For years, China's housing market raced toward one goal, more.
But the finish line has now moved.
Now the pressing question isn't how many homes, it's what makes for a good home.
And what do we demand when we stop just buying space and start choosing a life?
The search for a good house begins now.
We're live from Beijing.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve.
Thank you very much for sharing your time with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Xinyu and Yuxin.
First up, for a long time, China's housing market moved forward at an incredible pace.
Speed, scale and affordability shaped how homes were built and sold.
Now, though, as the market matures, the conversation is slowly changing.
Attention is drifting away from how many homes are delivered and toward how comfortable, reliable and livable those homes really are.
Against this backdrop, the idea of good houses has begun to surface more than it did before.
So what does a good house actually mean?
And as expectations rise, what are buyers and developers and cities really looking for?
Xinyu and Yuxin, good afternoon to you both.
Good house.
It doesn't really tell us, I guess, what a good house actually is.
The term itself, I mean.
It's not a specific housing type or a single technical standard.
Otherwise, it will be just too abstract.
Describing a house as good.
It's a policy concept that signals where China's housing sector is is headed, as it shifts towards high-quality development.
And the idea catches people's attention in March in 2025, when good houses were written into the government work report for the first time,
And the term is actually good house, right?
We're not just describing these by ourselves.
Yeah, in Chinese it's called 好房子.
It was later reaffirmed in October in the central government's recommendations for the next five-year plan, which clearly stated that building safe comfortable, also green which means sustainable and smart homes is a key part for promoting high-quality development in real estate.
Yeah, we're going to learn more about it, because the term on its own good house doesn't really tell us much.
And also, it's a relative thing, I think, right?
I mean, good house to one person might not mean good house to another person.
Yeah, so there's no one size fits all.
Yeah.
We can see that people's expectations for a quality house.
They can include higher ceilings or better ventilation, things like that.
There's a lot of things that we're going to talk about.
First, though, I want to get a little bit more of a specific... definition.
And with the help of our reporter Yang Yang, he spoke with Wang Ying.
Wang Ying is an associate professor from Tsinghua University who has expertise in residential planning and housing development, as well as urban design and construction guidance.
The perfect person to hear from.
And she talks about what you'll hear what makes a good house and what some of the principles behind it are.
I usually say there's no single answer to what a good house really is.
It's a bit like defining a good person or a good family.
It depends on who you are.
A single young professional, a family with kids or a household caring for elderly parents will all prioritize very different things.
And even for the same person, those expectations change as life moves on.
Housing also has a social side.
As society changes, so do our shared expectations.
In aging communities, for example, age-friendly and barrier-free design matters much more than it used to.
Today, people also care about air quality safety, disaster resilience and smart home features.
That said, there are still clear bottom lines.
A good house must be safe and healthy.
On top of that comes comfort, and then broader goals like green, low-carbon living and intelligent systems.
So, at this stage, Good houses usually come down to four ideas safety comfort, green and smart, and those standards will keep evolving with technology and society.
So what the professor said there about the four principles came from the Ministry of Housing's National Standard, the Project Code for Residential Building.
That took effect on the 1st of May in 2025 and it kind of provides that technical foundation for what a good house is, is meant to be.
And it sets those four principles.
The professor talked about it, safety, comfort, sustainability, and intelligent design.
And it introduces a bunch of different upgrades.
Yeah.
For me, I think one of the key highlights is the upgraded construction standards to enhance people's livability.
For instance, the minimum floor to ceiling height was raised to three meters.
So from the previous standards, it was like 2.8 meters.
So now it's three meters.
And then with the higher floor to ceiling height, we can have like better access to sunshine and better ventilation.
Yeah, better windows.
Windows as well.
And also for those residential buildings of four stories high and above.
Please say elevator.
Yes, it's mandatory now to install elevators.
Because if you look at some of these old residential buildings which are like six or seven floors high, you have to climb all the stairs.
There's no elevators.
That's right.
I mean, yeah, it's mandatory.
I've lived in, have you ever lived in a building that didn't have an elevator?
Yeah.
It's not an easy thing to do.
I mean even up to the fifth floor.
In my experience for me, my physical condition up to the third floor was fine.
Going to the fourth was a little bit more challenging.
