Student Question: Hello, Master. There’s a perspective circulating recently that domestic demand can only be revived by rescuing the real estate market. What’s your take on this? How should the real estate market be rescued?
Master Chi’s Response: I don’t quite agree with that view.
The way I see it, the residential housing market is only one part of the broader real estate sector — and moreover, it has already passed its adolescence. It is naturally destined to contract.
So the question of “rescuing or not rescuing” is somewhat beside the point. Choosing to rescue it is like insisting on dragging back someone who has already grown past adolescence and stopped growing taller, pumping them full of hormones every day to force them to keep gaining height. That approach comes with its own set of problems.
In my view, real estate has now entered a period of normal industry adjustment — characterized by falling prices, shrinking volume, and slowing momentum.
Looked at through the lens of international experience, this is completely normal. Nothing to be alarmed about.
Let me offer an analogy — it may not be a perfect one. Imagine we see a young person breaking out in acne. Do you think they’re sick? Honestly, you might not need to do anything at all. They’ll likely pass through that stage and the acne will clear up on its own — or perhaps a little ointment is all it takes. But if you blow it out of proportion and drag them to the hospital every day, they’ll grow anxious and distressed. In the end, you might actually trigger a hormonal imbalance.
Rescuing real estate and the residential housing sector faces exactly this same problem. It has naturally reached a phase of contraction. Forcing it back through intervention could actually prove damaging to the market. My view is: leave it alone. This is simply competition and the natural development cycle of the industry at work.
Real estate is a cyclical business. Adolescence passes. And there are factors beyond residential housing influencing the picture. So this isn’t something that can simply be “rescued” just because everyone calls for it.