Why Rent Is So Cheap in China

Did you know that renting a home in China is significantly cheaper than in Europe or the United States?
Let me surprise you: the annual rent for an apartment of about 150 square meters, with a sea view and located just 50 meters from the water, will cost you only 300 US dollars per year.

Why is it so cheap?
Because China has enormous reserves of cement and concrete, which it uses to build countless highways, bridges, tunnels, residential buildings, skyscrapers — and entire cities that are populated only by 5–10%.

You might ask: Why are the rest of the apartments empty if China has so many people?
You will be surprised, but all these apartments have already been sold to Chinese residents. China has a huge amount of unoccupied housing because people use apartments as a way to invest their savings. Most families own several modern, fully equipped apartments. This is one of the reasons why China faced a housing crisis.

China also built roads for the next twenty years, as well as satellite towns and countless high-rise buildings — even small villages often have their own skyscraper, sometimes several. There are huge hotels everywhere, with enormous lobbies that you will rarely see in Europe.

Of course, in major megacities the cost of housing is very high. But as soon as you drive out of the city — using one of the many paid, high-speed expressways — rental prices drop sharply. For example, in megacities like Guangzhou or Shenzhen, a small studio apartment costs around $800–900 per year if you pay monthly under an annual contract.

But outside the city, you can rent a studio apartment five times larger in terms of square meters at six to seven times lower price, also under an annual contract. And these apartments are not in the middle of nowhere — they are still within the continuous urban area.
Yes, at first I also thought that Chinese cities never end; they simply flow from one name into another — and almost always in the form of 30–40–50+ story buildings. Technology never stops advancing.

Back in 2011, we were searching for a comfortable and beautiful place on China’s southern coast to live and relax, away from the hustle and bustle of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and of course Hong Kong. (Hong Kong is very close, but you simply cannot compare its housing prices with mainland China — Hong Kong prices are something else entirely…)

We got lucky: we discovered the newly constructed Gantry Garden Silver Beach (named after the developer). It's like a small city designed for about 150,000 residents, located about 80 km east of Shenzhen — which means it is also not far from Guangzhou and the Hong Kong border.

Silver Beach Garden offers modern high-rise buildings right on the seashore, a wide sandy beach, and all the necessary amenities for comfortable living. Most importantly — the prices for large apartments were very attractive.

The town’s occupancy has remained at around 8–10% all these years.

From 2014 to 2017, we actively promoted Silver Beach Garden among expats living and working in China. At that time, China’s economy was booming, and there were many foreigners living permanently in Chinese cities. Before the pandemic, around 2,500 expats lived in the Garden permanently. Today the number is slightly lower — around 1,500–2,000 — but many of them do not consider Silver Beach their main place of residence.

Some stay here to treat their children, others use the Garden as a transit base, and some keep it as a second home or vacation spot while living permanently in megacities. Meanwhile, many permanent residents who frequently travel to Shenzhen or Guangzhou for work rent additional apartments there to save commuting time.

Now the Garden has cafés and small restaurants, several foreign company offices, Starbucks, KFC, and a couple of McDonald’s — all of which appeared relatively recently. Before the pandemic there were none or very few of these.

Rental prices start at $100–120 per month for a decent studio apartment under an annual contract.
There are first-line buildings near the sea, second-line buildings slightly further inland, as well as more remote areas where prices are even lower.
Large seafront apartments on the first line generally cost $300–500 per month under an annual contract.

If you rent for just one or two months, the price will be much higher — sometimes several times higher.
And if you rent daily, especially during holidays or peak season, the nightly cost can be equivalent to half a month’s rent under a yearly contract.

We will tell you more about Silver Beach Garden in upcoming posts. For now, subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t miss the most interesting insights about life in China.

You can also view Silver Beach Garden from above in our YouTube drone video.