And then living on the fifth, I mean you get used to it after a few months, but it's not easy when you have things like kids or groceries or if you are an elderly person who has difficulty making it up those stairs.
So this is a.
This is the one that kind of stood out to me as the most important, exactly especially when i was like you know, i need to rent a house here in beijing, and when i was looking for houses i will.
The first kind of a requirement from me is having elevators.
Because the first thing that you can think of is moving.
And you move all of the furniture.
Moving in and moving out.
Yes.
And the elevators can help a really, really lot.
And actually, we had this discussion before about all of the new standards and everything.
And it's been there for a while.
And it's applying to mostly just the newly built houses.
Yeah.
And that is why we're discussing that maybe previously there are houses like existing houses.
And then we're building new houses with the new standards.
And also the new standards have also required this.
Enhanced sound insulation standards for walls and floors.
I think it for me is really important because the house that I am living right now you can literally hear your neighbor sneeze.
Yeah, I can hear it very loud.
So, like the sound insulation, as well as heating and air conditioning, these can really define how this house, how comfortable this house is.
I think we'll come back to examples like sound insulation in a little while, but I'd like to talk more about Some of the construction standards.
One is for aging friendly and barrier free design.
So the population here in China, we've talked about it a lot.
It's in the news a lot.
It's an aging society here.
And the standards introduce mandatory details, very specific things like wider entrances and bathroom doorways have to be wider as well.
That would be, I guess, for wheelchair access probably.
Also provisions for installing grab bars in bathrooms and at least one accessible public entrance for each residential building, and making homes more inclusive over the long term, which is a really, really great thing, and i mean the reason those are such a ne.
Well, they're a great thing, but they're also a necessary thing because of the aging population because, according to national bureau of statistics, in 2025, china has the largest elderly population in the world and in 2020, there were 191 million people aged 65 and above.
That's accounting for over one-fifth of the global elderly population, meaning that at least one in five older adults worldwide is Chinese.
And China's Ministry of Natural Resources and also Ministry of Civil Affairs and National Health Commission jointly issued new measures on January 28th in 2020, and that all new urban areas and residential projects must synchronously include elder care service facilities in line with this planning standards to expand access to inclusive elder care.
So it's not just about the design on the interior of the home.
It's about what you can find within the community complex itself.
What types of things would, what would that look like?
Yeah.
Uh, practically that could mean things like a small community daycare center for seniors, maybe in the community compound, and also a daytime care space where older residents can eat, rest and socialize.
Um, But mostly just having the idea and integrate the idea of having these facilities in that area to making their lives just easier or more convenient and to address the challenges of some of the Rural aging issues.
I've also saw some examples like the happiness neighborhood communities in Nanping Fujian province, specifically in southern China.
They offer a kind of a representative example.
So they have that kind of model that brings together elderly people who live alone or have left behind as so-called just hollowed out villages.
So they relocate them into that centrally built apartment style housing within that township.
So these communities are equipped with, as we said, shared facilities such as communal dining halls and basic medical clinics, and also activity centers and even small gardens for growing vegetables, because that's kind of a habit of a lot of old people.
That's cool.
It's kind of turning it into a university campus kind of.
Yes.
Right?
For the elderly.
Yeah, gathering them.
And in this way older residents can stay close to their, of course, hometown and also their familiar surroundings, while enjoying convenient public spaces and a supportive environment.
So that's one side of the coin.
Is changes policy support, changes for the elderly.
But it doesn't just stop there, because it's not just the elderly who are making use of these new homes.
The demographic reality is something different.
That's very new in terms of housing vulnerability.
Living alone is that.
Now, that applies to the elderly, of course, but there's something called the empty nest youth a group, and it reflects this deep kind of change within Chinese society.
According to estimates based on the national statistics, China's single person households Could reach 150 to 200 million by the year 2030.
More than 30% of the population would be living alone.
Among that group, 20 to 39 year olds may number 40 to 70 million.
That's doubling or even tripling compared to a couple of decades ago.
And it's happening in major cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, all the big ones.
Young people are living alone already.
It's the norm rather than the exception.
And this is a trend that we see in other parts of the world as well.
29% of Americans live in a single household.
Then in Korea.
