Chongzhen's domineering

Chapter 199 A Unique Business of Selling Houses and Land (Part 1)

With the Lunar New Year approaching, the capital city is even more bustling and lively.

The streets and alleys of the inner city were once again teeming with people, and the shops, teahouses, and even restaurants were packed with people.

After Zhu Jue took power, he seemed to be making a lot of random and haphazard decisions, but he was actually using the experience developed in later generations.

That was a highly successful experience tested over hundreds of years, and he had also successfully built a huge business empire, so he was very familiar with developing this system.

Therefore, the development of the capital was so rapid that it was frightening to many officials in the outer court, while the people of the capital were overjoyed.

For an emperor or investor, the early stages of development required a huge investment of manpower, resources, and money. When the capital was expanded into a nine-square grid covering a radius of hundreds of miles, he had already invested an unknown amount of money.

However, for the people of the capital, this was a great thing. Not only did they get money from the land acquisition and move into new houses, they also had many extra ways to earn money.

Even if they don't know anything else, they can always dig. Even if they just take a hoe and dig, they can still earn one or two taels of silver a month. If they dig for ten months, they can earn ten taels of silver.

Moreover, as the capital city became increasingly prosperous, there were far more ways to make money than just these; the work in the weaving factory was even more lucrative than digging the ground.

Those with a knack for making money have many more ways to earn it. Even setting up a stall in the morning to sell breakfast items like porridge, steamed buns, and noodles can earn them more money than working in a textile factory.

In short, most of the money Zhu Jue invested in the early stages of the large-scale development was actually distributed to the people of the capital as welfare. Everyone became richer and their lives became more and more prosperous, so the common people were naturally overjoyed.

With the Lunar New Year approaching, there are naturally more people buying New Year's goods, and the crowds in the inner city are incredibly dense.

This year, a strange thing happened in the capital of the Ming Dynasty: the northern outer city, which is under construction, was also crowded with people, as if they were buying New Year's goods there.

At this time, there were no New Year's goods to buy in the outer city of Beiwai. The shops in Beiwai were just whitewashed outlines on the ground, and the foundations had not even been dug yet.

However, the residences in the outer city of the north were built one after another and gradually completed, and the ordinary people of the outer city of the north moved in one after another.

As for why the northern outer city, which has no shops selling anything, is still bustling with people, it's because there are still quite a few smart people these days, especially in the culturally rich capital of the Ming Dynasty, where there are far more smart people than those who aren't.

Bi Maoliang only let out a little bit of word, saying that there were newly built houses and shops for sale in the northern outer city, and those with a brain started rushing over there.

Especially after some of the houses were built, more and more people came to see them, seemingly to buy New Year's goods.

They weren't there to buy New Year's goods, of course, but they were there to look at the goods, including houses and shops, which were quite profitable.

Anyone with a brain knows that the capital is such a prosperous place, with so many government offices, where the provincial and palace examinations are held, and factories are everywhere. Making money is incredibly easy to find. All these conditions mean that the population of the capital will definitely keep increasing, and anyone with a way out will try their best to squeeze in.

With more people, there needs to be a place to live. Building a house in the capital is not easy; land is hard to find, and labor costs are rising. Under these circumstances, a ready-made house is the best option.

Originally, there weren't many ready-made houses for sale in the capital. Moreover, as early as last year when the capital was becoming increasingly prosperous, those houses for sale by the common people were all bought up. There was nothing that even the smart ones could do.

The fact that the inner court was now selling tens of thousands of such residences at only one hundred taels of silver per unit naturally attracted shrewd individuals.

Everyone knows how difficult it is to buy a house in the capital these days; one hundred taels for a house is the cost price.

This is because the private land price is no longer twenty taels per mu.

Many people offered fifty taels per mu but still couldn't buy land.

After all, not everyone is Wei Zhongxian. When the Grandfather Wei tells someone to get lost, no one dares to disobey. As for others, the people of the capital don't even give him a second glance.

