建材市場那句「很不好」，住建部三天前給咗答案

[Hany’s take] Column: Hany’s blog review

"That ‘Pretty Bad’ at the Building-Materials Market — the Housing Ministry Gave the Answer Three Days Ago"

Hany · September 23, 2026 · 2 PM

— The building-materials boss said "pretty bad"; the Housing Ministry had already given him the answer three days earlier

Yesterday at noon I went to the building-materials market. Honestly, I only meant to wander around and check prices on doors, windows and hardware. In the end I hadn't finished one cup of tea before I'd heard a bellyful of plain truth.

When I walked into Mr. Chen's shop he was dozing under the fan. It isn't big. Both sides are stacked with door handles, hinges and sliding rails, and there are a few sample doors on the floor. When he saw me he scrambled up, offered me a cigarette and said with a grin, "Hany, long time no see. What wind blew you over today?"

I asked him straight out, "Old Chen, how's the door-and-window hardware business lately?" The grin folded up at once. He shook his head and said four words: "Pretty bad." He said it very calmly. Not a complaint — more like something he'd accepted a long time ago.

I asked how bad. He said: "We used to live off new developments. A tower gets handed over and the whole building's door-and-window hardware follows it — big volume, fast money. Now there's far less new building. Property has declined, and of course it drags us down with it. So what do we live on now? People coming in to top up stock. A hinge breaks, a roller jams, the renovation guy comes by to pick up a few. The repeat rate is strong, but they're all odd-lot orders — a few dozen dollars here, a hundred-odd there. Keeping a whole shop standing on that is really not easy."

Right in the middle of that, a young fellow came in wearing a grey work shirt with white plaster on his trouser cuffs, carrying one broken roller. "Boss, got this wheel? I need four." Mr. Chen glanced at it, turned and picked four off the rack. Twenty dollars. The young man scanned, paid, took them and left — the whole thing under two minutes. Mr. Chen pointed at his back and told me, "See that? That's what it is now. That's Qiang, the renovation guy. He's always doing up old flats for people. Rollers, locks, they need changing all the time. These are my bread and butter now."

I asked Qiang whether there's a lot of renovation work lately. He said there is, plenty — lots of old flats. "If you can't afford a new one, you tidy up the old place: swap the door-and-window hardware, change the lock, and the whole flat feels new." One owner told him, "Do a renovation once, live in it ten or twenty years. Next time I look you up, who knows when that'll be." Mr. Chen cut in from the side, "Exactly. A man renovates once, and that pretty much covers him for ten or twenty years. So our line is a traditional business — slow. One sale carries you for years."

Just then Uncle Leung from the next shop wandered over for the fun of it. Uncle Leung has been in hardware over twenty years and his hair has gone completely white. The moment he sat down he said, "Hany, you do electronics, you're different. Your phone gets replaced every two years. One of my hinges lasts ten years without breaking. People only come when it breaks; when nothing breaks, not a sound, not a peep." I said, "Uncle Leung, electronics aren't having an easy time either. Huaqiangbei has gone quiet too." He laughed and said, "At least you've still got new things coming out. A new model every year. Us? The same styles for ten years. What we compete on is who can hold out longer."

That one line landed right inside me. Electronics is a fast business — it lives on new products. Building materials is a slow business — it lives on outlasting time. Two kinds of bad, and they are not the same kind of bad.

Back home that night I was scrolling my phone and saw that press conference from three days earlier, September 18, at the State Council Information Office — the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development talking about high-quality development of housing construction in the 15th Five-Year Plan. Vice Minister Chen Shaowang said a string of things, and two of them hit me at once: the supply-demand relationship in the property market has undergone major changes, and real estate has entered the stock era. Zhang Xuetao, director of the Real Estate Market Regulation Department, even gave the numbers: second-hand housing as a share of transactions was 27% in 2020, 46% in 2025, and in the first eight months of this year it is already 52%. Above 50% marks entry into the stock era.

I immediately thought of Mr. Chen that afternoon — "property has declined." So the chill he felt in his shop has already been stamped at the national level. It isn't that one shop of his is doing badly; an entire era of increments is over. Before, it was build new towers, hand over new towers, fit new doors and windows — one long chain. Now second-hand transactions are over half the market, and whoever buys a second-hand flat has to renovate it and change the door-and-window hardware. Mr. Chen says he's holding on with top-up orders, and what he's holding on to is exactly that stock.

There were two more things at that press conference that are closely tied to him. One was sales of completed housing. Zhang Xuetao said selling completed homes is already the general trend — cash on one side, goods on the other, what you see is what you get, which fundamentally prevents delivery risk. For building materials that's a double-edged sword: the more standardised completed-home delivery is, the steadier bulk demand for doors and windows becomes — but payment terms and quality requirements will certainly be tougher, and it gets harder for a scattered little shop to win a big order. The second was the housing provident fund. The newly revised Regulations on the Administration of Housing Provident Fund took effect on September 20; withdrawal situations went from 6 to 9, so ordinary people can now withdraw for day-to-day home renovation and for paying property management fees. Being able to use the provident fund for renovation is good news for Mr. Chen: with owners' wallets a bit looser, the willingness to renovate gets stronger, and top-up orders naturally get more frequent.

I also looked up the figures for the first eight months of this year: floor space completed fell 23.7% year-on-year, residential completions fell 25.4%. A half-year report from Soochow Securities said renovation building-materials revenue growth turned negative in Q2, at –5.5%. Deep-processing firms are holding only eight to ten days of orders — a five-year low. The numbers are cold, but they match that scene in the shop that afternoon: the big orders are gone, the odd lots are holding things up, nobody dares build inventory, and everyone buys only as they use.

So Mr. Chen's line about "not the same as you electronics people" tastes richer the more I chew on it. When electronics is bad, it's because technology turns over fast and price wars are savage — but at least there are still AI devices, still overseas markets, still new products to tell a story with. When building materials is bad, it's the low-frequency fate of one renovation every ten years: the new towers are gone, so all you can do is wait for old flats to be done up. One side is fast, one side is slow. The fast have the anxiety of fast; the slow have the torment of slow.

As I was leaving, Mr. Chen told me, "Hany, I'm not greedy. If I can hold on to this shop and keep a bowl of rice, that's enough." Uncle Leung patted his shoulder: "Hold on. There are so many old flats. Doors and windows will always break, and when they break they have to be changed, and when they're changed they have to come to us." Qiang poked his head in from the doorway and added, "That's right, Mr. Chen. Next time the roller breaks, I'll be back to give you the business." The whole shop laughed.

On the way back I kept thinking: "stock era" is a big phrase, but on the ground it comes down to this — one roller for twenty dollars, one hinge for a dozen-odd, one renovation that lasts ten years. The increment being gone doesn't mean demand is gone; it means demand has shattered, scattered, slowed down. Whoever is willing to bend down and pick up the odd lots, whoever turns repeat purchases into old relationships, is the one who keeps living inside the stock.

Trade begins with friends, not orders — that's the line I wrote in the KTL piece last time, and today at the building-materials market it came true again. What Mr. Chen is protecting isn't stock, it's the goodwill of renovators like Qiang. A renovation happens once every ten or twenty years, but in between there are countless top-ups, and those all depend on the ordinary everyday relationship. Electronics or building materials — once the increment era is over, everyone is competing at the same thing: who is worth remembering, who is worth coming back to.

An order lasts a moment; trust lasts a lifetime. Building-materials people feel that line deeper than electronics people do.

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