After the epidemic, China’s IC market – Huaqiangbei’s depression
In late December 2023, towards the end of the year, the temperature in Shenzhen finally dropped, and it looked a bit like winter. However, the weather forecast for next week shows that the temperature will rise back to 25 degrees.
This is not normal, Lao Zhang thought, neither the weather nor the Huaqiangbei market.
Lao Zhang is a real estate agent. In 2002, he started working in a property management company. In 2008, he came to Huaqiangbei and switched careers to real estate. He has been doing this for 15 years.
The properties in Lao Zhang’s hands are mainly around Huaqiang North. In the area around Huaqiang Electronics Market, more than 90% of the customers are from the electronics industry.
Walking on Huaqiangbei Pedestrian Street during the day, you can still feel the excitement, with people coming and going, and many people pushing small carts making deliveries. Lao Zhang walked on the familiar road, as if nothing had changed, until he walked into the door of Huaqiang Electronics World, and a chill suddenly hit him.
Walking on the first floor, there are already many empty shops around. The market is very quiet, no one is talking, and there are no pedestrians in the aisle. Everyone is sitting in the shop, looking at computers and mobile phones, doing business quietly.
The end of the year is the off-season for the market, and many stores will sublease or cancel their leases before the year ends, but the electronics market is still more deserted than before. Lao Zhang said hello and chatted with a few familiar electronics bosses. Many people told him that business was not easy to do and they would probably have to go home early this year to celebrate the New Year.
Lao Zhang sighed, he had expected this.
Starting from May or June this year, the Huaqiangbei market and offices began to slowly become empty.
In the first two months, most of the offices in Huaqiangbei were mainly small and medium-sized units that were vacant. By December, some larger companies also began to be affected, and large offices of 100 and 200 square meters also began to be put up for sale. A 200-square-meter office can accommodate about 30-40 people, which is not very small for a chip distributor.
What’s more intuitive is that there are even fewer people waiting for the elevator. Even the delivery boy has noticed the depression in Huaqiangbei.
Lao Ge made a rough estimate and found that the vacancy rate in the electronics market is currently about 20-30%. It was so empty that the first floor of Xinhuaqiang was even renovated, and the original merchants moved to other floors or left.
Of course, rents have also been affected.
The rent in the electronics market has not dropped significantly yet. Lao Ge guessed that several markets may be waiting and watching, and they are afraid to be the first to take the initiative to lower prices. Just like the chip market, they are also afraid of falling into a price war.
Compared with the beginning of this year, office building rents have dropped by 20-30%. At the beginning of this year, the rent price in Huaqiangbei was very high. It began to decline after May and June, but it is still higher than the price in 2020.
“Many houses have expired now, and some customers have just returned them without renting new ones.” The market is so weak, there are no orders, and many people just return them directly. A strong company will choose to stay for a while. support.
“It’s like going back to three years ago,” Lao Ge said. The chip industry ushered in unprecedented craze from 2020 to 2022, and the real estate market in Huaqiangbei also soared. Rent soared and it was difficult to find a house.
2023 is about to pass, and Lao Ge now recalls those three years as if it were a lifetime ago.
