An entire apartment is priced at just 8,000 yuan! Is another Hegang emerging?

Another city has hit the trending list for its "dirt-cheap" housing prices.

Recently, a woman spent 30,000 yuan to buy a 40-square-meter second-hand old house with full payment in Chencang District, Baoji, Shaanxi Province. What's more extreme is that her friend bought a top-floor apartment in the same community for only 8,000 yuan.

As a result, the related topic quickly sparked widespread heated discussion. This also naturally reminds people of Hegang, Heilongjiang, which became popular earlier for its "dirt-cheap" housing prices.

Will Baoji really become the next Hegang?

01

Compared with Hegang, the emergence of 8,000-yuan apartments in Baoji is more or less surprising.

After all, Hegang is a typical resource-exhausted city, while Baoji is the second largest city in Shaanxi Province, second only to Xi'an. Meanwhile, it is also a key industrial town in western China, a high-end equipment manufacturing base, and a R&D and production base for new materials, known as the "China Titanium Valley". Besides, the Longhai, Baocheng and Baozhong railways meet here, making Baoji an important national railway transportation hub.

So what is the truth on earth?

First of all, according to media reports, the "8,000-yuan apartment" can only be regarded as a special case in the local area.

Take the community where this transaction took place as an example. It is the family dormitory of the former Shaanxi Machine Tool Factory, built in the late 1980s, with a history of nearly 40 years, which is a typical "old, small and shabby" residential building. And this ultra-low-price 8,000-yuan apartment is located on the top floor. At present, the general quoted price of housing sources in this community is around 40,000 to 50,000 yuan.

Therefore, it is obviously an exaggeration to equate Baoji with Hegang. But it is undeniable that third- and fourth-tier cities like Baoji are indeed facing current challenges.

For example, Baoji used to be the second city in Shaanxi in terms of GDP, but now it has been overtaken by Xianyang and Yulin, dropping to the fourth place in the province. In terms of population, the permanent resident population of Baoji decreased by nearly 400,000 during the 7th National Population Census; at the end of 2025, the permanent resident population decreased by about 40,000 year on year.

Therefore, against the general background of the overall downturn of the real estate industry, superimposed on these factors, the emergence of some "dirt-cheap" houses in Baoji is not too surprising.

02

In fact, in the past few years, the label of "the second Hegang" has been attached to many cities.

Rushan of Shandong, Changshou District of Chongqing, Qianjiang of Hubei, Huainan of Anhui, Hebi of Henan and other places have all been on the list.

There was even a circulated "Hegang-ization" list covering 95 cities, which not only included resource-exhausted cities, but even some areas around Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. It should also be reminded that most of these data are based on the situation of previous years.

At the same time, with the change of development stage, the differentiation of housing prices will become more drastic even within the same city.

For some old, small and shabby residential buildings in the downtown area of central cities, the prices may also be incredibly low. For example, not long ago, the topic of "some people start to snap up old, small and shabby properties in batches at the bottom price" hit the trending list, and some people bought seven or eight sets at a time like buying cabbages.

Behind this, it is actually the result of changes in the development stage of real estate and urbanization.

In the past, many "old, small and shabby" properties had expectations of demolition income, so the price gap between them and new houses was not that large. But now, as urban renewal focuses on transformation and upgrading, large-scale demolition and relocation have gradually faded out, a large number of old, small and shabby properties have lost their premium space, so it is easier for "ultra-low prices" to appear naturally.

In addition, some places with obvious changes in population and industrial structure may also give birth to ultra-low housing prices. Therefore, a new trend is that more and more "Hegang-ized" sections may appear in many cities with not low development levels.

Of course, it needs to be emphasized that the so-called "Hegang-ization", the change of housing prices is only the appearance, and the essence behind it is the chain reaction brought by the change of urbanization development stage, the decrease of population and the pressure on the sustainable development of industries.

In fact, regarding the changes in the development stage of urbanization, the Central Urban Work Conference last year has made a clear judgment: China's urbanization is shifting from a period of rapid growth to a period of stable development, and urban development is shifting from the stage of large-scale incremental expansion to the stage of focusing on improving quality and efficiency through stock optimization.

Under this general background, some third- and fourth-tier cities are bound to face greater pressure, and this pressure will inevitably be transmitted to housing prices.

Therefore, the real "Hegang-ization" does not only refer to the "dirt-cheap" housing prices, but also the deep-seated problem of the sustainability of the city's comprehensive development. Facing this trend, how cities can "profoundly understand and actively adapt to it" is the real key.

It can be said that in the future, "Hegang-ization" will no longer be a proper noun referring to a specific city, and will increasingly lose its "news value", and will gradually evolve into a normal phenomenon that more and more people accept and get used to.

This is not only the inevitability of market differentiation, but also the natural projection of the alternation of the life cycle of urban development. For individuals, this also means that choosing the "right" city is becoming more and more important.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Western City Events", author: West China Bacterium, published with authorization from 36Kr.