Chapter 1 For Whom the Bell Tolls

Su Yehao was intimately familiar with this kind of cookie-cutter residential complex.

Back when he was a supervisor, he’d bounced around several similar projects. Despite the prevalence of thirty or forty-story residential buildings in big cities, six or seven-story buildings were the mainstream in smaller cities.

The reason was the cheap land prices and the availability of more land to develop.

Here at Bi Gui Yuan's Millennium Impression.

The buildings were particularly spacious, with greenery and parking spaces. Calculating the floor area ratio, it was at most around 1.1, with a public area ratio as low as 4%.

If they offered discounts during sales and gave away extra balcony and storage space, it would almost be like having no public area ratio at all, which indeed seemed very conscientious.

But there was no other way.

Faced with "sky-high" new homes costing six or seven thousand yuan per square meter, there were too few people who could afford to buy. An ordinary worker could only buy three square meters of housing after a year of saving without eating or drinking.

Which developer would dare to skimp on the usable area? They wouldn't be able to sell the houses, and customers would teach them a lesson in no time.

If you were to move the same kind of neighborhood to Hong Kong, facing these "thousand-square-foot mansions," even in places like Kowloon or Wong Tai Sin, where property prices were slightly lower, it would be considered a wealthy area. No developer would be so extravagant.

Compared to Pengcheng, some surrounding cities had even lower housing prices. Two or three hundred thousand Hong Kong dollars could buy a decent new house, and renting was even cheaper.

In comparison, even after the bubble burst, Hong Kong's housing prices remained high, which was why there was a small wave of retirees heading north to spend their twilight years. Buying a house on the mainland was almost like buying cabbage. Many white-collar workers in Hong Kong could afford to buy a house with a year's salary.

The older generation valued the idea of returning to their roots, and it was quite easy to apply for a Home Return Permit. They could spend their retirement going back and forth, visiting their children and grandchildren, which would save a lot of money.

According to Deputy General Manager Liu Yangnan.

Several buildings in this Millennium Impression complex had already been bought in bulk by Hong Kong customers.

Among the fifty small buildings, ten were equipped with elevators, probably to cater to different customer needs.

After all, elevator apartments cost several hundred yuan more per square meter. For an entire apartment, it would cost tens of thousands more, which most buyers definitely couldn't bear.

Elevators weren't needed on the first, second, and third floors. The fourth, fifth, and sixth floors could walk up and down as a form of exercise. The current main force of homebuyers had come all the way from hard times and weren't as delicate as people would be in the future.

Buying an elevator apartment would be seen as having too much money to spend. Stairwell apartments with cheaper prices were actually easier to sell.

When Deputy General Manager Liu Yangnan was taking Su Yehao in the elevator, he specially introduced:

"This is the first time our company has developed elevator apartments. We're benchmarking against the most high-end projects in the city. However, the first and second floors may have to be discounted, otherwise it might be difficult to sell."

"All ten elevator buildings are three-bedroom apartments, with sizes ranging from 105 to 118 square meters. Some developers with insufficient strength like to be calculating and cheat people, but we never do that. An elementary school will soon be built nearby, and the news has already been announced."

"We estimate that these 700 apartments will bring the company a net profit of more than 100 million yuan. We happened to get the land at the base price when Hong Kong's property market was declining..."

Su Yehao listened and nodded.

He had been closely monitoring the latest trends in the mainland's real estate market. Often, when a policy was introduced or news was announced in the morning, it would be compiled and sent to him on the same day, which he would flip through as bedtime reading, occasionally using it to pass the time.

It wasn't just the real estate industry. Some developments regarding listed companies would also be regularly collected, sorted, and summarized in the form of a briefing.

However.

There were just too many opportunities to make money.

Although he asked people to help him find information, after the documents were delivered to him, he might not actually read them.

Liu Yangnan thought that Su Yehao didn't quite understand the mainland market, so he explained it in great detail.

But in fact, Su Yehao knew far more than he did. The main purpose of contacting Bi Gui Yuan this time was simply to be lazy and save trouble.