Wei Gong was treacherous and ruthless, but at least he gave you a new house after buying the land. That is, he would give you twenty taels of silver for each acre of land and then replace it with a new house.

This is equivalent to getting twenty taels of silver for free, plus a new house. The cost price of this new house is more than thirty taels, so no one would sell it for fifty taels per mu. Of course, this refers to land that already had houses built on it.

As for farmland, there's no need to even think about it. Farmland can produce grain. According to the grain price in the capital, one mu of land can earn at least two taels of silver a year. This is a business for a lifetime, not just for one or two years.

Many savvy people started planting various vegetables. With the population of the capital increasing day by day, vegetables were selling very well. As long as you were willing to work hard and plant more vegetables to sell, it was not a problem to earn three or four taels or even four or five taels a year from one mu of land.

Besides, farmland is not allowed to be used for building houses unless Lord Wei comes to take it over.

Therefore, it is extremely difficult to buy a house in the capital at this time, even if it is old, and even if you offer 150 or 200 taels, you still can't buy it.

The inner court has actually built more than 10,000 new residences for sale, and they're only 100 taels a unit. Anyone who doesn't buy one would be a fool.

The reason so many people come to the North City every day is to see how well the houses are built. They are afraid that the inner court will hire some people to build houses that are uninhabitable with the worst materials and then sell them, forcing them to demolish and rebuild.

That would be a bit troublesome. One hundred taels is equivalent to buying an acre of land, and you would also have to pay people to demolish and rebuild it.

It turned out that this wasn't the case at all.

The soldiers recruited by the inner court were all from the Beijing Garrison. The walls were built with glutinous rice and lime mortar, and the bricks were as square as those used to build city walls. The wood used was also the most sturdy and durable.

Building houses like this is for hundreds of years, not the kind of houses that people live in for only a few decades.

More importantly, the newly built houses are all equipped with heating pipes.

This thing is really great! Once you install these heating pipes, you won't need to buy coal to heat the kang (heated brick bed) in winter, nor will you need to use charcoal fires. The house will be warm and cozy like spring.

The artisans' homes in the eastern outer city had already been connected to the internet long ago, and the artisans' homes in the western outer city have also been connected one after another. Many people have experienced it and found it to be really comfortable.

The key is that this thing is convenient and clean, as it doesn't require burning coal or charcoal.

As for the heating fee of one tael of silver per month, burning coal might not cost that much, but it's dirty. Burning charcoal would cost more than that per month.

After seeing it, many people started asking around to find someone in the inner court to buy it.

Bi Maoliang was also very business-minded. He wasn't in a hurry to sell. He directly suggested to Zhu Jue that they raise the price to two hundred taels per set before selling.

Zhu Juena also came to Beicheng every day to check on the progress, and he naturally saw those people looking at houses.

Judging from this situation, even if they don't raise the price, many people will resell it for 200 taels a set.

He also knew very well that this was how the industry was; it did indeed go through a period of rapid growth at the beginning, which was the first wave of "leeks" (new investors who were exploited), and the growth would only be more vigorous after they were harvested.

He certainly didn't want others to earn that money; he was still hoping to recoup his investment.

He expanded the capital city to a radius of over a hundred miles in one go. In the past two years, he has spent several million taels of silver just on buying land, and several million taels on hiring workers, building houses and factories, mining and purchasing raw materials, etc. In total, he has spent more than 20 million taels of silver.

If a house is priced at 100 taels and a shop at 200 taels, then even with more than 10,000 houses and more than 20,000 shops, it would not be possible to recover one-third of the cost.

His original plan was to sell some first, so that people could experience how comfortable it would be to live in a heated house in winter, and also to show how much appreciation potential there was in such ready-made houses. Then, he planned to double the price next year, so that he could barely break even half of his investment.

Who would have thought that clever people could see the appreciation potential of this house without even moving in, and there are many such clever people in the capital.

Then we might have no choice but to do as Bi Maoliang suggested and raise the price to two hundred taels per set before selling it.

(End of this chapter)