biggest surprise and deepest dismay, I came to the realization that to buy a house or an apartment in this region cost roughly the same as to buy a house or an apartment in Shanghai.

Since then, I have got this obsession of housing price comparison across continent: wherever I travel, along the Mediterranean coast of France, Italy or Spain, or in the major cities of Paris, Rome or Vienna, if I spot a real-estate agency along my way, I would stop to have a good look and once again console myself that not-buying an apartment in Shanghai is the right thing to do: if I could buy an apartment on the Mediterranean coast or in Paris, why do I buy an apartment in Shanghai?

How about America? At the beginning of the recent recession, there was a topic among the media that we Chinese could do better with our money buying a house in America where the price for a house in most cities roughly the same as the cost of an apartment in Shanghai. Of course it remains a talk coz it's inconvenient and impractical.

Then I was reading this novel "Lipstick Jungle", written by Candace Bushnell the author of "Sexy and City" somewhere after 911 and before the Credit Crisis. In this novel, one of the most successful women in New York, the chief of the magazine division of a big media conglomerate � this widely successful woman at 45 had a 4-story house in Upper Town New York which cost her 2.5 million USD and she occasionally felt the pressure of housing loan even with her big salary (the novel didn't specify, but with other reference, the guess is around one million). And here in Shanghai, any acceptable apartment costs 2.5 million RMB and everybody who's earning a good 250,000 RMB is bravely buying up and taking up a loan up to 2 million for 20 years.

Finally, we come to the top real-estate in the world in the newest novel from Candace Bushnell: One Fifth Avenue. This fictionary landmark building is the showcase of premium downtown N.Y. real-estate. The counting of the residents including a Pulitzer winner, a movie star, a socialite and column writer for the New York Times and above everything and everybody, the top three levels was an amazing apartment owned by a legendary old lady who head the N.Y. elite sociality for more than half a century. At the end of the novel, the old lady had died at 100 years old and the apartment became the property of the wife of a young hedge fund manager hence completed the transition of an era from the old money to the new money.

Anyway, this historically important, culturally mystified, most desirable apartment in the entire New York cost the hedge fund manager some 122 Million USD, which is precisely the same price for a 10-year old luxury penthouse apartment overlooking the Huangpo River at downtown Shanghai.

I think the point is pretty clear here. Who want to buy an apartment in Shanghai, if you could buy it at any "Rich and Famous" place around the world?