I mean this is big news in Korea, when I was living there and I just checked before the show in 2024 36 of the population there.
Single person household.
So it's kind of a global trend, but that's reflected in these new style, in these good houses too.
Yeah, so I think for those young people, they are living alone.
They have their own standards or needs of a good house, I mean.
Probably they want homes that are safe and easy to maintain.
And also they want some smart systems that provide basic security or emergency alerts or some simple daily automation.
And for some others, they want some shared spaces or like communal kitchens or gyms or study rooms.
And actually in China.
China is improving the living conditions of these migrant workers or new citizens or young people by expanding the coverage of government subsidized rental housing.
So it comes as like lower rent and with full amenities and modern renovation and fully furnished.
So when you arrive there, you just can bring your own suitcase and you can live there and just yeah, that's it.
Two things kind of stand out from what you just said to me.
Number one we're talking about.
It's important the proximity of services for the elderly and for the young people who are single person households.
Having things nearby their home that allows them to feel part of a community.
And then also the quote unquote necessities, as you put it, having a modern interior to your home.
Things that perhaps used to be considered a luxury before would now be considered the norm.
Yeah, because, you know, increase the supply share of these kind of new standards.
It's not only like upgrading that kind of idea.
It's also about giving people the idea because they're promoting that kind of idea as having a place to live, to live well, to have a better quality of life when they're getting into these houses in the residential area.
Yeah, this is what we were talking about before when we said you know, the push in China at one time was more houses, more houses, more houses.
But now it's not about the number of them.
It's about the quality so that people can really enjoy. living there.
Now the next question, of course, has to be why is this concept of a good house becoming a national policy focus?
Let's go back to Associate Professor from Tsinghua University, Wang Ying once again to learn a little bit about that.
A big reason is that China's housing story has changed.
Since around 2018 or 2019, The government has been doing what they call urban checkups, basically diagnosing city problems the way you'd go for a physical.
Around 2022, the focus shifted more clearly toward people's everyday lives.
That's when the idea of the four goods came in.
Good housing, good neighborhoods, good communities and good cities.
And good housing is the foundation of all that.
It tackles issues many people know too well.
Leaks, poor soundproofing, mold and maintenance headaches.
Take soundproofing, for example.
Sometimes you can hear everything neighbors arguing.
Next door, someone upstairs plays music louder and it travels straight down, and those kinds of things can easily turn into real conflicts between neighbors.
Now people care less about quick price gains and more about real livability, usable space, ceiling heights, balconies and homes that work for all ages.
So the goal of this policy is really to push housing from having enough to living better.
The professor didn't mention sneezing.
But that's what you were talking about before, right?
And it's such a large part of being happy in your space, that feeling of privacy.
But it's also I don't know about China, but I've been in other places where it can be the source of conflict right between neighbors too.
If one neighbor is too noisy, or if the upstairs neighbor has a couple of young children that are constantly running around, that can be a source of trouble between people who live next to each other.
All right, so now we know kind of what what it is and what's going on.
We know who it's for.
So then, how is the country going about building more of these good houses, Besides these kind of a central level policies setting the framework?
The year 2025 also marked a turning point, as the good house moved from concept to implementation and local governments have become the main execution layer.
So I take Beijing as an example.
Beijing is changing the rules to encourage developers to build more than just apartment.
They've introduced new Technical guidelines that allow developers add extras like ground floor open spaces, community service centers and wind and rain corridors.
That's what they call in Chinese 风雨连廊.
Without these spaces counting towards the building's total floor area limits.
They make neighborhoods more walkable and give residents more places to hang out.
Basically, they are having the idea of the first floor of the building.
They are making this first floor as a public space, but not a residential home.
Okay.
So maybe it's not included in your floor space when you're signing a contract and they're taking the size of the apartment into consideration.
I think also it's for those residential building developers.
Because when you have this specific piece of land and you want to build a building, residential building, then there is something called floor area ratio FAR.
It means the ratio of this building's total floor area to the size of this piece of land that you built this building.
And then The policy that you mentioned in Beijing.
Because you exclude these public spaces on the first floor from this ratio, then there's no cost to this specific space when you build this building.
That means there's more incentives for these developers to build better buildings with these public spaces and other facilities.
