In Huizhou, where housing prices have plummeted, has it become the middle class's "Dubai alternative"?

In the distant East, there is a city called Huizhou.

By Wang Dong

Edited by Yan Ruyi

Source: Phoenix WEEKLY (ID: phoenixweekly)

Cover source: pexels

In the past week, A-share investors truly experienced significant ups and downs.

Perhaps the only thing more turbulent than the A-shares is the real estate market in Dubai.

Since the outbreak of war, Dubai’s housing prices have plummeted by 30% in just two weeks.

In recent years, Dubai has attracted countless digital nomads with its favorable tax policies and low-threshold “Golden Visa.”

Many believe that as long as they have some savings and a job that allows remote work, they can live a “retired early” life in Dubai.

However, all this prosperity is built on the illusion of safety that Dubai, as a “Middle Eastern haven,” provides.

With the outbreak of war, new immigrants and travelers seem to awaken from a dream: sleeping next to a powder keg does indeed make it easy to lose sleep.

So, when Dubai collapses, where will digital nomads seek their next refuge?

Someone has provided an answer:

In the distant East, there is a city called Huizhou.

Huizhou, the new base for digital nomads

When someone suggested that Huizhou is the new capital for digital immigrants, many were shocked, and they asked:

Where is Huizhou?

Huizhou is a prefecture-level city under the jurisdiction of Guangdong Province, located in the southeastern part of Guangdong, at the eastern end of the Pearl River Delta, adjacent to Guangzhou and Shenzhen. It is one of the important cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and a national historical and cultural city…

Clearly, these answers do not explain why Huizhou has become a new haven for young people.

Born in Huizhou and graduated from Huizhou First High School, Sun Yuchen may represent many who are optimistic about Huizhou.

In Sun’s view, Huizhou has many advantages: low cost of living, safety, beautiful scenery, and a pleasant climate, and none of the cities like Bangkok, Johor Bahru, New York, or London can compare.

Sun Yuchen is not the first person to recommend Huizhou.

In “Goodbye, Lover,” the former internet celebrity Liu Jishou has always dreamed of living in a large flat in Huizhou, riding a motorcycle to surf every day, facing the sea with spring flowers blooming.

Going back a thousand years, a well-known internet celebrity once said in Huizhou:

“Each day, I feast on three hundred lychees, and I willingly live as a Lingnan person.”

Huizhou is not a small city; in terms of area, it is the second-largest city in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area—an area of 11,000 square kilometers, equivalent to six Shenzhens; in terms of population, it has over 6 million residents; economically, Huizhou’s GDP ranks fifth in Guangdong Province.

However, Huizhou’s city image does not quite match these statistics:

It is a giant in data but a small city in perception.

After all, being sandwiched between top cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Dongguan inevitably dims Huizhou’s star.

Everyone says Huizhou is good, but what exactly is good about Huizhou?

In contrast to its large area, Huizhou’s industries and population are extremely dispersed. Huicheng District has the hustle and bustle of an old city but is far from Guangzhou and Shenzhen; Huizhou’s Huayang and Daya Bay, close to Shenzhen, are isolated sleeping towns.

Walking in Huizhou, it is hard to feel the “big city pressure” that one experiences in Guangzhou or Shenzhen; instead, it feels like it consists of numerous disconnected small towns.

The housing supply here claims it can accommodate the entire population of Guangdong.

Thanks to this excess supply, Huizhou’s housing prices have long remained low.

In the remote areas around Shuangyue Bay and Xunliao Bay, sea-view apartments are as cheap as tens of thousands, roughly equivalent to a square meter in neighboring Shenzhen.

Even new houses in good locations only cost seven to eight thousand per square meter, about a third of Dongguan’s prices.

Renting is even more affordable; for one to two thousand a month, you can rent a seaside apartment with two bedrooms, an unbeatable sea view, and cleaning service.

It’s not just housing prices that are cheap.

