Who doesn’t know* in Chinese culture the numbers six and eight are considered ‘good’ and the number four ‘bad’?
Certainly not property buyers as this study of transaction details for a particularly warm spell in the Chengdu real estate market between 2004~2006 reveal. Particularly granular data is available for this period and Matthew Shum of the California Institute of Technology together with Wei Sun and Guangliang Ye, both of the Renmin University of China have drilled it for lucky number effects and managed to quantify some of them.
Concentrating on the ‘eight-effect’ they discover in their sample period second hand apartments with an eight sold on average for Rmb235/psm higher than comparable units. New units (that don’t price the eights at a premium) sold on average 6.9 days faster than adjacent units. In addition, they discovered a significant relationship between buyers with eights in their phone numbers and a preference for eight numbered apartments.
So, if you’re a vendor of an eight numbered unit check your potential buyers phone number (or vehicle registration number I’ll bet) if you want a guide as to who might have the upper hand in a forthcoming negotiation. If you’re a buyer of a new unit and the eight numbered unit really isn’t a premium there appears to be an arbitrage.
Happy Sunday.
[You can access the paper in full here Superstition and Lucky Apartments. *Just in case that’s you; six suggests ‘smooth’ as in things will proceed unhindered, eight sounds like prosper or wealth but can also mean infinity when rotated 90-degrees (lemniscate in English), two eights side by side look (a bit) like the shuangxi or double happiness symbol 囍. Four is simple, it sounds the same as the word for death]