Chapter 2 I am negative equity

I am negative equity (1) I still remember that I had just immigrated to Hong Kong.Because I can’t speak Cantonese well, I’m always reluctant to go to the store to buy things, because although the salesperson has a professional smile, you can still feel the contempt in their bones, because they will think that you are from New immigrants from the Mainland. New immigrants in Hong Kong often mean that they are poor, do not speak Cantonese, are old-fashioned, and generally speaking, do not belong to the mainstream society here. Among the new immigrants from the mainland, I was lucky, because I found a job in a TV station in less than a week.And I think I was quite grateful to my boss at the time, who paid me as much as a native-born Hong Kong University graduate.

After solving the problem of work, I began to think about how to make my living environment better.It is precisely because people constantly have different requirements and desires, they often make themselves bear more pressure in life. I am an example. I have been in negative equity for many years, and according to the current performance of the Hong Kong economy, it is impossible for my house to have a qualitative breakthrough in the foreseeable years In Hong Kong, as long as I say that I have negative equity, many people will express their empathy.Because this is already the status quo of many, many Hong Kong people.But in the Mainland, whenever I talk about negative equity, many people don’t understand, so I will take some time to explain: negative equity means that the housing price of the house you bought has fallen, and the decline has been lower than your loan from the bank. amount.

I bought the house in 1999. Because of the Asian financial turmoil, the real estate prices in Hong Kong at that time had dropped by almost 40% from the peak in 1997. I followed the advice of the SAR government, because officials of all sizes Come out and say that property prices have reached the bottom, and ordinary citizens can buy properties. And buying a house, having a real home of my own, was what I longed for most at that time.Because when I first arrived in Hong Kong, the salary was not high and the job was not stable, so I just rented a room from someone else for a few thousand dollars a month. The place that belongs to us is just a sleeping room of less than a hundred square feet.

After a year like this, because of the birth of a child, I moved to my mother-in-law's house for easy care.But after all, living with the elderly, I always feel that I still lack my own space. With a stable job, although it would be very difficult to buy a house for rent at that time, it was no match for the desire to have a home of my own and improve my living environment. After signing the sales contract, I felt that my choice should be regarded as wise, because the seller lost almost one million and sold this house of less than 500 square feet to me for two million Hong Kong dollars.I feel as if I have made a lot of money.

Because it was an era of high interest rates, the monthly repayment of the bank loan was almost 20,000 Hong Kong dollars, and it would take 20 years.From this day on, I am not working for myself, but for the bank. However, when I walked into the home I personally designed, I felt that no matter how hard it was, it was worth it. It’s just that property prices didn’t reach the bottom as the government hoped. In less than four years, my house had fallen to just over one million yuan, so I became one of the many negative equity families in Hong Kong. From then on, life began to be a little trembling.The most worrying thing is whether I will receive a big envelope from the company one day.Hong Kong's economy is in a downturn, and the days of media companies are sluggish because of a sharp drop in advertising. There was a time when every company had to rely on layoffs to control costs.One after another companies went bankrupt, and everyone was worried, because at this time, it was not because of their own work performance, but because in many companies, each department needed to hand over a list every quarter to share the company's income. The number of layoffs.

Originally, these things were still far away from me, but I kept reporting which big company was laying off employees again.But all of a sudden, these things started happening to my friends and colleagues. Among these people, many of them are like me, they need to provide a house, and they also need to raise children.What was originally a middle-income family suddenly lost half of its income.In those years, people around me smiled less and less.Everyone also started to seldom chat, and many people were full of worries. Even now, I still have a job.But the sense of instability has always been deep inside me.There was a time when I had a dispute with some management on certain issues, and I was quite chic when I argued, but when I got home, I felt a little guilty and felt that I had offended my boss after all, so I dreamed At that time, he was finally fired.

Many people told me that you don't have to worry about this job when you are like this.Actually, I don't think so.I am very aware of the fact that there is no company in this world that cannot survive without you. In fact, it is a good thing to have such survival pressure.Because under such circumstances, usually everyone will cherish the job opportunity in front of them more and work harder, in order to let the company feel that they still have great productivity and increase their competitiveness.Another point, I think it is very important for me to be able to know who I really am and where I am, so that I won’t let myself be in a trance because of some praises and achievements.

Because of being engaged in TV, many times, there is a dazzling halo in the eyes of others.But the halo is something that has nothing to do with him after all.To leave the public eye is to face real life, including the most trivial things.I think, the more you can see and face these trivial things clearly, the more you can live a real life. Sometimes, I am also very envious of those who make a lot of money. I think, if one day, I work not for survival, but for interest, how great it would be. I am negative equity (2) But I think most people will be the same as me, but with the accumulation of work achievements, the factors that may be purely for survival are gradually decreasing, and when a person has a lot of money, he should have other things. Desires arise, and there are other pressures, so I said to myself, don't envy others, and do a good job of yourself first.