The Development Of China's Middle Class In Five Years And Its Impacts On Real Estate Market

The Middle Class are the backbone of modern society, who play important roles in stabilizing the entire society, leading consuming trend and establishing social norms. In China's metropolises such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the Middle Class have been growing steadily, which will inevitably has great impacts on the development of Real Estate market. Therefore, it is of great importance to analyze the character of China's Middle Class, their consuming behavior on Real Estate and the impact of their future development on the Real Estate market. Based on the theory of stratification and consumer behavior, the field research composed of both questionnaire and in-depth interview was carried out in five cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Chongqing. Statistics on population and economy also contribute to the study.This thesis estimates that the scale of the Middle Class in China will continue to grow while the expanding of the Upper Middle Class will be relatively slow. The average age of the Middle Class will be older.The Middle Class have become and will continue to the majority consumer group of the Real Estate market. They have great desire to improve their living conditions. The features of the housing selection of the Middle Class are given, among which the family lifecycle appears to be extraordinarily influential. The Middle Class family will buy house several time during their life. The time to buy the first house will be postponed and the second houses will be owned by most middle-aged families. Investment in Real Estate will be common for the Middle Class in the future. This thesis holds the view that the future Middle Class consumers will be segmented much clearly by age cohort, such as young singles, young couples, young nuclear families, middle-aged families and elder families. According to the age structure of the entire urban population, this thesis estimates that the second-time buyer from the middle-aged and elder Middle Class families will be the leading consumers of the Real Estate market in the next five years. The requirements of the elder people will be an important factor in house selection.The broker service and Real Estate finance are keys to the future development of the Real Estate market, for the latent demand of the Middle Class can be turned into real consumption much quickly with proper broker and financial services and the filtering phenomena can also be formed with these services.