I Didn’t Buy a House in 2026. Five Years Later, I’m Still Doing the Math.

I turned off my phone, then turned it on again.

The apartment I’d been watching on the second-hand app had dropped another fifty thousand yuan. It was September 2026. I’d been looking in this second-tier city for more than half a year. Policies kept coming. Down payments fell to 15 percent. Mortgage rates slipped into the 2 percent range. Lao Zhou, my agent, sent me seventeen WeChat messages a day.

My wife said, “Maybe we should just do it.”

I didn’t answer.

That night I did the math. The place cost 1.8 million yuan. Down payment: 270,000. Loan: 1.53 million. Thirty years. Monthly payment: 6,800.

I made 12,000 a month. My wife made 7,000. Our child would start elementary school next year. The school district was average, but he could get in.

I ran the numbers three times. Then I turned off the calculator.

The next day I went to the sales office.

The Sales Office

It was busy. Seven or eight people stood around the scale model. A salesperson waved a laser pointer and said things like “only two units left” and “the price goes up tomorrow.”

I stood outside the crowd.

A man in a white shirt walked over and handed me a floor plan. Eighty-nine square meters. Three bedrooms. Total price: 1.75 million. Down payment: 260,000.

“Brother,” he said, “the policy is so good right now. Down payment this low, interest rate this low. If you don’t buy now, it’ll be too late.”

I asked one question: “How much was this place selling for last year?”

He paused. “Last year was a different market. Now it’s already at the bottom.”

I didn’t respond. I remembered a development I’d looked at last year. It was selling for 23,000 per square meter then. Now it was 18,000. The salesperson back then had also said, “It’s already at the bottom.”

I stayed forty minutes. When I left, the salesperson added me on WeChat and said, “Brother, think about it. This price really is at the bottom.”

I said, “Okay.”

Lao Zhou’s Listings

Lao Zhou had been on my WeChat friends list for more than two years.

Over those two years, his posts changed from “The market is going to rise” to “This is the policy bottom” to “First-time buyers need to get on board now.”

In September 2026, he posted more than ten times a day. The message was the same: transactions are booming, prices are stabilizing, and anyone who doesn’t buy now will regret it.

But I noticed one detail. Lao Zhou’s own apartment had been listed for sale last year. It still hadn’t sold.

I asked him once, “Brother Zhou, how’s your place selling?”

He said, “No rush. I’ll wait until the market improves.”

Later, I saw in the agent’s backend system that his apartment had been listed for fourteen months. The price had dropped from 2.1 million to 1.65 million. There had been three viewing records.

He was still posting, “Only two units left” and “Price increase tomorrow.”

The Math

I worked in tech at a small company. My salary was 12,000 yuan a month. My year-end bonus depended on performance. Last year business was poor, and I got 10,000.

My wife taught at a kindergarten. She earned 7,000 a month. Stable, but it had never increased.

We had 350,000 in savings.

Down payment: 270,000. That left 80,000. Deed tax, maintenance fund, and agency fees would come to about 50,000. That left 30,000. It would need to cover at least half a year of mortgage payments if something went wrong.

If we bought, the monthly payment would take 36 percent of our household income. It looked manageable on paper.

Then I remembered last year’s layoffs. Three people were let go. Their work was divided among those who remained. I didn’t know if I’d still have a job next year.

My wife said, “Maybe we should sell the place back home?”

I said, “It’s been listed for two years. No one’s even asked.”

She stopped talking.

My Cousin in Shanghai

My younger cousin worked in finance in Shanghai. He came back for dinner during National Day, and we talked about housing.

He said Shanghai’s transaction volume had picked up. A colleague had just bought an old, small apartment in the inner ring. Total price: 6 million yuan. Down payment: 2 million.

I asked, “So are prices going to rise there?”

He said, “I don’t know. My colleague regretted it right after buying. He thinks he paid too much.”

My cousin added that Shanghai was divided now. Inside the inner ring and outside the inner ring were two different worlds. His neighborhood had dropped 15 percent last year and another 5 percent this year. The agent kept telling him, “It’s already at the bottom.”

I asked, “So are you going to buy?”

He said, “I’m still watching.”

My Wife’s Colleague

One of my wife’s colleagues bought an apartment last year.

At the time, the policy was favorable. Interest rates had dropped. Down payments had dropped. The agent said, “It’s at the bottom.”