I actually saw or I have seen these kind of designs in some of these existed or in some other areas house.
And, but mostly, what I can see is that they are quite high end or more relatively more expensive houses that you can buy or and some of these developers are international developers
They are using the habits of, let's say, Singapore.
They have houses like that.
And then, I think, in Beijing, what they're trying to say is that they are trying to make this standard for everyone.
Yeah, for everyone.
Yeah.
Something that was reserved for the wealthy perhaps before would now be for everyone.
All right.
So achieving these types of goals is not an easy thing to do.
What are some of the things that we're finding challenging here?
Yeah, I think the first.
We have to think about the cost, because we've talked about how The country is striving for building better houses and the local governments as well.
But these improvements like soundproofing and higher ceilings and greener materials, smarter systems, they all come with a price and you have to pay more.
So the cost is the first thing you have to think about.
And another challenge is already existing housing stock.
Like we've talked about, building new buildings is far easier than like renovating these existing ones.
It's far more complicated than starting over.
So, to avoid these creating more construction waste, and renovations often have to work within these old structures and limited conditions.
And these can also cause a lot of challenges.
Yeah, I mean, it's not so easy just to, pardon me, just to tear down buildings.
Yes, and build new ones uh, it's not a video game that we're playing here, right?
Yeah, so you.
If by doing that, then you avoid creating more construction waste and you know you have to work within your limits, right of your of your conditions, Well then can higher, good housing standards actually be implemented into real world conditions.
Because, at the end of the day, renovation depends on how much residents are willing if that renovation takes place.
If they're willing to pay, if they're able to pay.
In many cases, that might not be the case for everyone.
And then even basic upgrades can be difficult as well.
Adding elevators to older buildings, for example, sounds simple, but It often runs into practical constraints.
Yeah, I mean, putting an elevator in a building that didn't have an elevator before is a costly and time-consuming project.
Exactly.
We had that discussion as well.
And by just...
Getting all of the agreement from all of the residents is the first challenge already.
I remember that conversation.
I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but it was something community related, apartment complex related.
And yeah, that was one of our points we were saying is that, you know, even if a certain number of the residents want to make the change, there will probably be a handful of residents that don't.
And that can simply come down to preference, of course, but it can also come down to cost, because that cost needs to be shared amongst everyone.
But overall, I mean, this has to be seen as a positive thing.
Some of the things that we talked about are really wonderful changes.
And they sound like and maybe this is the best part they sound like they are really taking into consideration the needs of Of the people who live in these spaces.
Yeah, because I think there is a word in Chinese called 全年龄友好社区.
And we're discussing that, the age-friendly communities, or age-friendly, all age-friendly, because that's directly translated from Chinese all age-friendly.
That's not only including the elderly or the children and also, of course, young people.
So, but the thing is that if you would like to build a like specifically aging friendly community, that that may be not that friendly to another age group.
Right.
So thinking about that is also.
You know, making the whole community is very, very friendly to the whole age group is another challenge.
And when you are having to build that idea into the concrete action is another challenge that we need to think of.
Yeah, because you're not building buildings specifically for one person in mind.
You're building them so that everybody can make use of the spaces.
Yes, that's why one of the examples that I've looked into, which is the city of Ningbo in eastern China, it has launched its three-year action plan from 2026 to 2028.
And it has divided the good houses into different scenarios to better cater to different types of people, like child-friendly design and also youth entrepreneurship.
Youth entrepreneurship?
Yes, for these younger people.
How do you incorporate that into a house design?
I guess, like we've talked about, the youth hotels and also some of the government-subsidized rental housing, are specifically targeting these youth or younger people and also newlywed housing.
For those newlyweds, they have their different needs and also for international communities.
So they have different scenarios for them to guide when they are building or renovating these existing housing to better serve the different groups of people.
Well, in the end, the idea of good housing.
It's not really about chasing a perfect standard, I suppose, or maybe even moving faster than reality would allow.
But it is about setting a shared direction.
The housing market here, it's becoming more stable, more people centered.
And the focus is shifting away from building more homes, as we mentioned, to building better ones that everybody can feel happy inside.
Home is where the heart is.
That's the expression in English.
I'm sure there's a Chinese equivalent as well.