Compared to Shenzhen and Hong Kong, Huizhou’s cost of living is almost charitable. A single-digit dim sum, and a bowl of Hengli soup noodles for 15 yuan, is like a massage for every worker’s soul.

On Shuidong Street, you can still find the freshest seafood stalls open at 2 AM.

Cheap doesn’t mean low quality; the quality of life in Huizhou is also good.

The last haven that young people flocked to was Hegang in Heilongjiang, where housing prices are even cheaper, and you can buy a two-bedroom for just a few tens of thousands.

Now, many of the first batch of young people who went to Hegang have returned. Just one winter was enough to teach every young person unaware of the consequences.

Compared to the torturous climate, being far removed from modern life is an even more serious issue in Hegang.

Even the Five Kingdoms City where Emperor Huizong of Song was in hiding and Ningguta where Zhen Yuandao was exiled are located further south than Hegang.

Here, you can’t find any decent job opportunities, nor can you talk about any social circles.

All these problems do not exist in Huizhou.

With a push of the accelerator, you can reach Shenzhen; a trip to Hong Kong or Guangzhou has a commuting intensity comparable to that of workers in Beijing.

Digital nomads can retreat from the world, but they cannot disconnect. In Huizhou, you can catch not only the winds from the Pacific but also the cutting-edge news of the times.

Huizhou-born singer Lan Lao

Due to lower venue rental and security costs than Shenzhen, many big-name artists now skip Dongguan and choose Huizhou as a fixed stop for their tours in the Greater Bay Area.

You can effortlessly maintain a social circle like in a first-tier city, and you won’t fall behind in cultural life either.

The environment here is also not comparable to Hegang.

Huizhou is one of the cities with the best air quality in the country.

In winter, the average temperature is 15°C, and it only gets cold for at most two weeks a year. During the Spring Festival, you can wear short sleeves, and the best beaches in Guangdong are just outside your door.

Warmer than Hegang, cheaper than Dali, and more convenient than Rushan…

In this light, Huizhou seems like paradise. But does Huizhou have no downsides?

Of course, it’s not as simple as you think.

Who is carrying the burden?

As young people begin to flock to Huizhou, they will find that the old folks have already settled there.

Especially the elderly from Northeast China.

Compared to young people who have just realized that being a nomad can be an identity, they are the seasoned migratory birds, the nomadic tribe of modern society.

In Huizhou, you can enjoy the most authentic Northeast barbecue and traditional spicy hotpot, rivaling that of Sanya;

In Daya Bay and Xunliao Bay, Northeast dialect is a common language.

As early as a decade ago, Huizhou’s real estate advertisements had already reached Northeast China.

In terms of motivation and needs, retirement and lounging have much in common.

For the elderly, the winters in the North are not only cold in temperature but also accompanied by high heating costs, extremely low outdoor activity rates, and threats to respiratory and cardiovascular health.

For young people, the exorbitant rents in first-tier cities, endless overtime, and extremely high social costs are another form of “frostbite.”

The elderly recuperate their physical health, while young people refresh their mental state.

To answer how Huizhou became the current price sinkhole, we must start with the city’s fervent history of urban development.

Around 2015, as housing prices in Shenzhen began to skyrocket and purchase restrictions intensified, new residents who couldn’t “get on the bus” began to turn their sights to satellite cities in the Greater Bay Area.

With abundant land supply and no purchase restrictions, Huizhou became the first choice for Shenzhen clients.

Back then, real estate firms led by Country Garden and Financial Street began an unprecedented “city-building” initiative in Huizhou.

The sales offices in Daya Bay were built like airports, and every day, hundreds of buses brought customers from Shenzhen and even across the country.

The most catchy slogan at the time was, “1/5 of Shenzhen’s housing prices, live in villas with sea views.”

This grand dream has yet to be realized.

In an era when the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Channel was still a figment of imagination and the subway Line 14 was still on paper, countless investors believed in the fairy tale of “Shenzhen-Huizhou integration,” thinking this was the next Nanshan in Shenzhen.