Developing these ordinary residential buildings in bulk was far more troublesome than developing large-scale integrated projects. Every building had to go through the entire process from land acquisition to sales. Doing it yourself was time-consuming and labor-intensive. It was much easier to invest directly.

Thinking about it this way, it was no wonder that developed countries in Europe and America were rich and relaxed.

They had completed the original accumulation of wealth a hundred years in advance, and like Su Yehao, they could use their money to invest and enjoy the dividends of appreciation, while throwing away the hard and tiring work, leaving only the most profitable core projects.

Europe and the United States produced a large airplane, exchanging it for countless clothes, toys, pots, pans, and other low-value-added commodities. That was why developing countries needed to develop and climb upwards.

Looking at the entire environment from the perspective of a future person, standing in 1999, he felt even more how difficult the prosperous age twenty years later was.

As for the pressure of housing prices, people had already been shouting about too much pressure since this era, but how many homebuyers who chose the right places in the next ten years actually lost money?

Just thinking about those who had mortgages now, having to pay "huge sums" of thousands of yuan every month in the future, and owning properties worth hundreds of thousands or millions, Su Yehao found it particularly interesting.

Standing on the balcony of the unfinished house, the afternoon sun shone on him, making his skin feel hot.

Su Yehao opened the window and looked out, casually asking, "If I invest 1 billion RMB in your company, how many shares of Bi Gui Yuan can you give me?"

"...I'll have to go back and ask our boss for his opinion. This is too big of a matter for me to decide on my own."

Deputy General Manager Liu Yangnan was shocked by this number, knowing what kind of help a 1 billion RMB investment would bring to the company's development. For a moment, his heart raced and his mouth felt dry.

A 1 billion RMB investment didn't mean that they could only use 1 billion to develop.

For a real estate development company, with this money, they could leverage at least another 2 to 3 billion in loans for land acquisition and development.

This meant that the company's overall strength would be raised to a new level. In the short term, they would have the opportunity to substantially surpass Vanke's scale and become one of the largest real estate developers in the country. They wouldn't have to rush to acquire land, develop, and recoup funds. They could start to be more flexible and continue to stockpile a batch of land in prime locations.

Although it was a bit like boasting under false pretenses.

However, once Su Yehao became a shareholder of Bi Gui Yuan, it would not only be beneficial to the company's brand image, but it could also provide substantial assistance in subsequent loans, land acquisitions, and financing.

Last year, Liu Yangnan had heard people say.

When Su Yehao's father was inspecting the cultural tourism city project in Guangzhou, several major banks directly arranged for the deputy heads of their head offices to receive him. It was a battle of the gods, and the various branches were not qualified to intervene at all.

And on Su Yehao's side, the landing of a Cyberport loan project successfully led to rumors that President Peng was about to be promoted. The president of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China personally poached him to work in the head office, in charge of the international business department, which included Hong Kong and Casino, 1997.

In the real estate business, how could one not have good relations with banks?

Once Su Yehao became one of the major shareholders, it would most likely cause Bi Gui Yuan's internal rating within the bank to rise to a new level, obtaining higher credit lines and faster approval and loan disbursement speeds.

Su Yehao didn't know what Liu Yangnan was thinking.

He was wondering if he should apply some sunscreen to avoid being disliked by the girls for getting sunburned. He left the window and continued:

"Okay, it might be 1 billion, or maybe a little more. I promised to help a friend find a good project, and your company is pretty good. If we reach an agreement on financing, I will arrange for an audit and consulting and legal team to comprehensively review the accounts and decision-making deployments of the past few years. Is that okay?"

Deputy General Manager Liu Yangnan nodded without hesitation and replied, "That's as it should be. Everything in our company is normal. We've paid all the taxes we should, and we only have some reasonable corporate bonds and bank loans, which we used to buy land."

"If there are no problems, I'll have my people coordinate with you. I can also help if you want to go public in the future, but it shouldn't be necessary in the next few years."

Su Yehao looked at his watch.

It was already past four in the afternoon, and thinking that Nong Qingying was still on the yacht, he first said goodbye to go find her.