She gritted her teeth and bought. Total price: 1.6 million yuan. Loan: 1.2 million.

This year, the same layout in that neighborhood was listed at 1.3 million.

She did the math. In one year, her down payment had disappeared.

When my wife came home and told me, her voice was calm. She said, “Good thing we didn’t buy.”

I didn’t say anything. I remembered that last year I had almost bought an apartment too. I liked one. Total price: 1.65 million. I hesitated for two days, and someone else bought it. At the time, I felt regret.

Now that apartment was back on the market. Listing price: 1.45 million. It had been listed for half a year without selling.

Cao Dewang’s Video

I watched a video of Cao Dewang online.

He said houses are just steel, cement, and bricks. They aren’t worth that much money. He also said people who own multiple properties should sell them quickly, because in the future they won’t be able to sell them or rent them out.

I forwarded the video to my wife.

She said, “He’s talking about people with multiple properties. We just want one to live in. It’s different, right?”

I said, “It is different. But if we buy, we’re the ones taking over the bag. In the future, if we want to move, who will we sell it to?”

She said, “Then we just won’t move.”

I said, “What about when the child gets older? What if the school district changes? What if I change jobs?”

She didn’t answer.

My Parents’ Apartment

My hometown is in a county town below the city.

My parents own an apartment there. One hundred and twenty square meters. They bought it in 2018 for 800,000 yuan. Now it was listed at 450,000. It had been on the market for two years, and no one had asked about it.

My father said, “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have bought it.”

I said, “You live in it. It doesn’t matter if the price drops.”

He said, “That’s what you say, but it doesn’t feel good. The money we saved our whole lives just disappeared.”

I remembered how happy he had been when he bought it. He felt he had finally left his son a place in the city.

Now that apartment had become his anxiety.

The Year I Didn’t Buy

In October 2026, I decided not to buy.

I couldn’t calculate clearly.

I couldn’t calculate whether my company would still exist next year or whether my wife’s salary would be cut. I couldn’t calculate the child’s education costs or my parents’ medical bills.

I couldn’t calculate clearly, so I didn’t dare bet the next thirty years on an apartment.

Lao Zhou kept posting. The salesperson kept calling. The sales office stayed busy without me.

I stopped going.

I deleted the second-hand housing app.

Five Years Later

Five years later, I was forty-three.

My child had started middle school. My wife was still at the kindergarten. I had changed companies, and my salary had gone up a little.

I was still renting. The rent had risen from 2,500 to 3,000.

The apartment I had looked at back then had dropped from 1.75 million to 1.2 million. Lao Zhou’s apartment finally sold for 1.1 million. That was 100,000 less than its peak.

Sometimes I wondered what would have happened if I had bought.

I would have paid the mortgage for five years. The principal would barely have gone down. The price would have fallen by 550,000. I might have already defaulted.

Or prices might have risen again. I might have upgraded to a bigger place. I didn’t know.

I only knew that I had savings now. I had changed jobs twice, and both times I left on my own terms.

My wife said, “Good thing we didn’t buy. Otherwise, how would you have dared to quit?”

I said, “Yeah.”

I felt neither relief nor regret. It was the only choice I could make at the time.

The Old Man’s Apartment

The place I rent now belongs to a man in his sixties.

He said he bought the apartment in 2005 for 300,000 yuan. Now it was worth 1.2 million.

He said, “You young people have it hard buying houses now.”

I said, “Yeah.”

He said, “When I bought, my salary was 2,000 and the price was 3,000 per square meter. Now your salary is 10,000 and the price is 20,000. You have it harder than we did.”

I nodded.

He said, “But housing will return to normal sooner or later. When I bought, I never imagined it would go up to a million.”

I said, “That’s true.”

I didn’t know how long I would keep renting. I still don’t.

Some nights I felt uneasy. Other nights I told myself that’s just how it is.

A house is for living in. The place I rented was also for living in.

My wife said, “When the child starts high school, we’ll talk about it again.”

I said, “Okay.”

That night, I lay in bed, listening to the cars outside.

I thought about that autumn in 2026, when I stood outside the sales office for a long time. The salesperson told me, “Brother, it’s at the bottom.”

I didn’t go in.

I didn’t know if that was the bottom.

I knew it was a bottom I couldn’t calculate clearly.

So I didn’t go in.

This article does not constitute investment advice. Markets carry risk; decisions require caution.