In 2016, the prices of properties near Daya Bay surged from 7,000 yuan/m² to 13,000 yuan/m² in a flash.

People scrambled to buy, dealing with tea fees, name change fees, and bundled parking spots…

At that time, Huizhou not only attracted a large number of Shenzhen clients but also harvested funds from all over the country through a powerful distribution network.

Many people signed contracts without even seeing the properties, only looking at the sand table.

Success came from Shenzhen, and so did the downfall.

By 2021, as real estate companies began to implode and housing market regulations tightened, Shenzhen’s housing market began to cool. As a shadow product of Shenzhen’s housing market, Huizhou’s real estate plummeted almost overnight.

The stories supporting Huizhou’s housing price narrative do not seem very solid.

The extension of the subway is delayed, and the progress of the Shenzhen-Huizhou/Shenzhen-Da intercity project is also unsatisfactory. The long-discussed Shenzhen East expansion and Huizhou integration remain on paper.

Every first-tier city needs a Huizhou.

Even now, many people’s houses are “trapped” in Huizhou.

For example, my friend Xiao Wang.

In 2019, he jumped into the Huizhou real estate market, and the house he carefully selected is now unwanted, as the remaining mortgage is higher than the cash price of a new house.

Owners in the same community who bought at the same time have seen their assets shrink by over 50%.

For those who bought the wrong house at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and at the wrong price, this is a painful deleveraging process; but for the young people who come here like migratory birds:

Huizhou is a place without historical burdens.

The real estate frenzy of the past left behind buildings and infrastructure far exceeding the population’s capacity. These excess resources have been taken over by young people wanting to escape the rat race and pursue a low-cost lifestyle.

After ten years of adjustment, the pie drawn back then, such as high-speed rail, some commercial facilities, and green parks, has slowly but surely started to materialize.

Every breeze in Daya Bay carries the silent sigh of a Shenzhen owner trapped in deep debt.

After the bubble burst, Huizhou has become a more friendly place for young people.

When housing prices fell, life began. The extremely low rents for sea-view apartments and the now less crowded seaside promenade have allowed Huizhou to return to its essence as a vacation destination.

Of course, those young people flocking to Huizhou will soon discover the inconvenient aspects of the place.

The cheap sea-view apartments and condos featured by video bloggers are mostly located in isolated areas like Daya Bay and Huizhou District.

Shuangyue Bay in Huizhou is a relatively popular vacation spot.

Getting from there to the main urban area of Huizhou District is extremely inconvenient.

The high-speed trains to Shenzhen can be as short as every 20 minutes, which sounds appealing, but the real problem is: how do you get out of your door?

Most of the popular residential buildings here are isolated, gated communities. Public transportation can’t be said to be good; it can only be described as nearly nonexistent.

If you don’t buy a car, you can only rely on shuttles or ride-hailing services that are hard to get; if you buy a car to live in Huizhou, you lose the meaning of being a “nomad.”

There are third-class hospitals and Sam’s supermarkets, but few people visit these places daily; the truly important community commerce is just barely adequate.

Low housing prices are a result of excess, so if you choose to live here, you will inevitably face another problem brought about by that excess:

No neighbors.

In many super-sized communities, the occupancy rate is only 20-30%. It’s fine during the day, but the nighttime experience is not as pleasant.

Even the most “influential” people can easily underestimate their need for social interaction.

However, for young people who come and go like migratory birds, these shortcomings and real inconveniences are not truly problematic.

The only issue is that history has long told us: when a place goes from niche to mainstream, being lifted to a “lounge sanctuary” by social apps and short videos, as a large number of tourists flood in, and internet-famous cafés fill the corners… housing prices and rents will quietly rise, prices will slowly increase, and the cost of living will rebound.

All the advantages that initially attracted us to stay will gradually become “expensive to live in” for more and more people.

When Huizhou truly becomes an ideal country crowded with young people, it will no longer be the current low-cost, slow-paced Huizhou where one can rest easy.

Perhaps by then, young people will need to search for the next Huizhou.