SHANGHAI, Aug 12 (Reuters) – Beijing’s regulatory firestorm is hitting large swathes of China’s economy, but global investors including Blackstone and Warburg Pincus are ramping up bets on Chinese rental properties, judging the political wind is blowing in their favour.
China has cracked down on private tutoring, brought monopolistic tech giants to their knees, and stepped up curbs on home buying. But Beijing is wooing capital to help provide rental housing and is attracting plenty of institutional interest.
In China, “people need to be housed, but houses have become too expensive to buy. You need to have housing for rent,” said Graeme Torre, managing director of APG Asset Management, which has entered China’s rental housing market in partnership with U.S. property developer…