Knowing They Shouldn't Buy, China's Renters Still Long for a Home of Their Own
A renter's much-shared essay about wanting a home she knows is a bad buy — every financial argument absorbed, every counter-argument ready, until the landlord texts — has become the face of the debate China's renters keep having with themselves as property prices fall.
The trending phrase was not a news event. "Knowing I shouldn't buy a home, but still wanting a home of my own" (明知不该买房却想要自己的家) carried no announcement, no policy, no scandal — just a sentence that named a feeling, and a comment section that would not close. Its most-shared post, liked more than 4,000 times, came from a renter who posts as Liuxuan, and it is as good a document of the moment as any housing statistic.
"I really do understand why I shouldn't buy," she wrote. The arguments against have been rehearsed online for so long they have gone hoarse: prices falling, property no longer the reliably rising family asset it was for a generation, money tied up and unsellable exactly when you need it. "The clever people of the internet took it apart for me, kneaded it open and shredded it, until I got irritated watching." What finally shuts the debate down, she wrote, is not a rebuttal but a dismissal — someone calls wanting to own a home "poor person's thinking" (穷人思维), and that is supposed to be the end of it. "But open the comments, and there is still a crowd patiently, carefully explaining why they really must buy a house."
Then comes the part that made the post travel: what actually happens to her resolve. "Every time my landlord suddenly messages me, my heart jumps — I brace for some new trick — and I think: if this were my own home, it would feel safe." Wanting "a home of one's own," she writes, is supposed to be an illusion you can argue yourself out of, and she tries, item by item. She reminds herself that in "a special period" someone could still break the door down and take you away; that the neighbor could be someone who hammers on your door with a knife in the small hours; that a house can flood; that a home cannot become cash in an emergency. "Is it really better to own? Come on, just say it — is it or isn't it? Fine, fine. I talked myself around again, and pressed the restless heart back down."
The argument never resolves because the two sides are not really talking about the same thing. One side trades in return-on-investment, and its math has been getting worse for three years; the other side trades in the terms of a lease, and a lease can end. "Knowing prices are falling, knowing the arithmetic doesn't work, and still being unable to let go of the longing for a home of your own — that contradiction is being pulled back and forth in millions of renters' hearts," as one commenter under the topic put it.
The counter-case is made by bloggers looking further down the timeline. "Yes, the property downturn will eventually produce a better moment to buy," one widely read finance blogger wrote. "But if you're planning that far ahead, think about old age. A cruel reality: when you're fifty or sixty, no one wants to rent to you." A local property account in Fuzhou put the choice in monthly terms for its readers: a mortgage of five to ten thousand yuan a month, against rent of two to three thousand for a modest place near work — and asked its followers which they would choose.
Liuxuan's essay ends where it began: she talked herself around again. The comments under it are still open, still carefully explaining why they must buy.